Exploring Sociodrama as Participatory Action Research for Deceptive Design

Increasing research on the growing space of ethical and legal implications around persuasive interaction design implementations has shown a need to devise diverse forms of deceptive design detection and manipulation literacy. However, while existing research touches upon the felt experience of end users, there has not yet been an extensive body of research on this matter addressing the habitual, unconscious side of user interaction that deceptive patterns rely on. This paper argues that the widespread existence of deceptive design patterns calls for HCI research to expand ways of researching people's felt experience surrounding such practices. Connecting to existing efforts in HCI to center the body's role in interaction through frameworks such as embodied cognition, this paper explores the application of sociodrama as an action research method for uncovering people's felt experience surrounding coercive consenting practices in the design of everyday app Terms of Service (ToS).