@inproceedings{hoebenkuil-2025-jurix,author={Hoeben-Kuil, Lyra and van Dijck, Gijs and Savelka, Jaromir and Gunawan, Johanna and Kollnig, Konrad and Kolacz, Marta and Duffourc, Mindy and Chavravarthy, Shashank and Westermann, Hannes},year={2025},title={PREPRINT: Can LLMs Create Legally Relevant Summaries and Analyses of Videos?},url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.13772},publisher={Foundation for Legal Knowledge Based Systems}}
IPR
Leveraging Interdisciplinary Methods for Evidence Collection in Enforcement: Dark Patterns as a Case Study
Johanna T. Gunawan, Colin M. Gray, Cristiana Santos, and 1 more author
In Internet Policy Review Special Issue: The Craft of Interdisciplinary Research and Methods in Public Interest Cybersecurity, Privacy, and Digital Rights Governance, Nov 2025
@inproceedings{gunawan-2025-ipr,author={Gunawan, Johanna T. and Gray, Colin M. and Santos, Cristiana and Bielova, Nataliia},title={Leveraging Interdisciplinary Methods for Evidence Collection in Enforcement: Dark Patterns as a Case Study},year={2025},month=nov,publisher={Internet Policy Review},booktitle={Internet Policy Review Special Issue: The Craft of Interdisciplinary Research and Methods in Public Interest Cybersecurity, Privacy, and Digital Rights Governance},series={IPR'25 Special Issue},url={https://policyreview.info/articles/analysis/interdisciplinary-methods-dark-patterns},}
MobileHCI
“An Ad Posing as Medical Advice”: User Accounts of Dark UX in FemTech mHealth Apps
Ghada Alsebayel, Giovanni M Troiano, Johanna Gunawan, and 2 more authors
FemTech is an emerging industry offering products, software, and services to support women’s health and well-being. Within FemTech, mobile health applications (mHealth apps) are popular for managing menstruation, fertility, pregnancy, and menopause. Yet, these apps expose users to deceptive and misleading practices, which can be characterized as Dark Patterns in user experience (or dark UX). Dark UX in commercial FemTech mHealth apps is underexplored, leaving a critical gap in understanding how deceptive patterns manifest in intimate health contexts, the harms they cause, and how to address them. We crowd-source and thematically analyze user accounts of dark UX through user reviews from sixteen systematically selected FemTech mHealth apps. User-reported accounts of dark UX in FemTech mHealth apps reveal several problematic design patterns, which emphasize risks for minors and the need for more transparent design of FemTech mHealth apps. Based on our results, we outline recommendations for enhancing ethical UX design and furthering regulatory action in FemTech.
@inproceedings{alsebayel-2025-mobilehci,author={Alsebayel, Ghada and Troiano, Giovanni M and Gunawan, Johanna and Saksono, Herman and Harteveld, Casper},title={“An Ad Posing as Medical Advice”: User Accounts of Dark UX in FemTech mHealth Apps},year={2025},month=sep,issue_date={September 2025},publisher={Association for Computing Machinery},address={New York, NY, USA},volume={9},number={5},url={https://doi.org/10.1145/3743736},doi={10.1145/3743736},booktitle={Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact.},articleno={MHCI003},numpages={34},keywords={FemTech, mHealth, Mobile Applications, Women’s Health, Well-Being, Tracking and Monitoring, Dark Patterns, Dark UX, Privacy, Regulations, Mixed Methods, User Reviews}}
DIS
Towards Key Contributing Factors in Identifying Dark Pattern Autonomy Violations under the EU Digital Services Act
Sanju Ahuja, Johanna Gunawan, Nataliia Bielova, and 1 more author
In Proceedings of the 2025 Designing Interactive Systems Conference, , Funchal, Madeira, Portugal, , Jul 2025
@inproceedings{ahuja-2025-dis,author={Ahuja, Sanju and Gunawan, Johanna and Bielova, Nataliia and Santos, Cristiana},title={Towards Key Contributing Factors in Identifying Dark Pattern Autonomy Violations under the EU Digital Services Act},year={2025},month=jul,publisher={Association of Computing Machinery},booktitle={Proceedings of the 2025 Designing Interactive Systems Conference},location={<conf-loc>, <city>Funchal, Madeira</city>, <country>Portugal</country>, </conf-loc>},url={https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3715668.3736336}}
CHI
Promises, Promises: Understanding Claims Made in Social Robot Consumer Experiences
In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, , Yokohama, Japan, , Jul 2025
@inproceedings{gunawan-2025-chi,title={Promises, Promises: Understanding Claims Made in Social Robot Consumer Experiences},year={2025},publisher={Association of Computing Machinery},booktitle={Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},location={<conf-loc>, <city>Yokohama</city>, <country>Japan</country>, </conf-loc>},series={CHI '23},url={https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3713471},}
Ind. L. J.
Dark Patterns as Design Loyalty
Johanna Gunawan, Woodrow Hartzog, Neil Richards, and 2 more authors
In Indiana University Law Journal Symposium Issue, Jul 2025
@inproceedings{gunawan-2025-ilj,title={Dark Patterns as Design Loyalty},author={Gunawan, Johanna and Hartzog, Woodrow and Richards, Neil and Choffnes, David and Wilson, Christo},year={2025},publisher={Indiana University School of Law},booktitle={Indiana University Law Journal Symposium Issue},series={100 Ind. L. J.},volume={100},issue={4},url={https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=11577&context=ilj},}
PETS
Gig Work at What Cost?: Exploring Privacy Risks of Gig Work Platform Participation in the U.S.
Amogh Pradeep, Johanna Gunawan, Alvaro Feal, and 2 more authors
In Proceedings of 25th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium, Jul 2025
@inproceedings{pradeep-2025-pets,title={Gig Work at What Cost?: Exploring Privacy Risks of Gig Work Platform Participation in the U.S.},author={Pradeep, Amogh and Gunawan, Johanna and Feal, Alvaro and Choffnes, David and Hartzog, Woodrow},year={2025},month=jul,publisher={Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium},booktitle={Proceedings of 25th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium},series={PETS'25},}
2024
ConPro
PROPOSAL: Design Loyalty Approaches for Dark Patterns
Johanna Gunawan, David Choffnes, Woodrow Hartzog, and 1 more author
In Program of the 8th Workshop on Technology and Consumer Protection, Jul 2024
@inproceedings{gunawan-2024-conpro,author={Gunawan, Johanna and Choffnes, David and Hartzog, Woodrow and Wilson, Christo},year={2024},title={PROPOSAL: Design Loyalty Approaches for Dark Patterns},booktitle={Program of the 8th Workshop on Technology and Consumer Protection},url={https://conpro24.ieee-security.org/papers/gunawan-conpro24.pdf},}
ConPro
PROPOSAL: Privacy Perceptions and Behaviors of LGBTQ+ Community in Turkiye
Devris Isler, and Johanna Gunawan
In Program of the 8th Workshop on Technology and Consumer Protection, Jul 2024
@inproceedings{isler-2024-conpro,author={Isler, Devris and Gunawan, Johanna},year={2024},title={PROPOSAL: Privacy Perceptions and Behaviors of LGBTQ+ Community in Turkiye},booktitle={Program of the 8th Workshop on Technology and Consumer Protection},url={https://conpro24.ieee-security.org/papers/isler-conpro24.pdf},}
ConPro
PROPOSAL: SoK; Towards Collaborative Evidence Collection in Dark Patterns Enforcement
Cristiana Santos, Johanna Gunawan, Colin Gray, and 1 more author
In Program of the 8th Workshop on Technology and Consumer Protection, Jul 2024
@inproceedings{santos-2024-conpro,author={Santos, Cristiana and Gunawan, Johanna and Gray, Colin and Bielova, Nataliia},year={2024},title={PROPOSAL: SoK; Towards Collaborative Evidence Collection in Dark Patterns Enforcement},booktitle={Program of the 8th Workshop on Technology and Consumer Protection},url={https://conpro24.ieee-security.org/papers/santos-conpro24.pdf},}
Wash. U. L. Rev.
Privacy Nicks: How the Law Normalizes Surveillance
Woodrow Hartzog, Evan Selinger, and Johanna Gunawan
@inproceedings{hartzog-2024-wulr,title={Privacy Nicks: How the Law Normalizes Surveillance},author={Hartzog, Woodrow and Selinger, Evan and Gunawan, Johanna},year={2024},publisher={Washington University St. Louis School of Law},booktitle={Washington University Law Review},series={101 Wash. U. L. Rev.},}
2023
CHI Workshops
Position Paper: What Evidence is Needed to Prove the Existence of Dark Patterns?
Johanna Gunawan, Colin M. Gray, Cristiana Santos, and 1 more author
CHI’23 Workshop: Designing Technology and Policy Simultaneously: Towards a Research Agenda and New Practice, Jul 2023
@article{gunawan-2023-chiworkshop,title={Position Paper: What Evidence is Needed to Prove the Existence of Dark Patterns?},author={Gunawan, Johanna and Gray, Colin M. and Santos, Cristiana and Bielova, Nataliia},year={2023},journal={CHI'23 Workshop: Designing Technology and Policy Simultaneously: Towards a Research Agenda and New Practice},}
CHI
Understanding Dark Patterns in Home IoT Devices
Monica Kowalczyk, Johanna T. Gunawan, David Choffnes, and 3 more authors
In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, , Hamburg, Germany, , Jul 2023
Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices are ubiquitous, but little attention has been paid to how they may incorporate dark patterns despite consumer protections and privacy concerns arising from their unique access to intimate spaces and always-on capabilities. This paper conducts a systematic investigation of dark patterns in 57 popular, diverse smart home devices. We update manual interaction and annotation methods for the IoT context, then analyze dark pattern frequency across device types, manufacturers, and interaction modalities. We find that dark patterns are pervasive in IoT experiences, but manifest in diverse ways across device traits. Speakers, doorbells, and camera devices contain the most dark patterns, with manufacturers of such devices (Amazon and Google) having the most dark patterns compared to other vendors. We investigate how this distribution impacts the potential for consumer exposure to dark patterns, discuss broader implications for key stakeholders like designers and regulators, and identify opportunities for future dark patterns study.
@inproceedings{kowalcyzk-2023-chi,author={Kowalczyk, Monica and Gunawan, Johanna T. and Choffnes, David and Dubois, Daniel J and Hartzog, Woodrow and Wilson, Christo},title={Understanding Dark Patterns in Home IoT Devices},year={2023},isbn={9781450394215},publisher={Association for Computing Machinery},address={New York, NY, USA},url={https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581432},doi={10.1145/3544548.3581432},booktitle={Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},articleno={179},numpages={27},keywords={UX design, human factors, IoT, dark patterns},location={<conf-loc>, <city>Hamburg</city>, <country>Germany</country>, </conf-loc>},series={CHI '23},}
2022
CSLAW
Redress for Dark Patterns Privacy Harms? A Case Study on Consent Interactions
Johanna Gunawan, Cristiana Santos, and Irene Kamara
In Proceedings of the 2022 Symposium on Computer Science and Law, Washington DC, USA, Jul 2022
Internet users are constantly subjected to incessant demands for attention in a noisy digital world. Countless inputs compete for the chance to be clicked, to be seen, and to be interacted with, and they can deploy tactics that take advantage of behavioral psychology to ’nudge’ users into doing what they want. Some nudges are benign; others deceive, steer, or manipulate users, as the U.S. FTC Commissioner says, "into behavior that is profitable for an online service, but often harmful to [us] or contrary to [our] intent". These tactics are dark patterns, which are manipulative and deceptive interface designs used at-scale in more than ten percent of global shopping websites and more than ninety-five percent of the most popular apps in online services. Literature discusses several types of harms caused by dark patterns that includes harms of a material nature, such as financial harms, or anticompetitive issues, as well as harms of a non-material nature, such as privacy invasion, time loss, addiction, cognitive burdens, loss of autonomy, and emotional or psychological distress. Through a comprehensive literature review of this scholarship and case law analysis conducted by our interdisciplinary team of HCI and legal scholars, this paper investigates whether harms caused by such dark patterns could give rise to redress for individuals subject to dark pattern practices using consent interactions and the GDPR consent requirements as a case study.
@inproceedings{gunawan-2022-cslaw,author={Gunawan, Johanna and Santos, Cristiana and Kamara, Irene},title={Redress for Dark Patterns Privacy Harms? A Case Study on Consent Interactions},year={2022},isbn={9781450392341},publisher={Association for Computing Machinery},address={New York, NY, USA},url={https://doi.org/10.1145/3511265.3550448},doi={10.1145/3511265.3550448},booktitle={Proceedings of the 2022 Symposium on Computer Science and Law},pages={181–194},numpages={14},keywords={data protection infringement, harm, damages, redress, deceptive design, dark patterns, gdpr, consent, policy and law},location={Washington DC, USA},series={CSLAW '22},}
EuroUSEC
Exploring Deceptive Design Patterns in Voice Interfaces
In European Symposium on Usable Security, Jul 2022
@article{gunawan-2021-cscw,title={A Comparative Study of Dark Patterns Across Mobile and Web Modalities},author={Gunawan, Johanna and Choffnes, David and Hartzog, Woodrow and Wilson, Christo},year={2021},month=oct,publisher={Association for Computing Machinery},location={Virtual Event, Canada},booktitle={Conference Companion Publication of the 2021 Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing},series={CSCW '21},bib={gunawan-2021-cscw.bib}}
Seton Hall L. Rev.
The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Technology Trust Gap
Johanna Gunawan, David Choffnes, Woodrow Hartzog, and 1 more author
Seton Hall Law Review Symposium Book on Privacy, Healthcare, and Artificial Intelligence, Oct 2021
@article{gunawan-2021-shlr,title={The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Technology Trust Gap},author={Gunawan, Johanna and Choffnes, David and Hartzog, Woodrow and Wilson, Christo},year={2021},journal={Seton Hall Law Review Symposium Book on Privacy, Healthcare, and Artificial Intelligence},volume={51},}
MIT SERC
Case Study: The Case of the Nosy Neighbors
Johanna Gunawan, and Woodrow Hartzog
In Case Studies in Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing, Oct 2021
@incollection{gunawan-2021-nosyneighbors,title={Case Study: The Case of the Nosy Neighbors},author={Gunawan, Johanna and Hartzog, Woodrow},year={2021},booktitle={Case Studies in Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing},publisher={MIT Schwarzman College of Computing},}
CHI Workshops
Workshop Position Paper: Towards an Understanding of Dark Pattern Privacy Harms
@inproceedings{gunawan-2021-chiworkshop,title={Workshop Position Paper: Towards an Understanding of Dark Pattern Privacy Harms},booktitle={CHI'21},booksubtitle={What Can CHI Do About Dark Patterns?"},year={2021},}
2020
BKC Medium
Beware of Apps Bearing Gifts in a Pandemic
Woodrow Hartzog, Johanna Gunawan, David Choffnes, and 1 more author
@misc{hartzog-2020-bewaregifts,title={Beware of Apps Bearing Gifts in a Pandemic},author={Hartzog, Woodrow and Gunawan, Johanna and Choffnes, David and Wilson, Christo},year={2020},booktitle={Berkman Klein Center Collection on Medium},}