User Perception of Privacy with Ubiquitous Devices

TL;DR

This study explores user perceptions of privacy in the context of ubiquitous technologies, revealing key themes that influence privacy-related behaviors and informing design improvements for emerging tech.

Contribution

It provides new insights into user privacy concerns and behaviors, emphasizing psychological needs and informing privacy-by-design strategies.

Findings

Key themes include attitudes towards privacy, awareness, and consent.

Privacy concerns influence user actions in public and private spaces.

Findings can guide privacy-enhancing design in technology.

Abstract

Privacy is important for all individuals in everyday life. With emerging technologies, smartphones with AR, various social networking applications and artificial intelligence driven modes of surveillance, they tend to intrude privacy. This study aimed to explore and discover various concerns related to perception of privacy in this era of ubiquitous technologies. It employed online survey questionnaire to study user perspectives of privacy. Purposive sampling was used to collect data from 60 participants. Inductive thematic analysis was used to analyze data. Our study discovered key themes like attitude towards privacy in public and private spaces, privacy awareness, consent seeking, dilemmas/confusions related to various technologies, impact of attitude and beliefs on individuals actions regarding how to protect oneself from invasion of privacy in both public and private spaces. These themes interacted amongst themselves and influenced formation of various actions. They were like core principles that molded actions that prevented invasion of privacy for both participant and bystander. Findings of this study would be helpful to improve privacy and personalization of various emerging technologies. This study contributes to privacy by design and positive design by considering psychological needs of users. This is suggestive that the findings can be applied in the areas of experience design, positive technologies, social computing and behavioral interventions.