The document discusses privacy issues related to emerging technologies like wearables and smart home devices. It begins with an outline of topics to be covered, including contextualizing privacy, theoretical definitions versus real-world practices, privacy studies on online reviews, and open questions. The rest of the document delves into these topics, finding that privacy is a multidimensional concept that varies by context and individual. User studies of online reviews reveal different perspectives on privacy concerns for technologies. Imagery analysis identifies common metaphors and mental models around privacy concepts. Open questions remain around simplifying privacy and developing effective user-centric solutions.

1. USABLE PRIVACY
VIVIAN GENARO MOTTI
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
INFORMATION SCIENCES AND TECHNOLOGY
VOLGENAU SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING
GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY
Washington DC, March 14th, 2019

2. Wearables
Privacy
Visual
Privacy
Smart
Home
Devices

3. OUTLINE
• Contextualization
• Theoretical definitions vs. privacy in practice
• Privacy studies
• Online reviews
• Wearables and Smart Home Technologies
• Imagery Analysis
• Visual Privacy
• Open questions

4. WHAT IS PRIVACY?

6. Differential
privacy
Privacy by
design
Engineered
privacy
Contextual
privacy
Privacy

7. PRIVACY IN PRACTICE

8. PRIVACY IN PRACTICE

9. MULTIDISCIPLINARY
No consensual definition or one-size-fits-all solutions
Privacy …
Personal
Cultural
Legal
Technical
Contextual
…

10. MULTIDIMENSIONAL
• Context sensitive and domain specific
• varying across culture, age, generation, domain
• Cutting across multiple levels
• data, information, device, system, services, network,
application
• Span across temporal aspects
• Life-cycle from data collection, transmission, storage
to sharing
• Several trade-offs involved
• costs vs. benefits

11. MULTIDIMENSIONAL
Ecosystem
Network
Application & System
Data & Information

12. EXISTING SOLUTIONS
Terms and
Conditions
Policies
Settings
Non-
Disclosure
Agreements

13. INEFFECTIVE
Technical
Long
Complex
Not user-
centric

14. OPEN QUESTIONS
What are actual users’ concerns?
How aware are users about privacy?
How users’ consider privacy in practice?
What measures do they take?
What actions should they take?
What are the mismatches among stakeholders?
How can we facilitate adoption?

15. USER-CENTERED DESIGN
Understanding Users’ Perspectives
• Characterizing users’ mental models and awareness of
concerns through online reviews, questionnaires
Prototyping
• Framework, Design, Models
User Studies
• Participatory design
• Usability tests
Field Study
• Deployment in the wild

16. 1. ONLINE REVIEWS
• Wearables and Smart Home Devices
• Major Findings
• ‘I have never thought about it…’
• Oblivious users
• ‘Pick your poison’
• Deliberate choices
• ‘I am [my data is] not important’
• Unconcerned users

17. WEARABLES
Right to forget
• ‘it gives a record of everything you’ve done, day in and
day out, possibly even some things you don’t want to be
reminded of’
Location disclosure
• ‘... stalkers know where you are at all times of the day,
know when you go to sleep, riding a car, or climbing a
mountain’

18. WEARABLES
Discreet Display
• ‘the second screen will act as sort of a privacy screen,
keeping folks from reading your texts by glancing at your
wrist’
Surreptitious Audio and Video Recording
• ‘Social norms already frown on making surreptitious
audio recordings (though it isn't illegal, it is done only
infrequently and with an air of "secret agency" about it);
video is much more of an intrusion.’

19. WEARABLES
Fear of Surveillance
• ‘[wearable devices are] the NSA's new best friend’
Fear of Sousveillence
• ‘There's also another challenge that affects not only
those who wear Glass, but everyone else around privacy’

20. Social Implications
Criminal Abuse
Facial Recognition*
Access Control
Social Media Sync
Right to Forget
Users’ Fear
Speech Disclosure*
Surreptitious A/V Recording*
Location Disclosure
Device and Application Specific
Sensor
Specific
Data
Specific
Discrete
Display
and Visual
Occlusion

21. 2. VISUAL PRIVACY
• Imagery analysis

23. USERS’ MENTAL MODELS
On Privacy Imagery

25. Who
People, institutions,
organizations
How
Objects, actions, behaviors
Why
Goals, feelings, emotions
Where
Locations, places
Themes

26. TAXONOMY
Action Analyzing, Authenticating, Blindfolding, Blocking, Blurring,
Covering, Connecting, Closing, Dimming, Disclosing, Erasing,
Forwarding, Hiding, Localizing, Locking / Unlocking, Looking,
Observing / being observed, Packing, Protecting, Protesting,
Revealing, Sharing, Shredding, Spying, Surveilling,
Synchronizing, Uploading, Uncovering
Object Blockers
Controls
Sensors
Storage
Blinders, Curtains, Diary, Door, Fence, Gate Key, Message,
Padlock, Wall, Windows Semaphore
Camera, Camcorder, Microphone
Memory Card, Cloud
Organization Regulatory
Social Media
& I.T.
NSA, HIPPAA
Ashley Madison, Bitcoin, Facebook, Google+, Instagram,
Pinterest, RSS, Twitter, Whatsapp
People Role
Public Persons
Circle
Politicians, Legislators
Edward Snowden, George Orwell
Group, Individual
Concept Betrayal, Confidentiality, Creepiness, Exclusivity, Concepts
Fear, Intimacy, Isolation, Loneliness, Public vs.
Private, Safety, Secrecy, Shame

27. PRIVACY ACTIONS
shredding
hiding
spying

28. microphone
OBJECTS
cameras
door
padlock

29. ORGANIZATIONS
NSA
Social Media

30. PEOPLE
Snowden
Hillary

31. CONCEPTS
Solitude
Isolation

32. FREQUENCY OF CODES
Actions and objects were the most frequent
• n=73 and n=39
UI designers focus mainly on actions
• Privicons, Material icons, Mozilla icons
Variability
• Instagram was the most diverse source in terms of codes
All codes were used
• Real world actions
• Physical objects
• Privacy mechanisms

33. PRIVACY REQUIREMENTS
Data-driven, temporal perspective
Data collection
Data transmission
Data storage
Data sharing (access control)

34. PRIVACY METAPHORS

35. OPEN QUESTIONS
How to train users so that they become more aware?
How to support designers and developers?
What are the necessary tools, guidelines, principles, etc.?
How to simplify privacy to make it accessible and effective
for users regardless of their profile?
How to devise privacy controls?
…

36. FUTURE DIRECTIONS
• Quantifiable privacy
• Users’ concerns and nudging
• Visual vocabulary
• Simplified language based on mental models
• Privacy framework
• Meta definition
• Personalized privacy
• Universal models vs. individualized needs

37. FINAL REMARKS
Privacy is a multidisciplinary concept
• Important but also challenging to address with a
universal solution
User-centric approach can help to understand users’
mental models and aid to create privacy solutions that are
easier to use
• By matching familiar and real-world concepts with UI
design elements

38. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science
Foundation under Grant No. 1314342. Any opinions, findings, and
conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those
of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the
National Science Foundation.

39. REFERENCES
• CHHETRI, C.; MOTTI, V. G. (2019). Eliciting Privacy Concerns for Smart Home
Devices from a User Centered Perspective. In Proceedings of the iConference
2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer-Verlag.
• LOWENS, B.; MOTTI, V. G.; CAINE, K. (2017) Wearable Privacy: Skeletons in The
Data Closet. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Healthcare
Informatics. DOI 10.1109/ICHI.2017.29 [PDF] [Slides]
• MOTTI, V. G. & CAINE, K. E. (2016). Towards a Visual Vocabulary for Privacy
Concepts. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 2016
Annual Meeting. Washington DC, USA: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.
September 2016
• MOTTI, V. G.; CAINE, K. E. (2015). Users' Privacy Concerns About Wearables:
Impact of Form Factor, Sensors and Type of Data Collected. In Proceedings of
the Financial Cryptography and Data Security (1st Workshop on Wearable
Security and Privacy). Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer-Verlag
Berlin Heidelberg, Vol 8976, pp. 1-14. DOI=10.1007/978-3-662-48051-9_16

40. Q+A
vmotti@gmu.edu