Ease of navigation to information and potentially distracting design elements

We used a limited selection of low-level state-of-system heuristics to structure data collection.^22,23 With respect to the design of the privacy policy, we defined potentially distracting design elements based on the potential of certain design features to make reviewing the privacy policy less “simple, consistent, clear, multimodal, error-tolerant, and attention-focusing.”¹⁷ Specifically, we considered that any of the following design features could be distracting: pop-ups, GIFs, and videos (if the content was not related to the privacy policy); and hover/rollover effects (features which change in appearance when placing the cursor over them).

Assuming a scenario in which a visitor arriving on the app store page of an app or the homepage of a website, seeks reassurance by navigating to and reviewing the privacy policy before installing the app or further interacting with the website, we observed: how many clicks were necessary to navigate from the homepage or relevant app store page to the privacy policy, by what the researcher found to be the shortest possible route; and the number of potentially distracting design elements within or on the same page as the privacy policy. The researchers also kept qualitative notes on anything which they found unclear, which complicated the process of navigating to the privacy policy, or which may have constituted a distracting design element but did not meet our criteria.