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 you!janne@winlab.rutgers.edu

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