Overview

End user license agreements, terms of service agreements (ToS) and privacy policies all suffer from many of the same problems: people rarely read them and yet still agree to whatever is contained within them. There are many usability challenges with these policies: they are often lengthy, with jargon filled language that is difficult to quickly comprehend. However, these notices are the primary tool for users to understand the privacy implications of their digital activities and make informed decisions on which websites and software they use. Prior research has explored alternative designs for such notices, using more visual and structured interfaces for conveying information.

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We examine one proposal for engaging users to pay more attention to a privacy notice, using a comic to summarize the data policy. We hypothesize that the visual nature and story line of a comic may entice users to spend more time reading the agreement, and in turn lead to better understanding of that policy. We have conducted a lab based eye tracking study comparing the time and attention of users on a terms of service agreement. Our results indicate that there is an increase of attention, which we hope encourages additional investigation into whether this can lead to improved decision making.