Seeing Data Rights: Understanding of Pictograms and Color Cues for Privacy and Complex Data Practices

Young adults routinely encounter privacy notices and other legal documents on the Web, a challenge exacerbated by emerging frameworks such as the EU Data Act, which formalize complex data-sharing rights. Visual signals offer a promising means of revealing these properties, yet empirical evidence of how young users interpret them remains limited. We conducted an online study with 94 university students to examine the congruence between icons and labels, recall, and semantic interpretation of pictograms and color cues intended to convey privacy risks. Participants rated the representativeness of candidate symbols and evaluated color associations (e.g., danger, reassurance) before completing a label-free recall task. Results reveal a dichotomy: concrete pictograms (e.g., camera, location) showed high congruence and remembrance, whereas abstract “data collection” symbols performed markedly worse. Demographic effects were negligible, suggesting cross-group stability. We discuss design implications for youth-oriented interfaces, such as app stores and consent dialogs. We outline how these findings can inform the development of icon systems.