DESIGN RESEARCH: DECODING PRIVACY IN (MOBILE) TECHNOLOGY
translating privacy perceptions, conflicts, strategies into dev. guidelines
12
MONTHS
behavioral & design research
197
RESPONDENTS
of privacy research
2
M.SC. THESES
in psychology and design
1
PUBLICATION
in Design Engineering Conference
Decoding Privacy is 2-year research project about the understanding of privacy in today’s world, more specifically the challenges, conflicts and potential solutions in the field of mobile technology. Initiated at the Technical University Munich (TUM), the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) and the Center for Digital Technology and Management (CDTM): this was developed as a joint project by Tanja Kornberger and Diana Schneider.
DESIGN METHODOLOGY:
Through a combination of Anthropology, Psychology, Technology Management and Design Research, we aimed to understand, structure and visualise the ambiguous field of privacy in mobile technology, gather real-world cases of privacy conflicts and link them to potential solutions. This was approached through:
- literature study of privacy: its history, meaning, social / political / emotional / physical significance, the interdependency of private vs. public, the blurring lines between different roles, etc.
- quantitative pre-study with 197 participants of an extensive eSurvey about privacy patterns, conflicts of privacy in public settings, strategies to achieve privacy
- qualitative study in San Francisco with mobile developers to identify how privacy is perceived by the people who design and build the solutions that impact our lives and can be the root of private / public conflicts
- development of a classification system to map the layers of privacy, its roles, and causes of privacy conflict in tech
- development of design guidelines and strategies to ensure or regain privacy in mobile tech: designing for privacy from the very first stages in a development process
OUTPUT:
The quantitative empirical research illustrated a complex layered, multidimensional model of privacy structured by degrees of interaction with most privacy conflicts occurring in the context of mobile technologies, but most strategies employed by users being inept in this context. This raises the topic of the Designer Engineer/ Developer role in this evolution: a problem field we addressed in our speech at the Young Members Event of the International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED’13) in Seoul, Korea. For more information, have a look at www.decodingprivacy.com
KEY SKILLS:
- design research based on in-depth literature review and empathic field study
- clustering quantitative and qualitative data in a layered, multidimensional model (thus contradicting the simplified duality of private versus public)
- writing and visualising a collaborative scientific paper of Psychology and Design researchers, published and presented at the International Conference on Engineering Design in Seoul, South Korea
PROJECT IMPRESSIONS:
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