Monday, April 19, 2004
430-438 Soda Hall, Wozniak Lounge
1:00-2:30 p.m.

Ph.D. candidate in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Dept.

University of California, Berkeley

An Architecture for Privacy-Sensitive Ubiquitous Computing

Abstract:

Privacy is the most often-cited criticism of ubiquitous computing, and may be the greatest barrier to its long-term success. However, developers currently have little support in designing software architectures or in creating useful and usable interactions that are effective in helping end-users manage their privacy.

In this talk, I present Confab, a toolkit that facilitates the creation of privacy-sensitive ubicomp applications. I describe how the design of this toolkit was influenced by an extensive analysis of end-user needs, including surveys, interviews, and examination of issues faced by previous systems. I also describe how Confab provides support for the capture, storage, processing, and sharing of personal information in a privacy-sensitive manner, focusing primarily on real-time location information.

Jason Hong works in the Group for User Interface Research (GUIR) and is a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at Berkeley EECS. His research interests are in Human-Computer Interaction and Ubiquitous Computing, specifically in privacy and in tools for streamlining the design, prototyping,and evaluation of applications. He is a co-author of The Design of Sites, a pattern-based approach to designing customer-centeredweb sites.