Up Close and Personal: Exploring User-preferred Image Schemas for Intuitive Privacy Awareness and Control

Effective end-user privacy management in everyday ubiquitous computing environments requires giving users complex, contextual information about potential privacy breaches and enabling management of these breaches in a timely, engaging and intuitive manner. In this paper, we propose using empirically grounded image schema-based metaphors to help design these interactions. Results from our exploratory user study (N=22) demonstrate end users’ preferences for changes in physical attributes and spatial properties of objects for privacy awareness. For privacy control, end users prefer to exert force and create spatial movement. The study also explores user preferences for wearable vs. ambient form-factors for managing privacy and concludes that a hybrid solution would work for more users across more contexts. We thus provide a combination of form factor preferences, and a focused set of image schemas for designers to use when designing metaphor-based tangible privacy management tools.