University of Maryland

CSCW 2021 Workshop: Call for Participation

Designing for Data Awareness: Addressing Privacy and Security Concerns About “Smart” Technologies

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Note: Due to various deadlines, we have extended the deadline for submitting position papers or statements of interest to September 10.
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Overview

The internet of things (IoT) and smart home technologies are pervasive in the U.S. and abroad. Devices like smart speakers, cameras, thermostats, and vacuums promise to save consumers time and energy and to make tasks easier. Many devices also provide significant benefits through accessibility features that offer hands-free options, voice commands, and management through smartphone apps. At the same time, however, researchers and the media have documented a number of vulnerabilities in these devices, which raises concerns about what and how much data is being collected, how that data is used, and who has access to the data. In this one-day workshop, participants will work together to brainstorm potential solutions for making smart device data more visible and interpretable for consumers. Through rotating breakout sessions and full-group discussions, participants will identify data-based threats in popular smart home technologies, select data flows that are most concerning, and generate design ideas for tools or other artifacts that can help consumers make more informed decisions about using these devices. Opportunities for networking and future collaborations will also be incorporated.

Keywords: privacy, internet of things, IoT, smart homes, design

CSCW 2021 Homepage: https://cscw.acm.org/2021/

Download the full workshop overview paper here [PDF]

How to Attend

This one-day workshop will be held virtually the weekend before CSCW begins (on Sunday, October 24, 2021). You have two ways to participate:

  1. If you’re actively conducting research in this space and looking for feedback, you can submit a 2-4 page position paper (using the ACM Primary Article Template) that outlines your ongoing or proposed research idea or makes an argument for an approach, theory, or method to studying privacy in the context of IoT and smart homes. If accepted, we’ll share your position paper with all attendees prior to the workshop via Google Drive and allow other participants to comment on your work. You’ll also have 3-4 minutes to give a lightning talk during the workshop
  2. If you’re interested in attending but don’t have current work you want to share, you can submit a 1-page statement of interest that provides a brief background on your research and your interest in the workshop’s focus. These statements will also be shared in the Google Drive, but these participants will not give a lightning talk.

***Want to participate? Complete this Google Form by September 10, 2021.

The forms asks for some basic information about you and lets you upload your position paper OR statement of interest. Questions should be directed to networkedprivacy2021[at]gmail.com (include “CSCW Smart Home Workshop” in the subject line). Accepted participants will be notified on September 15, 2021.

Timeline

Workshop Overview

This is a one-day Zoom workshop, with full-group and breakout activities and regular breaks to minimize fatigue. Prior to the workshop, we will share a Google Drive and Slack workspace with all participants. The Drive will include position papers to allow participants to provide feedback on others’ work. The Slack is for the broader community of people doing research on networked privacy topics but will also have a channel specifically for this workshop. We’ll also use Miro boards (or a similar online brainstorming tool) for the design activities.

Below we provide an outline of the full workshop schedule (note: the final schedule will be shared with participants prior to the workshop). Bio breaks and networking opportunities will be interspersed throughout the event to minimize Zoom fatigue.

Introductions & Lightning Talks: We’ll open the workshop with introductions from the organizers and an overview of our plans for the day. We’ll share brief participant introductions, then let participants who submitted a position paper give a lightning talk about the research idea or project they want feedback on.

Panel discussion: We’ll hold a discussion with invited panelists to share their experiences and challenges in doing design work at the intersection of privacy and IoT.

Design Fiction & Speculative Design Activity: The primary goal of the workshop is to have participants identify creative design solutions to the privacy challenges raised by smart home technologies. To encourage participants to start thinking creatively about design, Richmond Wong will facilitate a design fiction activity to help the group explore and define this problem space. Participants will break into groups and be tasked with creating fictional stories and objects that capture some of the major privacy challenges raised by smart home technology. This activity will help participants craft a shared understanding of the problem space by depicting the situated everyday privacy experiences from the perspective of diverse stakeholders.

Designing for Visibility: We’ll begin our primary design activity with a short, full-group activity to brainstorm challenges related to smart speakers, which are especially important because they often serve as a hub for smart home ecosystems. Following this, we will break participants into groups based on areas of the home. Each group will be given a set of prompts that ask them to expand on the smart speaker discussion by identifying additional technologies that are specific to their assigned space, the potential data flows generated by those technologies, and potential privacy risks of those technologies. Once they have identified those risks, they will begin brainstorming potential design solutions that could respond to those risks. The groups will rotate multiple times during this process to allow for feedback and generating new design ideas.

Design Debrief / Next Steps / Wrap-up: Back as one group, we’ll ask each group to provide a short report on the design ideas generated during their session. During this reporting, organizers will map out the different ideas and themes connecting them on a shared whiteboard. Following this, we’ll discuss next steps for this research, opportunities for participants to get involved, and networking opportunities to keep connected with workshop participants and the broader community of privacy researchers.

Organizers