This paper reports an interview study about how consent to sexual activity is computer-mediated. The study's context of online dating is chosen due to the prevalence of sexual violence, or nonconsensual sexual activity, that is associated with dating app-use. Participants (n=19) represent a range of gender identities and sexual orientations, and predominantly used the dating app Tinder. Findings reveal two computer-mediated consent processes: consent signaling and affirmative consent. With consent signaling, users employed Tinder's interface to infer and imply agreement to sex without any explicit confirmation before making sexual advances in-person. With affirmative consent, users employed the interface to establish patterns of overt discourse around sex and consent across online and offline modalities. The paper elucidates shortcomings of both computer-mediated consent processes that leave users susceptible to sexual violence and envisions dating apps as potential sexual violence prevention solutions if deliberately designed to mediate consent exchange. CCS Concepts: • Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in collaborative and social computing; • Social and professional topics → User Characters → Gender; Sexual orientation
This paper reports a participatory design study about how dating apps could be designed to mediate sexual consent exchange and ultimately serve as scalable sexual violence prevention solutions. Participants (n=17) were dating app users identifying as LGBTQIA+ or women (demographics at disproportionate risk of sexual violence). Participants envisioned dating apps encouraging safer consent exchange practices by normalizing discussions around consent and sexual boundaries online, before meeting face-to-face with potential sex partners. The design ideas generated by the participants, which we coded as Consent Communication Progression, involved the dating app messaging interface using AI-driven conversation prompts. Such prompts would gradually progress messaging conversations towards topics of consent and sexual boundaries with an algorithm that tailors the prompts to specific users. Participants applied a consent lens when imagining human-AI interaction, in which conversation prompts would only be posted in the interface if the user first consented to the particular conversation occurring. Implications for future work are discussed. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing; • Human computer interaction (HCI); • HCI design and evaluation methods; • User studies; • Social and professional topics; • User characteristics; • Gender; • Collaborative and social computing; • Empirical studies in collaborative and social computing;
This paper presents a study of a messaging interface prototype for online dating intended to improve women's face-to-face meeting decisions, and therefore the capacity to manage the gendered risks involved with such meetings. The interface prompts users with discussion topics that are potentially more valuable for user evaluation than the impression management-motivated topics often chosen by men. These topics come in the form of first-date scenarios that messaging partners either agree or disagree on. Through a mixed-methods study utilizing speed dating events, daters used the interface to interact before meeting face-to-face. Results indicate that women's face-to-face meeting decisions improve when the interface prompts them to discuss scenarios involving agreement of opinion. Men's decisions are worsened by the same interface variant, potentially due to the displayed agreement being misinterpreted as a signal of compatibility. The study ultimately stresses that designs intended for women, and at-risk groups more broadly, must also be assessed with other user demographics-namely those that pose a risk-to identify unforeseen implications.
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