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
to
human behavior
with
computer 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 Journal
Your Apps are Watching You
Dec 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.
What Are Your Apps Really Doing?
Shares your location,
gender, unique phone ID,
phone# with advertisers
Uploads your entire
contact list to their server
(including phone #s)
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
User Expectation
(What an app
(What people think
actually does)
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
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.
90% users were surprised this app
sent their precise location to
mobile ads providers.
0% users were surprised this app
can control camera flashlight.
See all
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 GPSequipped phones shipped
•2014: 770 million GPSequipped 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