Investigating Ethical Data Communication with Purrsuasion: An Educational Game about Negotiated Data Disclosure

A team of researchers from the University of Washington and University of Chicago has published a paper on arXiv detailing 'Purrsuasion,' an innovative open-source game designed to teach the complex ethics of negotiated data disclosure. The game moves beyond framing data ethics as merely avoiding deceptive design, instead simulating real-world scenarios where pro-social actors must negotiate what information can be shared under situational constraints. Players take on the roles of data providers, who must create visualizations while adhering to disclosure limits, and data seekers, who request information and award a contract based on what they receive.

The researchers deployed Purrsuasion in an undergraduate data science class with 27 students, collecting gameplay data for a mixed-methods analysis. Their findings revealed significant challenges: students often struggled to envision an ideal visualization solution, leading to 'satisficing'—settling for an adequate rather than optimal design—and had difficulty attributing authorial intent behind the visualizations they saw. To address the challenge of evaluating ethical choices in this context, the team developed and contributed a heuristic scoring rubric designed to support sociotechnical judgments of how well a solution adheres to disclosure principles, providing a tangible tool for educators.