Mobile HCI 2008 Poster
My poster for Mobile HCI 2008. The main aim of this poster is to illustrate my findings regarding location disclosure privacy in mobile awareness systems. Location deception is a real practice, so I argue here that any UI supporting location disclosure to real people should support the ability to manipulate exactly what others see. Mobile tactile interfaces support gestures that would be a natural way to move location indicators around in the UI. The poster illustrates examples that show the user’s current location as a draggable point surrounded by an also draggable circle. The more points on the map that this circle envelopes, the more ambiguous the representation of location seen on other users’ screens.
This is an interaction model that I believe will pave the way to more usable automatic, mobile location disclosure interfaces. If access were controlled by allowed-lists, the interactions required to select who can see what, and when, is multi-faceted, which causes a whole load of problems, including users perceiving the system to be more complex, therefore abandoning use altogether.
Under this model, when users want to blur their exact location, they simply create a larger bounding box around their current location. Who cares if people know you’re ’somewhere’ in the city? During times when you feel more social, you simply reduce the size of the box. If your buddies know you well enough, they should be able to infer where you’re likely to be even if they don’t know your exact location. Then, the good ol’ phone call comes in and the system becomes a context-setter and conversation starter…
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