Privacy Cards for Surfacing Mental Models and Exploring Privacy Concerns: A Case Study of Voice-First Ambient Interfaces with Older Adults

TL;DR

This work investigates the ethical and privacy implications of voice-first ambient interfaces (VFAIs) for aging in place through an in-depth engagement with five older adults, finding insufficient mental models for proper consent.

Abstract

We investigate the ethical and privacy implications of voice-first ambient interfaces (VFAIs) for aging in place through an in-depth engagement with five older adults. Our participants were in the process of becoming experienced VFAI users, and had used a VFAI-based design probe for health data reporting. We create and iteratively refine an interview protocol using Privacy Cards. We customize Privacy Cards by drawing on participants' previous interviews and device usage logs. Using Privacy Cards, we conduct interviews to surface their mental models, and explore their privacy concerns. We find insufficient mental models for proper consent. For example, participants did not know who could access their data, and experienced difficulty distinguishing built-in functionality from third-party apps. Participants initially expressed little worry about VFAI-related ethical concerns, but interviews with Privacy Cards revealed nuanced issues, resulting in various implications for future research and design.

Figures (4)

• Figure 1: Note, this image is an embedded PDF, so zooming in may help see the graphics at a more appropriate size. This diagram depicts three phases of the Privacy Cards' design process: 1) Planning---Hypothetical scenario as a prompt for getting feedback from CI experts (top), and CI parameters and their respective values in the context of older adults and VFAIs at a senior center (bottom), 2) Paper prototyping---Cards generated from the planning phase after narrowing down the sender options and creating two sets of conditions (what is expected to lead to appropriate, or inappropriate evaluations), and 3) Digital Field Study---A portion of the final set of Privacy Cards we used over Zoom with older adult participants in their homes.
• Figure 2: Privacy Cards in action during step four of P3's session. Participants used the cards to evaluate the appropriateness of different information flows. The VFAI in the cards was labeled by the name the participant used to refer to it (i.e. Echo or Alexa).
• Figure 3: Privacy Cards in action during step five of P3's session. After their first appropriateness evaluation, participants were asked to reconsider them based on new "conditions" imposed on the flows. We placed a Data card that was considered inappropriate to complete a four-card flow on the left side, and had Condition cards stacked on the top right of the screen. The flow is then re-evaluated considering these conditions.
• Figure 8: Setup slides for step five.