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The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was passed in 2016 to regulate companies’ use and storage of personal data, such as cookies, which are a common feature of the modern internet used to track user’s activity and preferences. This paper aims to examine people’s perspectives on cookie consent prompts and the effects of using deceptive design in cookie consent prompts.

The results suggest that the design, rather than trust in the website’s organization, is crucial for users’ decisions to accept, decline, or manage cookies. Honest design is emphasized, and the dangers of deceptive design in cookie consent prompts are highlighted. Prompts that require full attention from the user and cover the content of the page are more likely to result in reflective and active decisions, but design friction that forces users to make a reflective choice causes irritation. The study also reveals a discrepancy between self-reported and observed behavior regarding cookie acceptance, as users tend to accept more cookies than they say they do.

People make a vast number of decisions every day and these decisions invoke either a reflective or automatic behavior. Using e.g., nudging to influence a person’s behavior in a positive direction can have beneficial sustainable effects. This study aims to illustrate how digital nudging and design friction can be used to induce a reflective behavior in users of digital services during their decision-making. The field of study is the user’s reflection regarding sustainable choices when ordering meals online. The results provided from this initial case study showed that the participants preferred prototypes with implemented design approaches of digital nudging and design friction over a neutral prototype. Nudging had great impact on the decision-making process and provided feelings such as guilt if the participants did not select the option with the lowest carbon footprint. The design approach also induced a reflective behavior among the participants. Introducing so-called design friction provided a reflective behavior but had no impact on the participants decisions. Results also showed that even detailed information in the neutral prototype provided an informative and reflective behavior, which in some of the cases had an impact on the participants’ decisions.

The recent global pandemic has had great impact on our society, were restricted physical social interaction created changes that will have long-lasting effects on how certain activities are performed. One example is how the restrictive use of training facilities has impacted people's motivation of working out. Training online, through e.g., social media, increased during this time and many new apps for this purpose were launched. One way of differentiating in this landscape is the use of augmented reality. This paper investigates how augmented reality can be used in mobile fitness apps to improve the digital social interaction when working out. The study is based on prototyping and testing of a conceptual app and the results show the potential of augmented reality to improve social interaction in this context.

This paper examines Slack's effects on perceived stress levels among employees compared with classical work communication such as email. The study also investigates whether or not modern work platforms such as Slack affects the way people view and separate work and leisure time. As work from home increased drastically with the spread of Covid-19, simple and fast communication at work became more important than ever. Employees did not have the same possibility to meet daily at the office which created new demands on text-based communication platforms used for work purposes. The study was performed through a survey with 113 contributing respondents as well as three follow-up interviews. The study shows a difference in the respondents' approach toward Slack compared to email. Close to 11% stated that they read emails after work hours whereas 24% stated that they read Slack messages after work. Even though a slight difference can be seen between the two ways of communication, it becomes clear that it is more likely the ease-of-use and simple accessibility of modern work communication can cause stress than Slack itself. The results show that platforms such as Slack make it easier to interact with colleagues even after work hours. These results illustrate the issue of living in a time where the office is equally as remote as fixed.

Scrollytelling is the most common form of long-form journalism and has become a popular communication device because of its ability to capture an audience’s attention. This could make scrollytelling a suitable format for younger audiences, whose attitudes towards news differ from older generations; it is more individualistic and is driven by progress and entertainment. This paper investigates the effect scrollytelling has on journalistic content according to a younger audience. This was done by letting participants consume an article in both a normal static format, i.e., non-scrollytelling, and a scrollytelling format, and then provide insights through a questionnaire and interview. The results showed a significant difference in perceived engagement favoring the scrollytelling format and clear indications of which features scrollytelling can produce and how desirable these are. It also showed the strength of scrollytelling in its ability to invoke an emotional response.

There are numerous online payment methods when shopping online. This paper presents the evolution of payment methods through the years and investigates which payment methods young adults prefer and investigates if and how modern payment methods affect financial responsibility among young adults. The study was conducted through a survey and follow-up interviews with Swedish young adults. 75% claimed they make online purchases 1-3 times a week or more, of which 35% always check their bank account before paying. The study suggests that direct payment using their smart device (Swish) is the most preferred payment method. The research suggests that it is the combination of the different payment methods available that is impacting financial responsibility among young adults rather than the payment method itself.

Immersion has become an important factor for video games. This study investigates the effect that haptic feedback has on the perceived immersion of the player in two different setups; one with haptic feedback in the game controller and one with feedback in a haptic vest. Both experiments consisted of a user test, followed by answering a questionnaire. The results show tendencies of haptic feedback both increasing and inhibiting the ability to feel immersed by certain metrics, even if the statistical analysis shows no significant difference between the groups in any of the sub-scales. The results also show that most of the test subjects thinks that the vest and its' haptic feedback delivers more immersion to the gaming experience. The conclusion that can be drawn from both experiments is that haptic feedback improves the user feeling of immersion, more specifically regarding the players awareness of the surroundings in the game.

The concept of creativity is an important part of human society and the continuous evolution of artificial minds has raised questions on creativity among machines. This aim of the this study is to explore machine learning algorithms' ability to be creative. The study reported in this paper uses short samples of music generated by IBM Watson beats that are evaluated using expert assessment of 51 music teachers together with samples generated by humans as control samples. The results show that one of the machine learning generated samples showed the same level of creativity as the human generated samples. Hence, there are indications that today machine learning algorithms can create music that is hard to distinguish from human created music and can be considered creative.

As a larger proportion of our lives moves onto the web, so does important and valuable information. This has led to an increase in different kinds of manipulative patterns (dark patterns) in web design with the sole purpose of being deceptive and tricking users. This paper discusses the comprehensive suite of deceptive design patterns on Internet services where the users are expected to comply with the use of cookies. This was done by analyzing 50 different home cooking recipe websites, regarding their appliance to GDPR and how they use different dark patterns in their design. Even though legislation tries tomove the choices from the website to the user, it is clear that by using deceptive design patterns it is possible to "bypass" the legislation and trick the user into making a favorable choice for the owners behind the website. The results show that out of the websites that were GDPR approved, a majority still use two types of deceptive design patterns - misdirection and sneak into basket.

This paper aims to provide guidance when designing acall to action in a digital system with the purpose to create anintended feeling and user engagement. The paper is based on a test of four different simple call to action constructions. The users clearly prefer constructions that have a high explainability and feels intuitive. Hence, the design should have a high level of transparency and show the user straight away what it demands from the user and what the result of the action is. Furthermore, the design should have a high usability to make it clear how touse the call to action.