According to Jennifer King, a doctoral candidate in the field of human-computer interaction at the University of California, Berkeley, companies cannot achieve meaningful disclosure about the terms and conditions of a promotional offer or health and safety cautions of a product simply by including that language in their terms of service or usage agreement.
"People don't read them," said King. "Fundamentally, if there's anything someone needs to see -- they absolutely need to see that information before they make a decision -- it needs to be called out and it needs to be somewhere in their task flow versus burying it in a document where most people are trained to simply acknowledge that 'I accept' and not read them."
Kristin Burnham covers consumer technology, social networking and Web 2.0 for CIO.com. Follow Kristin on Twitter @kmburnham. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline and on Facebook. Email Kristin at kburnham@cio.com
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