Visualisation and Other Methods of Expression

VOME

Funded by:

Focus

VOME’s focus is to develop different types of interventions to raise privacy awareness.

These interventions might be social interventions used in off-line social interactions or digital interventions that are used as part of an on-line service.

The interventions are designed as “thinking tools” to raise awareness about privacy issues when using on-line technologies.

Depending on the service design, these tools might be used as a part of a means of empowering users to have greater control over the use of their personal information.

Interventions

The interventions presented in this slide show are all digital interventions.

The interventions are developed from design principles which a VOME team developed in a user-centric design study.

They are technical probes whose purpose is to elicit responses from research participants on particular aspects of privacy awareness, probe usability and accessibility.

Context

These digital interventions are set in a mock-up of an on-line registration process.

Typical of the services we have researched, the mock-up uses the scenario of an on-line council service.

Intervention one was used as a probe to explore different approaches to communicating and stimulating privacy awareness between service user and service provider.

Intervention two was used as a probe to explore how and where intervention was most effective for people with different levels of confidence in technology use.

INTERVENTION ONE

Intervention One

The aim of our first intervention was to evaluate different ways for service users to explore issues of privacy as they were asked to register for a service

We experimented with three exploration methods:

Privacy Enquiry Privacy TransparencyDiscussion Page

Registration

Privacy Features

The privacy awareness features are all designed to stimulate some kind of exploration or inquiry.

Privacy Enquiry – a means of raising questions with service providersPrivacy Transparency – maps to show where personal information flows to once it has been disclosedDiscussion Page – a means of discussing information use with your community (either on-line or off-line communities).

All features are on the side bar and separate to the process of registration

Privacy Enquiry : a means of raising questions with service providers

Privacy Transparency : maps to show where personal information flows to once it has been disclosed

Discussion Page : a means of discussing information use with your community (either on-line or off-line communities)

Privacy Transparency: The Map

The privacy transparency map turned out to be the most popular method of inquiry.

Even those people who did not read the privacy policy still engaged with the map.

The map proved to be the engagement method most participants wanted to use.

The chat and discussion pages did not work particularly well but participants reported that they were happy both features were there.

Privacy Transparency: The Map

An early prototype of the map can be seen on the next slide.

The map plays a number of important roles:Re-enforcement of privacy messagesVisualisation of third party involvementArticulation of personal data use policies

All these roles were derived from the user studies we conducted.

Re-enforcement of privacy messages

Visualisation of third party involvement

Traditional Methods

In addition to providing methods of inquiry, our mock service also provided the traditional methods of raising privacy awareness (service agreement and privacy policy)

Examples of how we do this can be seen on the next slide.

Traditional methods of raising privacy awareness

INTERVENTION TWO

Intervention Two

The aim of our second intervention is to explore how to embed privacy awareness into the design of an on-line service

In this intervention we have developed our idea of mapping services and information but incorporated these ideas into the service design itself and gave service users more granular control over the disclosure of their information.

This intervention is also located in the scenario of service registration with a local council.

The Features

The next slide shows the privacy awareness features in Intervention Two.

As you can see, we have included chat and discussion features as well as the maps. We have also included a “Frequently Asked Questions” slot…

Map Chat Community discussion

FAQs

Scenario

The scenario is still the same; a mock-up of an on-line registration service with a local council.

The next shows how we have adapted the map to show how the personal information is used in different local council services.

Creating the Map

In Intervention Two, a service user constructs the map when they select a particular service they want to register with. The next slide shows how service users make these choices.

The following slide shows how the maps are built up.

Traditional Methods

The traditional methods of privacy awareness and communication have been retained in this prototype too.

The next slide shows how they are positioned…

Traditional methods of raising privacy awareness

A Question of Balance

Intervention Two was used as probe to encourage research participants to explore with researchers:

the degree of on-line support and help they wanted when disclosing personal information the form that support should take

The next slide shows how we have designed the probe to provoke this type of discussion.

Outcomes

VOME research has shown that users require a mix of privacy awareness methods.

The interventions have provoked a range of reactions in service users which have been recorded both in terms of interface use and in terms of feedback and comment.

These reactions have informed a number of insights related to how to design privacy awareness technologies for people with various levels of confidence in both technology and in the service provider.

Where to next?

VOME completes on July 4th 2012

In the last six months we are running three case studies to explore our design principles still further:

We are developing a map to communicate institutional values when managing personal information. We are working to include our design principles in the overall design of Sunderland City Council’s Child Poverty Portal.We are working with Pallion Action Group, West Sunderland, to design a community support service for the community to use during a period of benefit change.

Contact us

You can find VOME here: www.vome.org

Or on Twitter twitter.com/vome_project

or email lynne.white@rhul.ac.uk