Ubicomp: Context Awareness

past work
- users were not willing to trade off location privacy for useful services (INTERACT 2003)
- this work examines tradeoff between loss of control and usefulness using mobile phone

three levels of interactivity
- personalization: user defined
- passive context-awareness: device alerts user to updated state
- active context-awareness: cellphone adjusts itself to updated state

study
- 23 users, 5 day journal on use-level, usefulness and sense-of-control, 8 participants interviewed afterwards
- imaginary services: private ringing profile, lunch service, activity tracking

results
- correlation between perception of control and level of interactivity
- preferred active and PASSIVE context-aware apps over personalization
- people were willing to give up a certain level of control
--> designers should consider
1) usefulness
2) loss of control
3) privacy (the biggest dealbreaker for usability)

Q: you don't want damaging consequences of application behavior, right? so did you find any nuances to the survey?
A: main concerns: you cannot fake errors in a hypothetical survey

Q: Bob McGrath, U Illinois
Different users different results?
A: All users were same type: young, students/professionals btw. 20 - 25

Q: Deborra Zukowski, Pitney Bowes
Very hard for people to change work practices. Following up on what long-term impact on practices might be?
A: initial eagerness, but it seems kind of fake

Q: Paul Bello, Orange
Explain difference btw. privacy and loss of control?
A: location privacy work: how people feel about disclosing their location to other people -- they were uptight. In loss of control, the device is acting on its own w/o people knowing. Releasing info to service v. person.
Q: loss of control over where information goes = nervousness over privacy