An Investigation of Comic-Based Permission Requests

Research suggests that permission requests do not adequately inform users about the implications of granting or denying such requests. It is important that informed consent is given should users grant the request. This paper reports on the results of a study that examined novel comic-based permission request design in terms of user response and preferences for permission-granting decisions. We conducted co-design workshops to design the comic-based permission requests. We then compared our comic-based designs to current Android text-based permission requests using five common permission request types in an online survey. Our results showed that 52% of participants preferred the comic-based requests, and 24% the text-based requests. While comics were found to be an effective medium to achieve informed consent, some participants reported that the text-based request offered sufficient information to make decisions. Given that a relatively large number of participants preferred the comic-based permissions, we encourage future designers to consider alternative forms of permission requests.