Supporting Awareness: Introducing Feedback

In section 2.1.3 we said that the privacy management process involves tools for expressing how one’s information should be communicated to others (several approaches describing control mechanisms are described in the section 2.2.5) and tools for supporting awareness. Awareness in this context relates to the user’s understanding of the sociotechnical system and its capabilities (the sociotechnical nature of ubicomp is explained in the section 2.1.2).

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According to Dourish and Bellotti (1992) awareness is an understanding of the activities of

others, which provides a context for your own activity. Nguyen and Mynatt argue that lack of awareness and control is not simply a privacy issue, characterized as ‘Do the wrong people know things about me?’, but it strikes fundamental issues in people understanding the capabilities of a system, and then being able to shape that system to meet their particular needs.

They conclude that shaping the system is impossible without the understanding of the system (Nguyen and Mynatt 2002; Nguyen and Mynatt 2001). This conforms to Altman’s findings that privacy regulation requires both output and input from the environment, in our case, a ubicomp system.

The conclusion here is that the user of a ubicomp system requires methods and interfaces that help her not only shape the system (control the dissemination of personal information) but also

understand how it affects the social interaction (by collecting feedback from the system).

While awareness has assigned a more social meaning in the HCI literature (Dourish and Bellotti 1992), we use term feedback to describe technical aspects of awareness in ubicomp. We borrowed this term from Bellotti’s and Sellen’s work on media spaces that define feedback as “informing people when and what information about them is being captured and to whom the

information is being available” (Bellotti and Sellen 1993). Feedback can be regarded as an

information unit describing the data flow and stakeholders accessing the information in a ubicomp system.

HCI researchers consider feedback as an important privacy feature for context-aware applications, which has been discussed extensively in prior work (J. Y. Tsai et al. 2009; Bellotti and Sellen 1993; Raento and Oulasvirta 2005; Hsieh et al. 2007). Feedback has been recognized as an important factor allaying users’ privacy concerns and increasing comfort of sharing location (J. Y. Tsai et al. 2009). Research has also shown that feedback can affect users’ behaviour, improves the understanding of the data flow within the system (Nguyen and Mynatt 2002) and can minimize potential privacy risks in the future (Adams 2000).

Chapter 2: Research Context and Related Work

Beyond examining the social consequences of using feedback, a number of researchers have proposed design solutions for representing feedback for different contexts and activities. Bellotti and Sellen (1993) studied the use of feedback to show users of the RAVE environment that they were being recorded. They found that feedback in the form of an LED light is a good communication tool but that displaying the full information about people watching is too intrusive. A similar approach for providing feedback was proposed by Neustaedter and Greenberg, but they added sound to LED feedback

Figure 2-4. Access notification interface presenting just information and why (Hong 2005).

To provide a real-time descriptions of who is requesting information and why, Hong proposed the concept of access notifications represented as a dialog window with additional controls for accepting, denying or ignoring the request. Access notifications support plausible deniability for the trackee and also act as a privacy management tool

notification is that people tend to ignore 2005).

Sellen et al. proposed a novel design for a situated device, The Whereabouts Clock, presenting real-time information of “what the group is up to” based on a fictional device described in J.K.

Context and Related Work

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Beyond examining the social consequences of using feedback, a number of researchers have proposed design solutions for representing feedback for different contexts and activities. Bellotti edback to show users of the RAVE environment that they were being recorded. They found that feedback in the form of an LED light is a good communication tool but that displaying the full information about people watching is too h for providing feedback was proposed by Neustaedter and

LED feedback (Neustaedter and Greenberg 2003).

cess notification interface presenting just-in-time description of who is requesting

time descriptions of who is requesting information and why, Hong proposed represented as a dialog window with additional controls for accepting, denying or ignoring the request. Access notifications support plausible deniability for the trackee and also act as a privacy management tool (Figure 2-4). The shortcoming of access notification is that people tend to ignore consent requests without reading them (Pettersson et al.

posed a novel design for a situated device, The Whereabouts Clock, presenting time information of “what the group is up to” based on a fictional device described in J.K. Beyond examining the social consequences of using feedback, a number of researchers have proposed design solutions for representing feedback for different contexts and activities. Bellotti edback to show users of the RAVE environment that they were being recorded. They found that feedback in the form of an LED light is a good communication tool but that displaying the full information about people watching is too h for providing feedback was proposed by Neustaedter and

time description of who is requesting

time descriptions of who is requesting information and why, Hong proposed represented as a dialog window with additional controls for accepting, denying or ignoring the request. Access notifications support plausible deniability for The shortcoming of access (Pettersson et al.

posed a novel design for a situated device, The Whereabouts Clock, presenting time information of “what the group is up to” based on a fictional device described in J.K.

Rowling’s Harry Potter books

awareness, it could be adapted to present information about “what the group knows about me”.

Figure 2-5. The Whereabouts Clock interface

Another attempt to provide feedback about location requests was (2009). They proposed a design for both real

first was a bubble notification (as used in the

2-6) was found as a minimally disruptive method for supporting awareness, which is on goals of our research. Sa

delivering feedback information in the real

showing who had access to what information and when

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Rowling’s Harry Potter books (Sellen et al. 2006). While this tool was used to improve family awareness, it could be adapted to present information about “what the group knows about me”.

The Whereabouts Clock interface (Sellen et al. 2006).

Another attempt to provide feedback about location requests was presented by Sadeh et al. . They proposed a design for both real-time and aggregated feedback mechanisms. The first was a bubble notification (as used in the Windows Operating Systems). The bubble

was found as a minimally disruptive method for supporting awareness, which is on

Sadeh et al. do not report on the effectiveness of bubble interface in delivering feedback information in the real-time. The second was a location request history list, showing who had access to what information and when (Figure 2-7).

hile this tool was used to improve family awareness, it could be adapted to present information about “what the group knows about me”.

presented by Sadeh et al. time and aggregated feedback mechanisms. The The bubble (Figure was found as a minimally disruptive method for supporting awareness, which is one of the deh et al. do not report on the effectiveness of bubble interface in he second was a location request history list,

Chapter 2: Research Context and Related Work

Figure 2-6. Real-time feedback in the form of bubble, notifying users of incoming queries help maintain awareness while being minimally disruptive

Figure 2-7. Historical (aggregated) feedback tool helps users understand how their privacy policies work and enables them to more effectively refine their policies

A similar interface was presented by Lederer et al. disclosure log to help people understand their priv

design is that it does not provide a mechanism for making suggestions and refining privacy preferences ad-hoc. A similar interface for a disclosure log

2009), interface is presented in Figure

combined historical feedback with the control mechanism.

Since most of the work in the awareness interfaces design area has been focused on the aspects, Tsai has expanded the work in the area and investigated

and its importance at supporting privacy Context and Related Work

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time feedback in the form of bubble, notifying users of incoming queries help maintain awareness while being minimally disruptive (Sadeh et al. 2009).

. Historical (aggregated) feedback tool helps users understand how their privacy policies and enables them to more effectively refine their policies (Sadeh et al. 2009).

presented by Lederer et al. (2004) who also designed an interface for a disclosure log to help people understand their privacy policies. A shortcoming of the latter design is that it does not provide a mechanism for making suggestions and refining privacy similar interface for a disclosure log was proposed in (J. Y. Tsai et al.

Figure 3-3. They continued the work of Sadeh (2009) combined historical feedback with the control mechanism.

Since most of the work in the awareness interfaces design area has been focused on the design expanded the work in the area and investigated the social aspects of feedback at supporting privacy. They conducted in the wild (Rogers 2011) study aimed

time feedback in the form of bubble, notifying users of incoming queries help

. Historical (aggregated) feedback tool helps users understand how their privacy policies

who also designed an interface for a acy policies. A shortcoming of the latter design is that it does not provide a mechanism for making suggestions and refining privacy J. Y. Tsai et al. (2009), and

design the social aspects of feedback aimed

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at examining the impact of feedback for sharing location within the social groups. Tsai et al. found that feedback is a very important design feature supporting user’s acceptance of location- sharing technologies and improving the comfort of sharing location. They also highlighted the positive correlation between the feedback availability and openness. Tsai’s study provided new insights about the importance of feedback for managing personal privacy in ubiquitous computing system. However, their efforts have focused on feedback’s utility from the data owner’s perspective, not extended field explorations of the data requester behaviour. The latter is explored in this thesis.

Hsieh et al. provided a set of different feedback designs for push and pull based interaction in the area of instant messaging systems (Hsieh et al. 2007). They also provided some insights about unobtrusive interaction design for real-time feedback. Ackerman and Cranor proposed the privacy critics concept to support awareness and warn web users about potential privacy risks of sharing personal information with a particular website (Ackerman and Cranor 1999). While the concept of a semi-autonomous agent offering privacy warnings and suggestions to Internet users could support users’ awareness, the proposed design was very intrusive. A more efficient design solution aiming at solving a similar problem was later proposed in (Cranor, Guduru, and Arjula 2006).

A relatively small number of researchers discuss the concept of historical feedback in the form of disclosure logs for location information on mobile devices (Raento and Oulasvirta 2005; Lederer 2003). Raento and Oulasirta’s interface provides both coarse-grained location request information, and fine-grained view available on demand (Raento and Oulasvirta 2005). Another attempt to provide feedback in the context of mobile devices is Locaccino, which provides an on-demand list of most recent location requesters (Toch et al. 2010). Marmasse proposed a real- time feedback as “thinking of you” information. In her Watch Me system (Marmasse 2004), a data requester picture was displayed on the screen to provide timely information about who is requesting one’s information.

Chapter 2: Research Context and Related Work

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A number of design considerations for real-time feedback were proposed for large screen devices (Hong 2005; Sadeh et al. 2009; Hsieh et al. 2007). Although mobile devices have been considered the most widely used ubiquitous computing technology (Barkhuus and Dey 2003) for quite a while, little work has been done on the real-time feedback in mobile context. These are clearly very different from traditional, large screen computers due to the diversity of their context of use, relation with the owner and their ubiquitous nature.

The work described so far has strongly focused on visual feedback, which might not be appropriate in a mobile context. For example, vibro-tactile and auditory feedback has been used successfully in other domains such as mobile search (Robinson, Eslambolchilar, and Jones 2009), navigation (Holland, Morse, and Gedenryd 2002) or supporting visually impaired people in reading graphs activities (Wall and Brewster 2006).