We are pleased to announce the recent publication by Hadan, Choong, Zhang-Kennedy, and Dr. Lennart Nacke, titled "Deceived by Immersion: A Systematic Analysis of Deceptive Design in Extended Reality," published in ACM Computing Surveys.
Paper Overview:
This study explores the emerging risks of deceptive design in Extended Reality (XR) environments, where the immersive nature of XR can enable subtle and powerful manipulation strategies. While deceptive design has been extensively studied in conventional user interfaces, the unique challenges in XR environments remain under-researched.
The authors conducted a systematic review of the existing literature, employing thematic synthesis to identify eight key themes that highlight how XR technologies can facilitate deception. The findings point to XR’s enhanced capabilities for immersion and data collection, which raise new ethical concerns for users, designers, and policymakers alike. The paper also outlines existing countermeasures and suggests future research directions, including the exploration of unintentional deceptive design, data-driven manipulations, user education, and the connection between ethical design and policy regulations.
Funding Acknowledgment:
This research was supported by several grants, including the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Insight Grant, and the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) JELF Grant.
For more details, you can access the full paper here: Deceived by Immersion: A Systematic Analysis of Deceptive Design in Extended Reality.
