Ewa Luger

Terms of Agreement: Rethinking Consent for Pervasive Computing

With its emphasis on ‘smart environments’, the vision of pervasive computing raises critical concerns with respect to consent. When sensors capture data about people, and digital systems interpret and respond to that data below the line of user visibility, two fundamental questions arise. First, are current notions of consent relevant in the emerging class of pervasive systems and, secondly, what are the practical consequences of dealing with consent for such environments? This paper reflects on the key principles of consent and the challenges raised by pervasive systems through a review of multidisciplinary perspectives on consent and technology. The developing complexity and decreasing visibility of pervasive computing systems, coupled with the increasing value and sensitivity of personal data, mean that it is no longer sufficient to design systems that assume users capable of making informed decisions at a single moment. In particular, the unprecedented sensitivity of contextual data, and the potential harms associated with inferences made on the basis of that data, highlights the need to revisit our design principles. Many of these discussions are nuanced and implicate a broad range of perspectives; however, it is clear that there is unlikely to be a ‘moment of consent’ in pervasive systems. In order to progress this agenda we offer the following set of recommendations to designers, as considerations for future systems design: (i) electronic consent mechanisms (ECMs) must cease to be designed around ‘moments in time’ and allow for negotiation, (ii) systems should enable establishment of user expectations and development of norms, (iii) systems should be sensitive to thirdparty interactions and (iv) we should move beyond designing for user control towards designing for user autonomy.

Playing the Legal Card: Using Ideation Cards to Raise Data Protection Issues within the Design Process

The regulatory climate is in a process of change. Design, having been implicated for some time, is now explicitly linked to law. This paper recognises the heightened role of designers in the regulation of ambient interactive technologies. Taking account of incumbent legal requirements is difficult. Legal rules are convoluted, uncertain, and not geared towards operationalisable heuristics or development guidelines for system designers. Privacy and data protection are a particular moral, social and legal concern for technologies. This paper seeks to understand how to make emerging European data protection regulation more accessible to our community. Our approach develops and tests a series of data protection ideation cards with teams of designers. We find that, whilst wishing to protect users, regulation is viewed as a compliance issue. Subsequently we argue for the use of instruments, such as our cards, as a means to engage designers in leading a human-centered approach to regulation.

Behind The Scenes at HCI's Turn to the Arts

Since 2000, Human Computer Interaction (HCI) has seen a turn to the artistic, looking at more provocative, cultural and social experiences. In doing so HCI is increasingly collaborating with artists who engage with real world data. Much of this work focuses on engaging the public in the spectacle of interactive experiences. In contrast, this paper takes a look behind the scenes by studying a collaboration between artists, climate scientists and researchers as they designed a participatory sensing system to interpret scientific data for public presentation. This paper presents this cross-disciplinary approach from the perspective of an artist/researcher on the project.

Literatin: beyond awareness of readability in terms and conditions

Terms and Conditions (T&Cs) are frequently unread as a consequence of their complexity and length. Readability formulas are used to objectively measure this complexity, but ironically their outputs are also unreadable to many. This motivated the development of a chrome extension called Literatin that compares the complexity of popular fictional literature to T&Cs in order sensitise people to their complexity. In this paper we discuss whether this has been achieved, and outline plans to further develop the extension.

Exploring Patterns as a Framework for Embedding Consent Mechanisms in Human-Agent Collectives

With ever increasing developments in computing technology, approaches to attaining informed consent are becoming outdated. In light of this ongoing change, researchers have begun to propose several new mechanisms to meet the emerging challenges of consent in pervasive settings. Unfortunately a particular problem arises when considering consent in the context of Human-Agent Collectives (HACs). These large-scale heterogeneous networks, of multiple co-operating humans and agents are particularly complex and it is difficult to know what, where and how to introduce these new mechanisms. In this paper we explore the potential of patterns of interactional arrangement as a framework for embedding consent mechanisms in HACs and other ubiquitous systems.

An emerging tool kit for attaining informed consent in UbiComp

Existing approaches to attaining informed consent are outdated and inappropriate for use in ubiquitous computing systems. The pervasiveness of the technology and the nature of user interaction require a rethinking of consent mechanisms. In this paper we briefly introduce and discuss several new approaches to consent acquisition developed specifically for the new era of ubiquitous computing.

Sustaining consent through agency: a framework for future development

Whilst being addressed in terms of traditional online interactions, the concept of consent has only recently seen attention in respect of pervasive systems. This paper takes the position that consent (online), as it currently stands, is a fiction. It reflects only the most basic requirements of the original concept and, as such, should not be transferred to Ubicomp systems without careful reconfiguration. In a world of pervasive sensors, software agents and tick and click consent, where is the space for human agency? This paper draws on the findings of previous studies to suggest an emerging framework that seeks to move beyond securing consent, to sustaining user agency within the design of Ubicomp systems.