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Creating a Framework to Support the Critical Consideration of Dark Design Aspects in Free-to-Play Apps

Published: 12 June 2019 Publication History

Abstract

The majority of mobile apps are free-to-play and so include a variety of forms of advertising and other mechanisms for monetization. These monetization mechanisms often have deceptive elements and closely resemble what designers know as Dark Patterns. In-app advertising and purchasing have been studied with adults but, to-date, younger users have received comparatively little consideration despite their increased susceptibility to manipulation. This paper addresses the gap in research by creating the ADD (App Dark Design) framework which brings together insights from practitioners, theory from existing related research, and the findings from a user study which gathered qualitative data from 39 girls aged 12-13 years. We also derive a set of emerging issues and identify future research questions. This work is the first of its kind to create a framework to support the critical consideration of the design of free-to-play apps. We have identified a set of problematic Dark Design aspects that young people across the world are encountering in their apps every day and we hope this paper will both raise awareness and stimulate further research work on this important topic.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    IDC '19: Proceedings of the 18th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children
    June 2019
    787 pages
    ISBN:9781450366908
    DOI:10.1145/3311927
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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    Publication History

    Published: 12 June 2019

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    Author Tags

    1. Apps
    2. Children
    3. Free-to-play
    4. Freemium
    5. Monetization

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    IDC '19
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    IDC '19: Interaction Design and Children
    June 12 - 15, 2019
    ID, Boise, USA

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    IDC '19 Paper Acceptance Rate 41 of 124 submissions, 33%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 172 of 578 submissions, 30%

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    IDC '25
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    June 23 - 26, 2025
    Reykjavik , Iceland

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    • (2024)Identifying Dark Patterns in User Account Disabling Interfaces: Content Analysis ResultsSocial Media + Society10.1177/2056305123122426910:1Online publication date: 27-Jan-2024
    • (2024)Level Up or Game Over: Exploring How Dark Patterns Shape Mobile GamesProceedings of the International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia10.1145/3701571.3701604(148-156)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2024
    • (2024)Growing Up With Dark Patterns: How Children Perceive Malicious User Interface DesignsProceedings of the 13th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/3679318.3685358(1-17)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
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    • (2024)Culture Clash: When Deceptive Design Meets Diverse Player ExpectationsCompanion Proceedings of the 2024 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play10.1145/3665463.3678866(272-275)Online publication date: 14-Oct-2024
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