EAGER: Developing design principles for network-scale applications derived from Internet thinking and the behavioral sciences.

The Internet is a platform that moves information between endpoints. But transport service alone is meaningless to users. It is Internet applications that control the character of user experience: without them the Internet would be of scant value to most.

While applications create the user experience, their design is an under-studied topic. The objective of this EAGER is to gain deeper understanding of how to bridge the gap between data transport and user goals—and how alternative design decisions might better serve users. To better support applications there must be a more methodical consideration of application requirements.

Some requirements are fully technical: improving performance and resilience or ensuring greater security of data transport. However, the most important and least well-understood are those that derive from their role in shaping the quality of Internet experience. One line of inquiry must begin “top down”, seeking to understand the ways in which design choices impact behavior.

Current Internet applications bring great benefit to society, but they also enable great harms (e.g., erosion of privacy, the fast and wide spread of disinformation, identity theft, the balkanization of society into disconnected, mutually hostile camps, etc.) This EAGER proposes to focus on this question: can we identify design approaches that reduce the potential for harm and create a more benign Internet experience? What would these alternate design principles imply for application support, and even for core features of the network?

This research is timely, because the Internet and society sit at a critical juncture. Governments are moving to impose a range of regulations on Internet Service Providers or application providers (aka "The Big Tech players"). Historical regulatory strategies (e.g., antitrust enforcement) may not be effective in this context.

They may have only a limited or indirect impact on application design. If regulation is to mitigate the harms listed above, it must be based on a grasp of how decisions made during application design shape user behavior. Regulators need a toolbox containing insights and practical strategies to be effective in this environment. This project seeks to inspire the creation of such a toolbox.

The challenge is only partially shaped by technical considerations. Online behavior is, above all, a manifestation of innately human motives and behavior patterns. Thus, the strategy to address the human aspects of the requirements includes a careful scan of research results from the behavioral and social sciences and the computer sciences.

The output will be a framework that explores the ways in which human behavior emerges under different design conditions. The results from these inquiries will offer fresh insights and options for action that will, in turn, lead to a more benign online experience for all. Tasks included in the EAGER include:

o Summarizing a body of relevant knowledge:

o As an initial case study of societal harms, focusing on disinformation; based on insights from that topic, generating to other examples where the insights are applicable;

o Developing a series of proposed design principles to foster prosocial behavior online. These will specify the application support services associated with select requirements, and - if possible - proposals for changes to the Internet itself; and finally; o Translating the summary into a form more accessible (e.g., comprehensible) to the technical community.

With the emergence of a new generation of interactive applications (e.g., enhanced and /or virtual reality), there will be unforeseen challenges in the arenas of authenticity, quality, and dynamics of online experience. By interweaving computer, behavioral and social sciences, work under this EAGER grant will go beyond the study of disinformation to identify practical steps applicable to a wide range of applications and their uses to support the continued growth of an open, civil society.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.