Section 21.5. Conclusion


21.5. Conclusion

In this chapter, we described five common pitfalls to which designs of privacy-affecting systems often succumb. These pitfalls include obscuring potential information flow, obscuring actual information flow, emphasizing configuration over action, lacking coarse-grained control, and inhibiting established practice. We provided several examples of systems that fall into or manage to avoid these pitfalls, including Faces, our user interface prototype for managing ubicomp privacy.

We further identified a number of conceptual tools to help designers. These tools include privacy design patterns; the metaphor of personae and activities as, respectively, indices to and contents of subspaces of a user's identity space; and an extension of Norman's elucidation of the role of mental models in the design process, in which the designer also works to align the user's mental model of his information flow with his observers'.

In closing, we encourage designers of privacy-affecting systems to employ our guidelines to help them design opportunities for users to understand the extent of a system's privacy implications and to influence those implications through socially meaningfully action.



Security and Usability. Designing Secure Systems that People Can Use
Security and Usability: Designing Secure Systems That People Can Use
ISBN: 0596008279
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 295

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