Project Details
Projekt
PriMR — Designing and Evaluating Scalable Privacy Awareness and Control User Interfaces for Mixed Reality
Subject Area
Image and Language Processing, Computer Graphics and Visualisation, Human Computer Interaction, Ubiquitous and Wearable Computing
Term
since 2023
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 521584224
Mixed Reality (MR) headsets offer great opportunities for a wide range of applications for leisure, work, education, and marketing, among others. With MR, users can be immersed in a virtual world (Virtual Reality) or augment their view of the real world with virtual content (Augmented Reality). To achieve this, MR headsets utilize an array of sensors (including many cameras) and bring them closer to the human body, enabling sensitive data to be captured, processed, and shared with third parties. State-of-the-art headsets already provide access to behavioral data (e.g., hand and body motion, eye gaze), physiological data (e.g., EEG, heart rate), contextual data (e.g., size of tracking space, bystanders), and device specifications. Such data allow one to infer information about user demographics, health and well-being, as well as impairments. It is apparent that such data is sensitive. While sensors are required to enable tracking and interaction, the captured data can also be misused. This creates an inherent challenge, since providing access to data is necessary to create a powerful MR experience. At the same time, it is important to empower users and their bystanders to protect their data from unintended use by third parties. This project examines how user interfaces for privacy control can be built for MR. The main challenges this project addresses are (1) how users and bystanders can be made aware of and understand the privacy implications of using MR technology, and (2) how they can be empowered to make reasonable decisions regarding data collection, processing, and sharing by MR devices and apps. As Mixed Reality scales to different environments (private, work, public), supports an increasing number of applications (games, office, education), continues to integrate novel sensors, and involves multiple users with different motivations and skills, many questions emerge: (1) How can MR user interfaces raise awareness among users about which data are collected, processed, and shared? (2) How can users’ MR privacy behavior be investigated in realistic settings? (3) How can bystanders of MR users be informed of an ongoing tracking and how can they be granted control over their data? (4) How can MR user interfaces efficiently communicate privacy risks associated with consenting to data collection and sharing and how can this be done in opportune moments? (5) How can MR user interfaces support efficient privacy permission control? (6) How can the impact of MR privacy interfaces be assessed? (7) How can researchers and practitioners be supported in the privacy-preserving design of MR applications? We envision the project as a significant step towards making privacy an integral aspect for the design of Mixed Reality applications. The outcome of this project will support considering and addressing privacy challenges during the design and development of novel features and technologies.
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
