Evaluating The Privacy of Using Mobile Devices to Interact In Public Places

The Musicology project explores how personal mobile devices, such a users’ cell-phones, can be used as conduits for bringing musical expression into public places such as cafés and coffee shops. This capability represents advanced usage models for emerging handheld devices, enabling personal music to be a more social experience by allowing people to easily play their music for others around them. Survey results highlight users’ perception of public and private interaction in shared spaces, refining the role of privacy in these contexts. Music can be a very personal expression of a individual’s identity, overlapping in surprising ways with the personal nature of users’ handheld devices.