Researching interaction design and digital inequalities
Hello! I research how users interact with technology and how inequalities impact those interactions, making them vulnerable. I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Human-Media Interaction Group at the University of Twente. My current research understands the experiences of user vulnerability towards manipulative designs to define interventions that empower users, improve the design of interfaces and, ultimately, inform policymaking. I draw on perspectives from critical human-computer interaction, socio-digital inequalities and critical design. I have further research interests and experience in usable privacy and security, and the societal impact of technology.
I hold a PhD from the University of Luxembourg and an MSc in Media and Communications Governance from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Prior to my academic career, I worked for five years as a cybersecurity and privacy consultant in different sectors -telecommunications, banking and insurance, among others.
I am an active member of different SIGCHI communities and conferences (e.g. DIS, CHI). I work with civil society groups to defend Digital Rights. I am a former board member of the Internet Society Spanish Chapter and Interferencias, with whom I conducted research and activism for a better digital world. I collaborate with several initiatives, here you can see the response to the Spanish Digital Rights Chart with Trackula Association and the initiative about the European Copyright Directive application in Spain with Wikimedia. I also co-authored a book about the socio-technical aspects of electronic voting.
*Communities of colour are asking us not to use the term “dark patterns” for their problematic connotations. I use the term manipulative designs instead, which I find more accurate. Discover why here! I truly thank Marelisa Blanco for her fantastic drawing in black and white, and Romain Toebosch for the coloured version!
Latest News
January 2025 - My talk “Towards Free-Fair-Patterns: Free to Use, Free from Deceptive Patterns, Fair for All” has been accepted at FOSDEM 2025! I will be speaking about open-source design as a way of tackling users’ vulnerabilities to deceptive design.
November 2024 - I successfully defended my PhD thesis “Disentangling Vulnerability to Manipulative Designs: An Experiential Perspective to Rethink Resistance Strategies” at the University of Luxembourg.
September 2024 - I started in a new position as postdoctoral researcher at the University of Twente to work on users’ vulnerabilities and social media harms. Also, our paper “Who is vulnerable to deceptive design patterns? A transdisciplinary perspective on the multi-dimensional nature of digital vulnerability”, led by Arianna Rossi, was finally published in the Computer Law & Security Review Journal.
July 2024 - I presented two research papers I led at the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) conference: Manipulative Design and Older Adults: Co-Creating Magic Machines to Understand Experiences of Online Manipulation and " My Mother Told Me These Things are Always Fake"-Understanding Teenagers' Experiences with Manipulative Designs.