In this short paper we describe the implementation of an IoT test-bed in an elementary school. We argue that by adding additional IoT senors to an existing IoT system it is possible to evolve an indoor climate control system into a indoor milieu control system aimed at improving the health and well-being for both pupils and staff who spend their days working in the school environment. Lastly, we call for multidisciplinary action as the domain IoT for health and well-being spans across several different knowledge domains.

The unprecedented pandemic of the infectious coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is still ongoing. Considering the limitations and restrictions imposed by COVID-19, we explored the role of technology and the extent of usage by end-users. In our online survey, we investigated users’ perspectives on their use of technologies in different contexts (e.g., work, entertainment), taking into consideration intrinsic factors such as health consciousness, perceived social isolation, and pandemic-related concerns. Results from 218 respondents show a significant increase in technology use in all investigated contexts after the pandemic occurred. Moreover, the results suggest that different factors may contribute to such increases, depending on the context. It appears that perceived social isolation, concerns about the pandemic, and tracking have the most prominent influence on different use of technology. Furthermore, open-ended responses include beneficial opportunities, concerns & consequences, and behavioral transformations & adaptations due to COVID-19. Our findings provide insights for designing and developing new technologies, especially for communication and entertainment, to support users’ needs during a pandemic.

Recent HCI research in information security and privacy focuses on the Elderly. It aims at the provision of inclu-sive, Elderly-friendly interfaces for security and data protection features. Much attention is put on care situa-tions where the image of the Elderly is that of sick or disabled persons not mastering contemporary infor-mation technology. That population is however a frac-tion of the group called the Elderly. In this position pa-per, we argue that the Elderly are a very diverse popu-lation. We discuss issues rising from researchers and software architects’ misconception of the Elderly as technology-illiterate and unable. We suggest a more nuanced approach that includes changing personal abil-ities over the course of life.

The lack of privacy awareness in smartphone ecosystems prevents users from being able to compare apps in terms of privacy and from making informed privacy decisions. In this paper we analysed smartphone users’ privacy perceptions and concerns based on a novel privacy enhancing tool called Android Apps Behaviour Analyser (A3). The A3 tool enables user to behaviourally analyse the privacy aspects of their installed apps and notifies about potential privacy invasive activities. To examine the capabilities of A3 we designed a user study. We captured and contrasted privacy concern and perception of 52 participants, before and after using our tool. The results showed that A3 enables users to easily detect their smartphone app’s privacy violation activities. Further, we found that there is a significant difference between users’ privacy concern and expectation before and after using A3 and the majority of them were surprised to learn how often their installed apps access personal resources. Overall, we observed that the A3 tool was capable to influence the participants’ attitude towards protecting their privacy.

People's decisions do not happen in a vacuum; there are multiple factors that may affect them. There are external determinants, such as cost/benefit calculation of decision outcomes. There are also internal factors, such as attitudes, personality, emotions, age, and nationality. Frequently, the latter have a final say on the decision at hand, and similar determinants are triggered during the digital interaction when people make decisions about their privacy.

The current digital privacy landscape is filled with recurring security breaches and leaks of personal information collected by online service providers. Growing dependency on Internet-connected devices and increasing privacy risks prompted policy makers to protect individuals' right to privacy. In Europe, the General Data Protection Regulation requires companies to provide adequate information about their data collection and processing practices to users, to increase privacy awareness and enable better decision making. Regardless, currently there is no sufficient, usable technology, which could help people make improved privacy decisions, decreasing over-disclosure and oversharing. Hence, multidisciplinary researchers aim at developing new privacy-enhancing solutions. To define such solutions and successfully convey data provision and processing practices, potential risks, or harms resulting from information disclosure, it is crucial to understand cognitive processes underpinning privacy decisions.

In this thesis, we examine privacy decisions and define factors that influence them. We investigate the attitude-behaviour relationship and identify privacy concerns affecting perceptions of privacy. Additionally, we examine factors influencing information sharing, such as emotional arousal and personality traits. Our results demonstrate that there is a relationship between privacy concerns and behaviours, and that simplified models of behaviour are insufficient to predict privacy decisions. Our findings show that internal factors, such as nationality and culture, emotional arousal, and individual characteristics, affect privacy decisions. Based on our findings, we conclude that future models of privacy should incorporate such determinants. Further, we postulate that privacy user interfaces must become more flexible and personalised than the current solutions.

When people interact with others, they control how much personal information they reveal, and, hence, make decisions about their privacy. Similarly, in online settings, they decide how much personal information they expose. However, online, their decisions might have greater consequences because of the persistent nature of disclosed information and technological complexities. Hence, technologies should provide people with comprehensive knowledge, enabling informed choices, and reducing privacy risks. Nevertheless, little is known about the interplay of the different factors that influence people's privacy choices. Sometimes, people over-disclose their personal information despite their privacy concerns, presumably relying on fast thinking of homo heuristicus. Yet, it is common to expect that people's decisions should result in more "rational" outcomes; this may decrease privacy risks - here, bringing to the forefront thinking of homo economicus.  This thesis presents insights into the understanding of online privacy decisions. Through a series of studies, we investigate the many factors that influence privacy-related attitudes and behaviors. Our work examines the interaction of the intrinsic (e.g., personality) and extrinsic (e.g., visual design of a privacy interface) determinants of online choices (e.g., disclosure). Overall, we demonstrate the complexity of human decisions in the context of online privacy, suggesting that people's choices are context-dependent and the borders between decisions of the homo heuristicus and economicus are blurry. Thus, we conclude that it is homo varius that can make privacy-aware choices by switching between rational calculations and heuristical thinking, depending on the interplay of different intrinsic and extrinsic determinants. This work provides a knowledge base for future studies investigating privacy decisions. Further, it contributes insights for privacy practitioners (e.g., designers) that may help improve current privacy designs.

Are people worried about harms that may result from their privacy decisions? How can we improve privacy decisions, and make them more informed? In this short position pa- per, we present some of the findings from the quantitative study on privacy attitudes and behaviors. Further, we shift the attention to potential differences of privacy perceptions among representatives from various demographics. We hope to start the discussion about a necessity to enrich privacy research and include cultural factors, to ensure in- clusion and enhance digital privacy.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a source of knowledge about the surrounding environment and people in such an environment. The insights collected by IoT can provide the knowledge needed to improve people’s health and overall well-being. Schools are one environment where IoT is scarcely applied, yet, it is expected that this is where children and teenagers spend most of their time. Drawing on previous findings, this paper presents preliminary results from qualitative inquiry investigating how and what IoT-based solutions could support health and well-being in elementary educational settings.

Increasing dependency on digital technologies introduces queries related to well-being–when and how digital technology poses a threat, or when it is the most appreciated by users? People have some expectations before using technology, which sometimes may be met, but there might be a mismatch at other times. Nevertheless, the digitalization of services advances and companies modify existing or produce new technologies that do not satisfy users' demands, putting their well-being at risk. Through an empirical inquiry, the present research explores experiences with technologies to shed more light on the main factors that enrich or diminish technology value and influence well-being. Exploiting the circumstances created by the COVID-19 pandemic that fast-forwarded technology use and development, an online inquiry was conducted to assess positive and negative experiences of technologies, focusing on the contexts of work, learning, entertainment, information-seeking, and health. The findings from 578 participants indicate that depending on the role of technologybeing a substitute for certain activities or an opportunity to perform them differently–consequences on well-being can more or less follow expectations. The results are discussed in the context of past research and practical implications for, e.g. technology design or managerial changes that could help overcome users' current challenges. 

In a well-functioning digital economy, consumers should be able to make autonomous and informed choices, and companies compete fairly. One of the barriers preventing such well-functioning is dark patterns—designs that mislead users into making specific purchase-related choices. In this research, through a qualitative inquiry (expert interviews), we classify dark patterns based on the harmful ways such designs affect the digital market. Moreover, we analyze data using the behavior change framework and illustrate ways to prevent dark patterns and grant consumers greater protection and autonomy. Our exploratory results outline potential solutions policymakers might apply to improve digital market well-functioning.

Too often, while interacting with online technologies, we blindly agree to services’ terms and conditions (T&Cs). We often disregard their content—believing it is not worth engaging with the long, hard-to-understand texts. The inconspicuous display of online T&Cs on the user interface (UI) adds to our lack of engagement. Nevertheless, certain information included in T&Cs could help usmake optimal decisions. In this replication research, we investigate this issue in the purchasing context. We confirm and extend previous fndings through an online experiment (N = 987), showing that diferently presented T&Cs (icons, scroll, and cost cue) compared to hyperlinked text affect whether people open them, becoming aware. We also show the efect of decision-making style on the relationship between awareness and satisfaction. We discuss the possible use of these fndings to improve users’ informed decisions. We also highlight problems that diferent designs may pose, potentially increasing the information gap between users and service providers.

We report preliminary findings from an online study, identifying people’s attitudes toward privacy issues. The results confirm some of the previous research findings regarding demographic and contextual dependencies of privacy perceptions. The research presents a new scale for measuring attitudes to privacy issues that is based on privacy harms. The results suggest that people consider privacy harms in generic and simplified terms, rather than as separated issues suggested in legal research. This research identified major factors that people tend to think of while considering online privacy.

We all too often must consent to information collection at an early stage of digital interactions, during application sign-up. Paying low attention to privacy policies, we are rarely aware of processing practices. Drawing on multidisciplinary research, we postulate that privacy policies presenting information in a way that triggers affective responses, together with individual characteristics, may influence privacy attitudes. Through an online quasi-experiment (N=88), we investigate how affect, illustration type, personality, and privacy concerns may influence end-users' willingness to disclose information and privacy awareness. Our results partially confirm these assumptions. We found that the affect may have an impact on privacy awareness, and stable psychological factors may influence disclosures. We discuss the applicability of our findings in interface design and in future research.

Because of the increasing dependency on online technologies in even the most ordinary activities, people have to make privacy decisions during everyday online interactions. Visual design often influences their choices. Hence, it is in the hands of choice architects and designers to guide users towards specific decision outcomes. This “nudging” has gained much interest among scholars in interdisciplinary research, resulting in experimental studies with visual cues that may have the potential to alter attitudes and behaviors. Attitude and behavior changes are often attributed to several psychological effects manifesting in cognitive processing and decision-making. This article presents the results of a systematic literature review carried out to identify which psychological effects have been previously studied in the context of online privacy interactions. Subsequently, fifteen articles were selected and thoroughly reviewed, resulting in the identification of twenty psychological effects. The visual cues triggering these effects were recognized and classified against their capabilities to alter privacy attitudes and behaviors. Specifically, the visual cues were divided into two categories: privacy-enhancing and privacy-deteriorating. This review discusses the applicability of such cues in research and UI design. Further, the findings are discussed against the existing research on digital nudges. The authors conclude with a discussion on issues of research quality in the privacy-related field and outline the road to improvement.

When people sign-up to new online services, privacy notices are the initial means by which data handling practices are communicated. Yet, their design seldom ensures users' privacy comprehension or provides people with privacy choices, resulting in negative feelings associated with the sign-up process. In this paper, we investigate how to improve privacy notice design to enhance privacy comprehension and control, while inducing more positive feelings towards these notices. In an online experiment (N=620), we examine the factors of curiosity, privacy concerns, trust, and time. We study how these factors and visual designs of notices (framing and control) influence privacy comprehension, intention to disclose, and affect (negative-positive). Our results show that, depending on an individual's level of curiosity, control can influence privacy comprehension, disclosure, and affect. We demonstrate that affect moderates the relationship between privacy concerns and disclosure. We elaborate on our results, highlighting how privacy notices that activate curiosity and provide control, could enhance usability and strengthen privacy-conscious behaviors.

The study was run to investigate exploratory capabilities of factors such as individual characteristics, privacy concerns and information disclosure in the context of privacy behaviors. The research examined whether affective states arising from immediate emotions alter such capabilities. The results of an online study with 474 international participants demonstrate that immediate emotions might influence information sharing. The effect of privacy concerns, personality and information disclosure on the willingness to share is stronger when participants are in a neutral affective state. However, when the positive or negative feelings take over, the influence of these factors on willingness to share decreases. In this article, we postulate the necessity to include immediate emotions into research on privacy-related decision-making and discuss the applicability of our results in the context of privacy UIs.

The increased popularity of interconnected devices, which we rely on when performing day-to-day activities expose people to various privacy harms. This paper presents findings from the empirical investigation of privacy concerns. The study revealed that people, regardless of their diversity, perceive privacy harms as generic and simplified models, not individually as suggested in Solove’s framework. Additionally, the results identified differences in privacy concerns related to information disclosure, protection behavior, and demographics. The findings may benefit privacy and system designers, ensuring that policies and digital systems match people’s privacy expectations, decreasing risks and harms.

This chapter examines the legal and normative obligations of states under Article 22 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) to protect individuals with disabilities against unlawful and arbitrary interference with their privacy, both in general and in particular with respect to their personal, health, and rehabilitation information. For persons with disabilities, the right to privacy plays a particularly important role in helping to guarantee rights such as the rights to equality, to freedom from discrimination, to employment, and to education, among others. This is because the right to privacy provides individuals with the right to control information about themselves, including information related to their disability status. The ability to control and limit discovery and disclosure of one’s disability status is essential in helping to protect the individual from discrimination and stigma.

Information sharing on social networks is ubiquitous, intuitive, and occasionally accidental. However, people may be unaware of the potential negative consequences of disclosures, such as reputational damages. Yet, people use social networks to disclose information about themselves or others, advised only by their own experiences and the context-invariant informed consent mechanism. In two online experiments (N = 515 and N = 765), we investigated how to aid informed sharing decisions and associate them with the potential outcomes via notifications. Based on the measurements of sharing attitudes, our results showed that the effectiveness of informing the users via notifications may depend on the timing, content, and layout of the notifications, as well as on the users’ curiosity and rational cognitive style, motivating information processing. Furthermore, positive emotions may result in disregard of important information. We discuss the implications for user privacy and self-presentation. We provide recommendations on privacy-supporting system design and suggest directions for further research.

  People manage their online personas similarly to the real life ones - by sharing favorable, rather than unfavorable, information about themselves. Nevertheless, the sharing of unfavorable information may still occur (e.g., negative reviews) and influence others' perceptions. Also, it remains unclear why people reveal potentially damaging information, particularly in the context of online sharing economies. In this paper, we report on a controlled online experiment (N=462), which explored how individual characteristics and feedback properties influence online sharing of information in two contexts (travel and short-term employment) where personal ratings are essential. We provided users with the option to conceal their personal rating if it dropped below a certain threshold. We found that the context of the interaction was the main determinant of the threshold users chose. Feedback participants received (with different control availability) either before or after they made their choices could trigger additional considerations. However, users relied on their priors (e.g., experience, assumptions), rather than on new information provided in indications. Our findings show how people often fail to identify the impact of non-disclosure, which can lead to undesirable information being signaled to other users. These findings challenge the notion of user "informedness'' vis-a-vis personal information disclosure.

As people's offline and online lives become increasingly entwined, the sensitivity of personal information disclosed online is increasing. Disclosures often occur through structured disclosure fields (e.g., drop-down lists). Prior research suggests these fields may limit privacy, with non-disclosing users being presumed to be hiding undesirable information. We investigated this around HIV status disclosure in online dating apps used by men who have sex with men. Our online study asked participants (N=183) to rate profiles where HIV status was either disclosed or undisclosed. We tested three designs for displaying undisclosed fields. Visibility of undisclosed fields had a significant effect on the way profiles were rated, and other profile information (e.g., ethnicity) could affect inferences that develop around undisclosed information. Our research highlights complexities around designing for non-disclosure and questions the voluntary nature of these fields. Further work is outlined to ensure disclosure control is appropriately implemented around online sensitive information disclosures.