Impact of Manipulative Design Patterns in Augmented Reality on Consumer Buying Behaviours

Abstract

ABSTRACT The increasing popularity of immersive technologies such as Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality have started to affect and shape the daily life of individuals across all age categories. The investment of time, resources and money from leading technology companies, suggest that immersive technologies would become the next big technology trend in the world. Due to its prognosticated capabilities and potential, the business world also has taken a keen interest on using technologies such as augmented reality when creating strategies for marketing and advertising. The inherent nature of marketing and advertising to persuade a customer or a potential customer to make a buying decision could be complemented from nature of immersive technology applications, while the dark design patterns or manipulative design patterns in augmented reality application design could lead the persuasive approach to a manipulative approach. How such manipulations might impact a consumer’s behaviours is an interesting research topic with both academic and practical benefits. Thereby, this research “Impact of manipulative design patterns in augmented reality on consumer behaviours” would first attempt to understand what dark design patterns could be used in an augmented reality-based application and then how those dark design patterns could influence consumer decision making. Once the possible dark design patterns are identified, effectiveness of the identified dark patterns would be evaluated using a suitable augmented reality system. The effectiveness would be measured using a controlled experiment, in which a selected set of participants would get involved. Through the analysis of the experiment’s data, this research would determine whether dark design patterns in augmented reality could impact a consumer’s buying behaviours. Keywords: Augmented reality, Human computer interaction, Image processing