Trust Me: Doubts and Concerns Living with the Internet of Things

An increasing number of everyday objects are now connected to the internet, collecting and sharing information about us: the "Internet of Things" (IoT). However, as the number of "social" objects increases, human concerns arising from this connected world are starting to become apparent. This paper presents the results of a preliminary qualitative study in which five participants lived with an ambiguous IoT device that collected and shared data about their activities at home for a week. In analyzing this data, we identify the nature of human and socio-technical concerns that arise when living with IoT technologies. Trust is identified as a critical factor - as trust in the entity/ies that are able to use their collected information decreases, users are likely to demand greater control over information collection. Addressing these concerns may support greater engagement of users with IoT technology. The paper concludes with a discussion of how IoT systems might be designed to better foster trust with their owners.

[1]  H. Jeff Smith,et al.  Information Privacy: Measuring Individuals' Concerns About Organizational Practices , 1996, MIS Q..

[2]  Lynn Dombrowski,et al.  Shared values/conflicting logics: working around e-government systems , 2014, CHI.

[3]  Jeffrey Holbrook,et al.  Early engagement and new technologies: opening up the laboratory , 2014 .

[4]  Antonio Iera,et al.  From "smart objects" to "social objects": The next evolutionary step of the internet of things , 2014, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[5]  Tom Rodden,et al.  Terms of Agreement: Rethinking Consent for Pervasive Computing , 2013, Interact. Comput..

[6]  Paul Dourish,et al.  Implications for design , 2006, CHI.

[7]  Gregory D. Abowd,et al.  Charting past, present, and future research in ubiquitous computing , 2000, TCHI.

[8]  Allison Druin,et al.  Technology probes: inspiring design for and with families , 2003, CHI '03.

[9]  Andy Crabtree,et al.  Human Data Interaction: Historical Lessons from Social Studies and CSCW , 2015, ECSCW.

[10]  Paul Dourish,et al.  Divining a Digital Future - Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing , 2011 .

[11]  Jessica K. Miller,et al.  Value tensions in design: the value sensitive design, development, and appropriation of a corporation's groupware system , 2007, GROUP.

[12]  Antonio Iera,et al.  The Internet of Things: A survey , 2010, Comput. Networks.

[13]  Susan Wyche,et al.  Values as lived experience: evolving value sensitive design in support of value discovery , 2009, CHI.

[14]  Alan Borning,et al.  Value Sensitive Design and Information Systems , 2020, The Ethics of Information Technologies.

[15]  Yvonne Rogers,et al.  Reflecting human values in the digital age , 2009, CACM.

[16]  Alex S. Taylor,et al.  Locating Family Values: A Field Trial of the Whereabouts Clock , 2007, UbiComp.

[17]  Jes A. Koepfler,et al.  Charting Sociotechnical Dimensions of Values for Design Research , 2013, Inf. Soc..

[18]  Tuck Wah Leong,et al.  Approaching a human-centred internet of things , 2013, OZCHI.

[19]  Peter Friess,et al.  Internet of Things Strategic Research Roadmap , 2011 .

[20]  Helen Nissenbaum,et al.  Bias in computer systems , 1996, TOIS.

[21]  Robert J. Kauffman,et al.  Making the ‘MOST’ out of RFID technology: a research agenda for the study of the adoption, usage and impact of RFID , 2007, Inf. Technol. Manag..

[22]  Samuel Fosso Wamba,et al.  Research Directions on the Adoption, Usage, and Impact of the Internet of Things through the Use of Big Data Analytics , 2015, 2015 48th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[23]  Hamed Haddadi,et al.  Human-Data Interaction , 2016 .

[24]  Geoffrey C. Bowker,et al.  Values in design , 2011, Commun. ACM.

[25]  Jes A. Koepfler,et al.  How to see values in social computing: methods for studying values dimensions , 2014, CSCW.