Bringing children into the process of designing for privacy and security
Kumar’s team focused on research involving children ages 5 to 12 and found that more than half of the papers they reviewed engaged children in some way. But they also found that the majority of those papers focused on getting feedback from children by interviewing them or showing them a prototype, tactics they said are important but involve a fairly limited amount of engagement.
“I would like to see the mentality of HCI researchers and designers shift from thinking they know what children need and want to actually centering children and their interests as much as possible,” Kumar said. “We should explore how children are understanding privacy and security and how they want it to be addressed.”
Additionally, she said she is hopeful that researchers and designers will notice children’s privacy and security issues sooner rather than later in the course of their work.
“Ideally, they will consider — from the project’s conceptualization — which aspect of privacy they’re touching and bring children into their work at the earliest stage,” she said. “This evolving paradigm, in tandem with the work that’s already been done in this space, may contribute to the creation of guidelines and systems that truly address the privacy and security issues that children are facing in a way that the children themselves are okay with.”
Kumar acknowledged that doing child-centered design — which involves time, resources, expertise and ethical insight — is more difficult than just asking children for feedback on adult-imposed visions of what we think they want. But she said she believes that good work has already been done.
“Researchers and designers can look to the literature to see what children have said on the topic of privacy and security and build on that,” she said. “They can also look to alternative ways to get children’s viewpoints, such as comments and reviews on the software and apps the children are using.”
The other authors on the paper are Virginia L. Byrne, Morgan State University; Marshini Chetty and Lucy Li, University of Chicago; Tamara L. Clegg and Jessica Vitak, University of Maryland, College Park; and Fiona O’Connell, University of Wisconsin, Madison.
The National Science Foundation funded this project.
