Coordination of Interpersonal PrivacyGrounding Privacy in Social Interaction

Natalia Romero Herrera

Scenario – Intentions to interact

• A face-to-face “hi”

• A mediated (MSN) “hi”

Agenda

• Context • Problem• Approach • In practice • Demonstration• Conclusions• Final Message

Context – Social Interactions

• Mediated communication• Awareness Systems• Media Spaces• Networked Communities

Problem – Too much/Too little

Problem – Signalling of borders

PictureNameStatusMessage

Personal

Availability

Activity

• People wants to feel connected

• People wants to share

• People want to signal borders with minimum effort

Problem – Grounding Borders

Problem – Signalling and Grounding

• Interpersonal privacy conflicts• Vulnerability of being always on

− Undesired interruption

• Lack of understanding of each others representations• False expectations and obligations• Physical, emotional and cognitive effort

• Communicators lack of lightweight and effective mechanisms to signal and ground each others’ intentions to interact

Approach

Security Legal

Social

Approach

• Privacy as a BORDER REGULATION process(Altman, 1975)

• Privacy is dynamic and dialectic

• Opening and closing borders of interaction

• Privacy as a GROUNDING process(Clark, 1996)• Establishing a shared understanding of each others’

representations for interaction

Solution

• Privacy Grounding Model (PGM)

Representing privacy borders

Establishing a shared understanding

In practice …

1. Identify the parties interacting• 1 to 1; 1 to many; many to many communication

• Hierarchy / Collaboration

2. Identify their borders of interaction• 1 or 2 ways communication• Asynchronous/synchronous• Text/visual/audio• Formal/casual

3. Identify scenarios of coordination of borders:• ‘knocking’ other’s borders: sending an email• Opening/closing your borders (after someone’s

‘knocking’): changing status to busy

In practice …

4. Identify signalling mechanisms to communicate intentions of opening/closing/knocking borders

• Sending an email with a ! symbol

• Lightweight: brief, background, simultaneous, distinctive

Interactive and Lightweight

5. Identify grounding mechanisms to establish understanding of the intentions of signalled borders

• Clicking the ! to ground its importance (though no answer can be provide yet)

• Interactive

DEMO - CB

Community Bar - Grouplab, Calgary

• Chat

• Own presence• Status - name

• Video

DEMO

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are needed to see this picture.

Conclusions

• Grounding mechanisms support lightweight and effective collaborative practices to establish a shared understanding of each others’ representations of privacy borders

• Lightweight• Interactivity• Effective in developing a shared understanding• Least collaborative effort• Explicit and ambiguity

Final Message

Research Challenge• Think about privacy!• Think about privacy as a border regulation process• Which is dynamic and collaborative

Design Challenge• Identify interactive and lightweight signalling and

grounding mechanisms to support the regulation of interaction borders