Lecturer: Johanna Gunawan
Fields: Technology policy, UX, consumer protections
Content
Computer scientists push the boundaries of knowledge and science with their research and developments, but quickly turning this into societal or policy impact is not always straightforward. In addition, the law is often perceived as moving too slowly to keep up with the fast pace of technological progress, or perhaps over-constricting innovation with new compliance requirements. In the age of AI raising questions on how both technical and legal disciplines should be taught, or where human value can be found, or what we societally consider to be our boundaries regarding AI use, the function of law and policy to protect us and our values comes into focus.
This talk shares the speaker’s experience conducting interdisciplinary research in human-computer interaction, and reflections on leveraging collaborations and cross-disciplinary learning into impact; both for one’s scholarly or educational pathways and on technology regulation and policy. This talk will discuss the often-operational challenges in the relationship between technology innovation or study and regulation writ large, pull from scholarship in dark patterns as a case study, then explore how academia can strengthen ties with law and policy for real-world impact. Finally, this talk shares resources for IK participants to reflect on and explore their potential for policy engagement and impact in their own field(s).
Literature
- 2019. Proceedings of the Symposium on Computer Science and Law. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA.
- Ahuja, J., Gunawan, J., Bielova, N., & Santos, C.T. (2026). Dark Patterns and the EU Digital Services Act: Mapping Autonomy Violations and Design Factors. In Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI \’26). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 1279, 1–30. https://doi.org/10.1145/3772318.3791
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- Gunawan, J., Gray, C.M., Santos, C., & Bielova, N. (2025). Leveraging interdisciplinary methods for evidence collection in enforcement: Dark patterns as a case study. Internet Policy Review, 14(4). https://doi.org/10.14763/2025.4.2047
- Lazar, J., Fiesler, C., Wentz, B., & Kushalnagar, R. (2026). Human–Computer Interaction and U.S. Law. Cambridge University Press; 2026.
- Tech Justice Law and Georgetown’s Knight-Georgetown Institute and Communication, Culture & Technology program (2026). Tech-Related Actions and Litigation Tracker. https://techjusticelaw.org/resources/tracker/
- Yang, Q., Wong, R. Y., Gilbert, T., Hagan, M.D., Jackson, S., Junginger, S., & Zimmerman, J. (2023). Designing Technology and Policy Simultaneously: Towards A Research Agenda and New Practice. In Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA \’23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 343, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3573827
Lecturer
Dr. Johanna Gunawan is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Law at Maastricht University in the Netherlands and holds a PhD in Cybersecurity from Northeastern University. She primarily works on the digital consumer protections problem of “dark patterns” or anti-consumer designs, and how to facilitate their enforcement. Her dark patterns work has been cited by WIRED Magazine, Consumer Reports, the US Federal Trade Commission, the OECD, and UK Competition and Markets Authority. Dr. Gunawan is affiliated with the Maastricht Law & Tech Lab, and frequently teaches on tech-law collaboration and topics to both computer scientists and lawyers.
Affiliation: Maastricht University
Homepage: johannagunawan.com