We present PriView, a concept that allows privacy-invasive devices in the users’ vicinity to be visualised. PriView is motivated by an ever-increasing number of sensors in our environments tracking potentially sensitive data (e.g., audio and video). At the same time, users are oftentimes unaware of this, which violates their privacy. Knowledge about potential recording would enable users to avoid accessing such areas or not to disclose certain information. We built two prototypes: a) a mobile application capable of detecting smart devices in the environment using a thermal camera, and b) VR mockups of six scenarios where PriView might be useful (e.g., a rental apartment). In both, we included several types of visualisation. Results of our lab study (N=24) indicate that users prefer simple, permanent indicators while wishing for detailed visualisations on demand. Our exploration is meant to support future designs of privacy visualisations for varying smart environments.

Publication

Sarah Prange, Ahmed Shams, Robin Piening, Yomna Abdelrahman and Florian Alt. PriView – Exploring Visualisations Supporting Users' Privacy Awareness. In Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. CHI'21. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. [Download Bibtex]