Nudging People
Janne Lindqvist WINLAB, Dept. of ECE, Rutgers University
NSF/DIMACS Workshop for Aspiring PIs in Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace
October 15, 2012
Preparing a Proposal Nugget
• When evaluating NSF proposals, reviewers should consider what the proposers – want to do, – why they want to do it, – how they plan to do it, – how they will know if they succeed, – and what benefits would accrue if the project
is successful. • http://www.nsf.gov/bfa/dias/policy/merit_review/
overview.pdf
Human-Centric Research Agenda
My agenda: Applying soft nudges tohuman behaviorwithcomputer systems
Research Interests
• Problems that exist in the world or practical problems
• (Ordinary) people - daily lives• Going beyond WEIRD (Western,
Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic)
Method
• Spot a problem• Study behavior or attitudes• Implement a software system• Recruit people to use the system in
their daily lives• See what happens
Spot a Problem: Phones and Driving
• 2009 mobile phones while driving cited as a factor in [US DOT HS 811 379]:– 995 deaths and 24,000 injuries in the US
• During a typical daylight moment in the US in 2009, 9% of all drivers were using a hand-held or hands-free phone while driving. [US DOT HS 811 372]
Nudge with the Phone
Method
• Spot a problem• Study behavior or attitudes• Implement a software system• Recruit people to use the system in
their daily lives• See what happens
Wall Street JournalYour Apps are Watching YouDec 2010
Why Is This Important?
• As of January 2012:
• the Android Market offered 390,000 apps with more than 10 billion downloads since the Market’s launch
• the Apple App Store offered more than 500,000 apps with over 18 billion downloads since its launch.
Shares your location,gender, unique phone ID,phone# with advertisers
Uploads your entire contact list to their server(including phone #s)
What Are Your Apps Really Doing?
Problem
• Should I install this app or not?
• People might ask?– What do these
permissions mean?– Why does app need
this permission?– When does it use
these permissions?
Method
• Spot a problem• Study behavior or attitudes• Implement a software system• Recruit people to use the system in
their daily lives• See what happens
Expectation and Purpose: Understanding Users’ Mental Models
of Mobile App Privacy through Crowdsourcing
Jialiu Lin, Shahriyar Amini, Jason I. Hong, Norman Sadeh (CMU), Janne Lindqvist (Rutgers) Joy Zhang (CMU)
in 14th ACM International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp’12)
Can We Use Crowdsourcing?
• Almost nobody reads privacy policies– We want to install the app– Reading policies not part of main task– Complexity of reading these policies (boring!!!!!)– Clear cost (my time) for unclear benefit
• Crowdsourcing can mitigate these problems• But what to crowdsource here?
– Our idea: expectations and misconceptions
Privacy as Expectations
• Apply this idea of mental models for privacy– Compare what people expect an app to do vs what an app
actually does– Emphasize the biggest gaps, the misconceptions that most
people had
App Behavior(What an app actually does)
App Behavior(What an app actually does)
User Expectation(What people think
the app does)
User Expectation(What people think
the app does)
New Summaries
• Simplified terms and bolded permissions
• Only focused on permissions that affect privacy
• Sorted by highest surprises
• Added if above threshold 90% users were surprised this app
sent their precise location to mobile ads providers.
95% users were surprised this app sent their approximate location to mobile ads providers.
95% users were surprised this app sent their phone’s unique ID to mobile ads providers.
See all
0% users were surprised this app can control camera flashlight.
What’s Next?
• Spot a problem• Study behavior or attitudes• Implement a software system• Recruit people to use the system
in their daily lives• See what happens
Preparing a Proposal Nugget (Again)
• When evaluating NSF proposals, reviewers should consider what the proposers – want to do, – why they want to do it, – how they plan to do it, – how they will know if they succeed, – and what benefits would accrue if the project
is successful. • http://www.nsf.gov/bfa/dias/policy/merit_review/
overview.pdf
Summary
Thank [email protected]
BACKUP SLIDES
Changing Behavior with Computer Systems?
• Understanding people– How are we nudged?– How can we be nudged?
• Building systems– Engineering– Laboratory trials
• Deploying systems for people to use in their daily lives– A lot of engineering
Problem Focus
• Should I install this app or not
• This is what people are supposed to be asking, but they do not
• Nudge people to ask it
Ubiquity of Location-Enabled Devices
•2009: 150 million GPS-equipped phones shipped
•2014: 770 million GPS-equipped phones expected to ship (~5x increase!)
•Future: Every mobile device will be location-enabled [Berg Insight ‘10]
Location-Based Services Growing
Foursquare changes privacy settings as we recommended