Nudging People

1
Nudging People

• Janne Lindqvist
• WINLAB, Dept. of ECE, Rutgers University
• NSF/DIMACS Workshop for Aspiring PIs in Secure
  and Trustworthy Cyberspace
• October 15, 2012

2
Preparing a Proposal Nugget

• When evaluating NSF proposals, reviewers should
  consider what the proposers
• want to do,
• why they want to do it,
• how they plan to do it,
• how they will know if they succeed,
• and what benefits would accrue if the project is
  successful.
• http//www.nsf.gov/bfa/dias/policy/merit_review/ov
  erview.pdf

3
Human-Centric Research Agenda

• My agenda
• Applying
• soft nudges
• to
• human behavior
• with
• computer systems

4
Research Interests

• Problems that exist in the world or practical
  problems
• (Ordinary) people - daily lives
• Going beyond WEIRD (Western, Educated,
  Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic)

5
Method

• Spot a problem
• Study behavior or attitudes
• Implement a software system
• Recruit people to use the system in their daily
  lives
• See what happens

6
Spot a Problem Phones and Driving

• 2009 mobile phones while driving cited as a
  factor in US DOT HS 811 379
• 995 deaths and 24,000 injuries in the US
• During a typical daylight moment in the US in
  2009, 9 of all drivers were using a hand-held or
  hands-free phone while driving. US DOT HS 811
  372

7
Nudge with the Phone
8
Method

• Spot a problem
• Study behavior or attitudes
• Implement a software system
• Recruit people to use the system in their daily
  lives
• See what happens

9
Wall Street Journal Your Apps are Watching
You Dec 2010
10
Why Is This Important?

• As of January 2012
• the Android Market offered 390,000 apps with more
  than 10 billion downloads since the Markets
  launch
• the Apple App Store offered more than 500,000
  apps with over 18 billion downloads since its
  launch.

11
What Are Your Apps Really Doing?
Shares your location,gender, unique phone
ID, phone with advertisers
Uploads your entire contact list to their
server (including phone s)
12
Problem

• Should I install this app
• or not?
• People might ask?
• What do these permissions mean?
• Why does app need this permission?
• When does it usethese permissions?

13
Method

• Spot a problem
• Study behavior or attitudes
• Implement a software system
• Recruit people to use the system in their daily
  lives
• See what happens

14
Expectation and Purpose Understanding Users
Mental Models of Mobile App Privacy through
Crowdsourcing
Jialiu Lin, Shahriyar Amini, Jason I. Hong,
Norman Sadeh (CMU), Janne Lindqvist (Rutgers) Joy
Zhang (CMU)in 14th ACM International Conference
on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp12)
15
Can We Use Crowdsourcing?

• Almost nobody reads privacy policies
• We want to install the app
• Reading policies not part of main task
• Complexity of reading these policies
  (boring!!!!!)
• Clear cost (my time) for unclear benefit
• Crowdsourcing can mitigate these problems
• But what to crowdsource here?
• Our idea expectations and misconceptions

16
Privacy as Expectations

• Apply this idea of mental models for privacy
• Compare what people expect an app to do vs what
  an app actually does
• Emphasize the biggest gaps, the misconceptions
  that most people had

App Behavior (What an app actually does)
User Expectation (What people think the app
does)
17
New Summaries

• Simplified terms and bolded permissions
• Only focused on permissions that affect privacy
• Sorted by highest surprises
• Added if above threshold

18
Whats Next?

• Spot a problem
• Study behavior or attitudes
• Implement a software system
• Recruit people to use the system in their daily
  lives
• See what happens

19
Preparing a Proposal Nugget (Again)

• When evaluating NSF proposals, reviewers should
  consider what the proposers
• want to do,
• why they want to do it,
• how they plan to do it,
• how they will know if they succeed,
• and what benefits would accrue if the project is
  successful.
• http//www.nsf.gov/bfa/dias/policy/merit_review/ov
  erview.pdf

20
Summary
21
Thank you!

• janne_at_winlab.rutgers.edu

22
BACKUP SLIDES
23
Changing Behavior with Computer Systems?

• Understanding people
• How are we nudged?
• How can we be nudged?
• Building systems
• Engineering
• Laboratory trials
• Deploying systems for people to use in their
  daily lives
• A lot of engineering

24
Problem Focus

• Should I install this app or not
• This is what people are supposed to be asking,
  but they do not
• Nudge people to ask it

25
Ubiquity of Location-Enabled Devices

• 2009 150 million GPS-equipped phones shipped
• 2014 770 million GPS-equipped phones expected to
  ship (5x increase!)
• Future Every mobile device will be
  location-enabled

Berg Insight 10
26
Location-Based Services Growing
27
Foursquare changes privacy settings as we
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