DART: User Research for Deception Awareness and Resilience Tools

Funding: NSF Convergence Accelerator, $5M (Phase 2, 2022), building on a $750K NSF Phase 1 award (2021) Partners: University at Buffalo (lead), Cornell, Lehigh, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Clemson’s Institute for Engaged Aging and Media Forensics Hub

The Ambiguity

Cybercrime against older adults isn’t a trivial problem — the FBI recorded over 92,000 U.S. adults 60 and older reporting online scam losses in a single year, totaling roughly $1.7 billion. Plenty of digital-literacy tools already existed to address this. Almost none of them were built specifically for older adults, and that gap was evidenced by low uptake of generic tools among the population most affected.

The open question wasn’t just “how do we teach scam awareness” — it was “why do older adults specifically succumb to online deception in the first place,” and what that meant for how a tool should be designed, not just what content it should contain.

Approach

Before any product design started, the research team spent the funded Phase 1 period conducting groundwork: we met directly with older adults in two different regions (Western New York and South Carolina) to understand, firsthand, why they respond to online deceptions.

My role in that effort was providing gerontological expertise and conducting participant/user research. I worked alongside colleagues studying online deception and scam techniques targeting seniors, and within a larger interdisciplinary team that also included researchers studying disinformation spread, online trolls and social media manipulation tactics, game designers, computer scientists, and learning specialists. The participant interview/user study findings served as direct input into products the technical and learning teams would go on to build.

What We Found

Phase 1 interviews and focus groups surfaced a pattern that shaped everything downstream. There was wide variability in older adults’ technology use and trust, but very few users reported direct personal experience with recognizing online scams and deception in the moment. Almost all of them, however, reported knowing someone — a friend, neighbor, or family member — who had been scammed and lost money, ranging from small amounts to substantial sums.

That mismatch between problem awareness (high) and lived pattern recognition (low) was an important finding. It meant the platform couldn’t assume users already had a mental model for what a scam attempt looks like from the inside. That distinction became a core design input for Phase 2.

Later phases shifted from formative research to iterative product feedback, using desirability studies for platform concepts, focus groups, and live trainings paired with survey and verbal feedback sessions to refine the tools as they were built.

What Changed

The Phase 1 findings shaped a deliberate design decision: DART wouldn’t be a single tool but a coordinated suite of Deception Awareness and Resilience Tools, meeting older adults through whichever channel fits.

At the center is DART Academy, an e-learning environment where older adults work through realistic scam scenarios. Alongside it, DeepCover — a spy-themed mobile puzzle game — provides a lower-pressure entry point for people who don’t think of themselves as at risk and wouldn’t otherwise seek out scam-recognition training. Supporting resources round out the suite: a podcast, a Deep Fake-O-Meter for evaluating suspicious content, a Scam Timer, a family guide, and articles on emerging tactics.

That range was intentional. Because most older adults hadn’t personally recognized a scam attempt in real time but were well aware scams existed, the team designed multiple entry points so a user could arrive through structured learning, through curiosity sparked by a game, through a caregiver, or through a family member looking for something to share. The tools were built for flexible use — independently, in communal settings like senior living communities or public libraries, or with a caregiver’s support — and designed to evolve as scam tactics evolve, rather than treated as a static curriculum.

The research and the resulting tools also outlived the grant. DART has since moved beyond its NSF-funded research phase into an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit, DART Collective, which continues to operate and expand the suite today.