Different starting points
The preferred route appears prominently while the protective route sits behind menus, help pages or account settings.
Concept product · Assessment design 0.1
PARITY · Digital Choice and Rights Parity Assessment
Measure the distance
between yes and no.
PARITY compares the route into a digital commitment with the route to refuse, reverse or leave it, showing whether the difference reflects legitimate protection or engineered obstruction.
The operational questionHow much harder does the service make the consumer-protective route than the trader-preferred route?
Compare the routes. Explain the difference. Remove the obstruction.
PARITYMatched pathways
Join
- Choose plan
- Enter payment
- Confirm
ΔFriction difference
Cancel
- Find account area
- Reject offer
- Change channel
- Wait for agent
- Repeat request
Compare the routesExplain the difference
Easy in should not mean hard out.
Pair the routes.
Explain every extra burden.
Protect the choice.
The problem
A right can exist on paper and fail in the journey.
Businesses routinely optimise subscription, purchase, consent, upgrade and account-creation journeys. They often manage cancellation, refusal, withdrawal, refund, complaint and deletion through a different team, channel or set of incentives.
The result may look formally complete because an exit eventually exists. Yet the consumer must search longer, repeat the request, change channel, reject offers, wait for staff or overcome verification that the entry route never required.
The button may exist. The route may still fail.
Different channels
The user can join online but must telephone, post a form or visit a premises to leave.
Different burdens
Repeated prompts, transfers, waiting, authentication and retention offers accumulate along one route only.
Different evidence
The organisation measures conversion but may not measure abandonment, failed cancellation or time to exercise a right.
What it is · what it is not
One matched-pathway assessment.
PARITY is
A journey-comparison and release-control tool.
- It pairs a trader-preferred route with its consumer-protective counterpart.
- It measures discoverability, actions, time, channels, prompts, verification and reversibility.
- It records the claimed purpose of each extra burden and tests whether the purpose supports the measure.
- It produces a reasoned route-level outcome and remediation record.
PARITY is not
A click-count rule or generic website scanner.
- It does not require every pair of journeys to contain identical steps.
- It does not ban security checks, fraud controls or every retention offer.
- It does not replace accessibility testing, consumer research or professional legal review.
- It does not issue a fairness certificate or produce a single score that can offset a serious obstruction.
PARITY asks whether the difference has a legitimate, evidenced and proportionate purpose.
How it works
Six steps from route pairing to release decision.
Pair the routes
Define the service, market, version, user objective and the two journeys that require comparison. Examples include subscribe/cancel, consent/withdraw, purchase/refund and upgrade/downgrade.
Build each journey
Record every screen, action, wait, channel change, authentication request, disclosure, prompt, offer and decision point.
Measure the parity delta
Compare discoverability, elapsed time, number of actions, channel changes, repeated prompts, salience, information and practical completion.
Explain the friction
Classify the claimed purpose: security, fraud prevention, identity verification, consumer protection, legal obligation, technical necessity, operational constraint or commercial retention.
Test necessity and proportionality
Ask whether the burden addresses a real risk, whether the entry route presents the same risk, whether a less burdensome measure exists and whether the evidence supports the justification.
Decide and remediate
Record the route-level outcome, design changes, responsible owners, deadline, monitoring measures and conditions for reassessment.
Outcomes
Five routes. No offsetting score.
PARITY reports the significance of the route difference and the evidence supporting it.
Parity preserved
The routes remain materially comparable and the difference does not impede the protective choice.
Justified asymmetry
The organisation has a legitimate, evidenced and proportionate reason for the difference.
Correctable imbalance
Unnecessary friction exists but a focused design change can remove it.
Material rights friction
The route makes refusal, withdrawal, cancellation or another protective choice materially harder.
Release block
The journey should not launch or remain in operation until the obstruction receives correction or independent review.
Worked example
Three actions to join. Seven screens and a telephone call to leave.
P
Fictional streaming subscriptionWeb sign-up compared with cancellation
Material rights friction
The user subscribes online after choosing a plan, entering payment details and confirming. Cancellation begins inside an unlabelled account menu, passes through three retention screens and ends with a telephone call during limited hours.
Illustrative conclusion. Identity verification does not justify the channel change because the service accepts the same credentials for sign-up and account modification. The organisation has not supplied evidence that telephone cancellation protects the consumer or prevents fraud.
- Starting point materially less discoverable.
- Four additional screens and three repeated offers.
- Online route changes to a restricted telephone channel.
- Success metric records retention, not failed cancellation.
Outputs
A reconstructable record of the route difference.
Choice Parity Map
The two journeys displayed side by side with every action, delay, prompt, channel and decision point.
Friction Ledger
Each additional burden, its claimed purpose, evidence, affected users and proposed correction.
Parity Delta
A structured comparison of discoverability, time, steps, transfers, authentication, prompts and completion.
Evidence Gap Register
Unsupported or incomplete claims about security, fraud, legal necessity or operational constraint.
Remediation Plan
Design changes, owners, deadlines, monitoring metrics and the expected route after correction.
Release Decision
A one-page reasoned outcome for product, legal, compliance, operations and senior approval.
Users
For organisations that control both entry and exit.
Technical details
A manual evidence tool first. Automation only where it improves reliability.
InterfaceSide-by-side journey builder
Users add screens, interactions, waits, transfers, prompts and evidence to two matched routes.
MetricsAutomatic route comparison
The browser calculates step, prompt, transfer, channel and timing differences from the structured journey.
EvidenceLocal attachments and manifest
Screenshots, call notes and documents can remain local, with hashes recorded in the project manifest.
LogicDeterministic outcome rules
The application exposes the factors supporting the route. Generative AI does not decide the outcome.
StorageIndexedDB and project files
Users save locally, export JSON and optionally encrypt a project file through the browser.
ReportingPDF and reusable JSON
A one-page decision sits before the full pathway, evidence and remediation record.
First-release limitation. PARITY will not crawl authenticated websites, conduct telephone calls or infer a complete journey automatically. Manual construction allows the method to cover websites, apps, chatbots, email and telephone within one evidence model.
Pricing model
Free explanation. One-off decision. Repeated internal use.
Free
A complete fictional subscription-and-cancellation comparison.
- Editable sample routes
- Watermarked sample report
- No live organisational decision
£395 + VAT
One service and version, with up to three matched pathway pairs.
- Local save and reopen
- Evidence attachments
- Full PDF and JSON export
- 120-day completion period
£7,500 per year + VAT
Repeated internal use by one named legal entity.
- Unlimited internal assessments and users
- Method and rule-pack updates
- Core sector profiles
- Version comparison and priority support
Proposed pricing, not a live online offer. External-client, group-company, white-label and regulatory use require separate terms.
Why now
Cancellation and rights friction create visible enforcement risk.
PARITY translates the journey-level problem into a repeatable internal control.
DSA route symmetry
DSA Recital 67 identifies making cancellation substantially more cumbersome than sign-up, or making some choices more difficult or time-consuming than others, as examples of dark-pattern conduct.
Read the official textOperational cancellation failure
Ofcom's July 2026 Virgin Media decision addressed repeated transfers, holds, deliberate dropped calls and incentives that discouraged cancellation.
Read Ofcom's decision summarySimple cancellation mechanisms
Recent FTC actions against subscription businesses show continuing scrutiny of hidden, cumbersome or ineffective cancellation routes.
Read the Chegg settlement releaseFAQs
Common questions about PARITY.
The full suite FAQ and legal boundary appear on separate pages.
Open all suite FAQs →Must both journeys contain the same number of steps?
No. A difference may protect the consumer or address a genuine security, fraud or identity risk. PARITY asks whether the organisation can identify, evidence and justify that difference.
Can PARITY assess telephone and chatbot journeys?
Yes. The first version relies on structured manual evidence, so a project can combine screens, call transfers, waiting periods, chatbot loops, email instructions and staff interactions.
Does a successful result prove legal compliance?
No. The result records the method's conclusion on the defined route pair and evidence. It does not bind a court or regulator and does not replace a legal opinion.
Why not use a single friction score?
A score can conceal a serious obstruction by averaging it against harmless design choices. PARITY reports the route, burden, purpose, evidence and legal significance separately.
PARITY
Easy in should not mean hard out.
Register interest in the fictional demonstration, a controlled pilot or an organisation licence.