Improving Cookie Consent Notice Communication and Usability via DSR

Cookie consent notices frequently fail to communicate data practices clearly or support meaningful user privacy choices. This study addressed that problem through a Design Science Research (DSR) approach, with two objectives: cataloguing prevalent cookie consent notice types on South African websites, and developing and evaluating an improved design artefact against those types. The 100 most popular South African websites were analysed, producing a typology of cookie consent designs. An improved artefact was then iteratively designed and assessed across three evaluation rounds. Expert usability testing found the artefact communicated data collection and third-party sharing more comprehensively than existing designs, earning excellent usability scores. A large-scale online experiment with 320 non-expert participants revealed that most typology designs performed poorly on privacy comprehension, with only one typology type exceeding the control. A further study with 275 participants confirmed the artefact's measurably better performance in both website data practice and cookie consent communication. The research makes both practical and theoretical contributions. Practically, it delivers a free, open-source, Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA)-compliant cookie consent notice that outperforms existing South African designs. Theoretically, it demonstrates that appropriate visualisations, specifically labelled icons, improve privacy communication by supporting multimedia learning, reducing cognitive load, and promoting recognition over recall. Easy-to-use choice mechanisms were also shown to significantly enhance usability. Limitations include the exclusive use of English materials in a multilingual population, suggesting future work should explore language and cultural effects on privacy notice comprehension.