A deep appreciation for design theory and philosophy drives our research into what makes designers “tick.” We ask deep questions about how designers think and act, taking on a critical theory lens to explore dimensions of social and ethical responsibility in design practice.
Our investigation into dark patterns and “everyday ethics” has been funded by two National Science Foundation grants, with the goal of supporting a more ethically- and socially-responsible UX practice. We continue to investigate dark patterns and ethical concerns through a practice-led approach, building examples and tools to address the threats of dark patterns, theorizing new approaches to supporting practitioners in their everyday work, and increasingly seeking to connect design, law, and HCI to push back against harmful design practices at multiple scales.
Recent Publications
- Obi, I., Gray, C. M., Chivukula, S. S., Duane, J., Johns, J., Will., M., Li, Z., & Carlock, T. (2025). Tracing the History and Evolution of Dark Patterns on Twitter from 2010-2021. ACM Transactions on Social Computing, 8(3-4), Article No. 8. https://doi.org/10.1145/3716306
- Chivukula, S. S., Gray, C. M., Li, Z., Pivonka, A. C., & Chen, J. (2024). Surveying a Landscape of Ethics-Focused Design Methods. ACM Journal of Responsible Computing, 1(3), Article No. 22. https://doi.org/10.1145/3678988
- Gray, C. M., Chivukula, S. S., Johns, J., Will, M., Obi, I., & Li, Z. (2024). Languaging Ethics in Technology Practice. ACM Journal of Responsible Computing, 1(2), Article No. 15. https://doi.org/10.1145/3656468
- Bielova, N., Santos, C., & Gray, C. M. (2024). Two worlds apart! Closing the gap between regulating EU consent and user studies. Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, 37(3), 1295-1333. https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/assets/articlePDFs/v37/Symposium-12-Bielova-Santos-Gray-Two-Worlds-Apart-Closing-the-Gap-Between-Regulating-EU-Consent-and-User-Studies.pdf [Awarded the 2025 CNIL-Inria Privacy Award]
- Chivukula, S. S., Mehta, S., Gray, C. M., & Gairola, R. (2025, July). Anti-Heroes: A Role-Based Method to Encourage Ethical Deliberation. In Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS’25) (pp. 3028 – 3044). https://doi.org/10.1145/3715336.3735776
- Gray, C. M., Mildner, T., & Gairola, R. (2025, April). Getting Trapped in Amazon’s “Iliad Flow”: A Foundation for the Temporal Analysis of Dark Patterns. In CHI’25: Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM Press. https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713828
- Sanchez Chamorro, L., Lallemand, C., & Gray, C. M. (2024, July). “My Mother Told Me These Things are Always Fake”—Understanding Teenagers’ Experiences with Manipulative Designs. In Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS’24). https://doi.org/10.1145/3643834.3660704
- Chivukula, S. S., & Gray, C. M. (2024, June). Envisioning Transformation Structures to Support Ethical Mediation Practices. In Proceedings of the Design Research Society Conference. Boston, MA: Design Research Society. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.178
- Chivukula, S. S., & Gray, C. M. (2024, June). Quant-Ethico: A Computational Approach to Quantifying and Interpreting Ethical Decision Making. In Proceedings of the Design Research Society Conference. Boston, MA: Design Research Society. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.223
- Gray, C. M., Obi, I., Chivukula, S. S., Li, Z., Carlock, T., Will, M., Pivonka, A. C., Johns, J., Rigsbee, B., Menon, A. R., & Bharadwaj, A.(2024, May). Building an Ethics-Focused Action Plan: Roles, Process Moves, and Trajectories. In CHI’24: Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM Press. https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642302
- Gray, C. M., Santos, C., Bielova, N., & Mildner, T.(2024, May). An Ontology of Dark Patterns: Foundations, Definitions, and a Structure for Transdisciplinary Action. In CHI’24: Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM Press. https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642436
- Gray, C. M., Chivukula, S. S., Carlock, T., Li, Z., & Duane, J. (2023, July). Scaffolding Ethics-Focused Methods for Practice Resonance. In Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS’23), 2375–2391. ACM Press. [Awarded Best Paper, Top 1%] https://doi.org/10.1145/3563657.3596111