Context, Content, Consent

How to Design User-Centered Privacy Explanations

authored by

Wasja Brunotte, Jakob Richard Christian Droste, Kurt Schneider

Abstract

In the context of the ongoing digitalization of society, human values such as privacy, ethics and trust are becoming increasingly important. Digital systems are entering private and professional spaces, which in turn affects the privacy of their end users. Hence, there is a need for conveying privacy information in a transparent and understandable manner, with the user in the focus. Lawmakers introduced privacy policies as a means of communicating privacy information. However, those documents have proven to be practically useless for end users. Privacy policies are long, vague, ambiguous and use complex language, such as legal terms, which often require profound background knowledge. Explainability has shown potential as a means to increase transparency and foster trust in software systems. Based upon the foundation of explainability, we developed a layered concept for user-centered privacy explanations, which is implemented within a high-fidelity software prototype. Finally, we tested and evaluated our concept by conducting an interactive user study with 61 participants. The results of our study suggest that our layered design concept enabled participants to understand the privacy aspects they regarded as important. We conclude that our approach seems to be an appropriate way to communicate complex privacy information to end users.

Organisation(s)

Software Engineering Section
PhoenixD: Photonics, Optics, and Engineering - Innovation Across Disciplines

Type

Conference contribution

Pages

86-89

No. of pages

4

Publication date

2023

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Software

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.18293/SEKE2023-032 (Access: Open)