Benevolent deception in human computer interaction

Abstract

Though it has been asserted that "good design is honest,"[42] deception exists throughout human-computer interaction research and practice. Because of the stigma associated with deception-in many cases rightfully so-the research community has focused its energy on eradicating malicious deception, and ignored instances in which deception is positively employed. In this paper we present the notion of benevolent deception, deception aimed at benefitting the user as well as the developer. We frame our discussion using a criminology-inspired model and ground components in various examples. We assert that this provides us with a set of tools and principles that not only helps us with system and interface design, but that opens new research areas. After all, as Cockton claims in his 2004 paper "ValueCentered HCI" [13], "Traditional disciplines have delivered truth. The goal of HCI is to deliver value." Author

How to describe and evaluate “deception” phenomena: recasting the metaphysics, ethics, and politics of ICTs in terms of magic and performance and taking a relational and narrative turn

“…They proposed to broaden the human-computer interaction agenda 'to consider the currently unfamiliar idea that the active deception of one user by another can be a valid approach to interaction design' (p. 576). Furthermore, like Rowe (2007) and Adar et al (2013) they also point to what may considered to be an ethical use of deception: computer systems that create deceptions in order to maintain security. Hence Adar et al suggest that there may be 'benevolent deception, deception aimed at benefitting the user as well as the developer' (Adar et al 2013, abstract).…”

Providing Adaptive Health Updates Across the Personal Social Network

“…Although there has been success in automatically generating communications that take emotions into account, for example, in a joke generator for children (Binsted et al, 2006)-technology has yet to be used to generate communications that deliberately lie about a sender's emotional state. Across HCI, researchers have ''tiptoed around'' benign deceit as an area of inquiry (Adar, Tan, & Teevan, 2013), and user models have yet to explicitly incorporate deceit as an adaptive dimension. However, when up to one third of our daily social interactions involve deceit (Hancock et al, 2004), the use of deceit as an adaptive strategy is relevant in the quest for increasingly naturalistic computer-generated communications.…”

“…Many systems already deceive-as described elsewhere (Adar et al, 2013)-but they are not presented as doing so. Deliberately designing deceit into systems presents rich research opportunities, but the word deceit should be used cautiously with users due to its pejorative implications.…”

Computationally Mediated Pro-Social Deception

“…For example, manipulation of users' mental models of systems in ways that benefit both systems' designers and end-users were documented by Adar et al [1]. Ambiguity, often promoted through deception, gives people space for flexible interpretation [29], and to tell stories they need to in order to preserve face and reputation [7,10].…”

“…Here, we are interested in exploring the complex contexts in which deception might take place, to consider not just cases where the system lies to a user [1] or computer mediated communication where one user lies to others, but situations where systems lie to each other about users; where a user needs to lie to one audience but not another; where tools or systems might protect a person from disclosure to other systems or tools. As Nissenbaum puts it:…”