Lifelogging User Study: Bystander Privacy

Abstract

Automatically and passively taking pictures (using lifelogging devices such as wearable cameras) of people who don’t know they’re having their picture taken raises a number of privacy concerns (from a bystander’s perspective). We conducted a study focussing on the bystanders’ concerns to the presence of augmented reality wearable devices in two contexts (one formal and one informal). The results suggests the need to embed privacy enhancing techniques into the design of
lifelogging applications, which are likely to depend upon an array of factors, but not limited to the context of use, scenario (and surroundings), and content.

Full text

© The Authors. Proceedings of British
HCI 2016 - Fusion, Bournemouth, UK
Lifelogging User Study: Bystander Privacy
Soumyadeb Chowdhury Md Sadek Ferdous Joemon M Jose
Singapore Institute of Technology University of Southampton University of Glasgow
Soum.Chowdhury@singaporetech.edu.sg S.Ferdous@soton.ac.uk Joemon.Jose@glasgow.ac.uk
Automatically and passively taking pictures (using lifelogging devices such as wearable cameras) of people
who don’t know they’re having their picture taken raises a number of privacy concerns (from a bystander’s
perspective). We conducted a study focussing on the bystanders’ concerns to the presence of augmented
reality wearable devices in two contexts (one formal and one informal). The results suggests the need to
embed privacy enhancing techniques into the design of lifelogging applications, which are likely to depend
upon an array of factors, but not limited to the context of use, scenario (and surroundings), and content.
Lifelogging, Wearable Camera, User Study, Privacy, Bystander, Privacy by Design
1. INTRODUCTION
Lifelogging, a technique for digitally gathering every
moment in life using wearable cameras (like
Autographer, 2009 and Narrative Clip, 2012) is a
growing phenomenon. The underlying problem of
lifelogging cameras is that they essentially demand
that an individual wearing the camera (lifelogger -LL)
take photos of complete strangers, which raises
privacy concerns from a bystander’s perspective
(BSs – known or unknown people captured in the
images). Wearable cameras, may capture photos in
different scenarios/contexts including, but not limited
to private (living room), intimate (time spent with
loved ones) and workplace. Hence understanding
the privacy implications of using such devices in
different scenarios from the BSs’ perspectives will
facilitate in supporting the needs of different actors,
by embedding privacy in the user-centred design.
In this paper, we report the results of a user study
conducted within two contexts/scenarios to
understand the perspectives of the BSs, when a
wearable camera is used. In our study, LLs are
actors who are wearing the device which passively
captures images, and BSs are actors who are
captured in the lifelogs (may be known or unknown
to the LLs). The results reported in (Chowdhury et
al., 2016) provides evidence that BSs were
concerned to the presence of lifelogging cameras,
contrary to the results reported in Hoyle et al. (2014),
where LLs reported to have encountered no
opposition from the BSs. It is worth mentioning that
these results are limited to understanding the
reactions of the BSs as perceived by the LLs. The
study reported in this paper addresses the above
limitation by focussing on BSs’ concerns and
perception to the presence of augmented reality
wearable cameras.
2. RELATED STUDIES
Zhou and Gurrin (2012) have reported a survey on
the attitudes of people towards lifelogging and
identified privacy as one of the primary concerns, in
addition to appearance of the device and comfort
using the device. Kelly et al. (2013) has suggested
that privacy and anonymity of third parties must be
protected and images containing third parties should
not be published without their consent. Clinch et al.
(2016) have reported an experiment with 13 people
over a period of 2.5 days. The study did not focus on
BS privacy, rather shared the challenges of
conducting such experiments, and discuss their
wide applicability in the future. The study reported in
Hoyle et al. (2014) has demonstrated that 26 out of
36 LLs reported positive interest from the BSs, and
none of the LLs reported to have encountered
opposition from the BSs. We contend that lifelogging
cameras are likely to be used within many social and
organizational contexts, as well as surroundings.
Given the diversity of users’ views about privacy,
which is extremely contextual, there is a need to
understand their perceptions of the BSs, when such
devices are used in different scenarios. This can be
achieved by conducting empirical studies, which will
help to develop techniques that will address their
privacy concerns in an array of scenarios.
3. EVALUATION
Privacy is individually subjective and socially
situated (Ackerman and Mainwaring, 2005). We
believe that BSs’ concerns regarding privacy is likely
to differ for the lifelog images captured in different
scenarios such as business meetings, informal
gathering with friends and family. However, we are
neither aware of all such scenarios nor it is easy to

Lifelogging User Study: Bystander Privacy, Chowdhury Ferdous Jose
simulate all the scenarios in the absence of a
standard experimental protocol, to understand the
BSs’ perspectives when lifelogging devices are
used. Hence, we decided to simulate two scenarios:
(S1) Use of wearable cameras during a student
presentation (formal meeting where a group of
students are demonstrating their projects to their
project supervisor); (S2) Use of wearable cameras
in a gathering among friends in the personal space
of the experimenter (indoor informal meeting). We
believe that the aforementioned scenarios are the
most likely ones that LLs will encounter in their daily
life, and covers two ends of the spectrum (i.e. formal
and informal gatherings).
Five postgraduate computing science students (age
range: 22-26) voluntarily agreed to take part in S1.
None of them had used lifelogging devices in the
past. All the subjects wore a wearable camera,
around their neck. Then each subject was asked to
give a 3 minute presentation on their dissertation,
followed by a 1 minute question answer session.
After the session, they were asked to complete a
questionnaire to share their views on being captured
in a series of photos, and to the presence of the
device during the presentation session.
The evaluator approached a number of friends to
take part in S2. 6 subjects (age range: 20-26),
voluntarily participated. None of the recruits had
used such devices in the past. All the subjects wore
a wearable camera around their neck, and
interacted with each other for 20 minutes. Out of 6
subjects, 4 knew each other beforehand and 2 just
knew the evaluator. Thus the simulation comprised
of a mix of people who knew each other, as well as
some of them were not acquainted with everyone in
the room, to simulate a real-life informal gathering,
where all people don’t necessarily know each other,
but interact. After the interaction, the subjects were
asked to answer a paper questionnaire.
4. RESULTS
According to the subjects (S1), the reasons which
may curtail the use of such a device during a formal
presentation are: content may be sensitive, and the
presenter may not want them to be recorded;
organisation policies that may prevent recording
pictures during a presentation; audience may be
bothered, if photographs are taken without their
consent. All the subjects reported that they tend to
become anxious, and are more conservative as well
as serious, if they are being captured in the images.
In relation to the images that are likely to affect their
privacy, 4 subjects reported that all images that are
captured or even shared in a public forum without
their permission and the images that show them
doing something else, other than paying attention to
the presentation is a breach to their privacy. Hence
in a formal meeting from the BSs’ perspective, the
sensitivity and privacy of an image passively
captured by a wearable camera is likely to depend
upon how the image portrays the people present in
it, and whether it is permitted to capture the contents
presented during the presentation.
All the subjects (in S2) seemed to contend that a LL
should take their consent before recording, and seek
permission before sharing them online. Most of the
subjects replied in free text that they forgot quickly
about the presence of the camera because they
were taken by the social environment. Hence the
camera captured images in private spaces like rest
rooms. Additionally, all the subjects were worried
about being caught on camera showing intimate
moments, or coming out negative on a photo. They
were concerned about: how the lifelogs will portray
themselves; how the contents will be used; what sort
of activities will be captured. We acknowledge that
there is often a gap between most user's stated
preferences and their actual behaviour. Since the
privacy sphere is relative, the results are likely to
differ for users from different age groups (Caprani et
al., 2012), and perhaps countries.
5. CONCLUSION
The possibility of ubiquitous presence of lifelogging
devices, especially in the private sphere has raised
serious concerns with respect to the BSs’ privacy.
We do not claim that our study with BSs is rigorous,
but contend that the BSs’ opinion about the privacy
implications of using such devices will vary
depending upon the occasion, context, content of
the photos, and the manner in which the images will
reflect their personality. Our study shows that the
likelihood of people forgetting about the camera in a
social environment and unintentionally using it in
rest rooms (violating the rules of BSs’ personal
space), warrants development of mechanisms to
filter out images captured in such spaces. In such
cases the LLs may not be aware of what they are
recording (unintentionally) and whose privacy they
might be breaching. Hence, we contend the need to
use contextual design in developing privacy friendly
usable lifelogging applications, i.e. implementing
privacy mediating techniques aligning to the
different contexts (scenarios) in which the lifelog
images are captured, without undermining the user
experience, and quality of service.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We acknowledge support from Integrated
Multimedia City Data, a project within the ESRC-
funded Urban Big Data Centre (ES/L011921/1). We
are also thankful to Atanas Bozhkov (MSc Student
University of Glasgow) for helping us to conduct the
user studies.

Lifelogging User Study: Bystander Privacy, Chowdhury Ferdous Jose
REFERENCES
Ackerman, M. and Mainwaring, S., (2005). Privacy
issues and human-computer interaction.
Computer, 27(5), pp.19-26.
Autographer. (2009) The World's First Intelligent
Wearable Camera, OMG Life Ltd Available from:
http://www.autographer.com (Accessed: 20 May
2016).
Caprani, N., Gurrin, C. and O'Connor, N.E., (2012).
Sharing as a motivation for lifelogging.
Chowdhury, S, et al., (2016). Bystander privacy in
lifelogging. In Proceedings of British HCI 2016-
Fusion. British Computer Society.
Clinch, Sarah, et al., (2016). Collecting Shared
Experiences through Lifelogging: Lessons
Learned. Pervasive Computing, IEEE, 15(1),
pp.58-67
Hoyle, R, et al., (2014), September. Privacy
behaviors of lifeloggers using wearable cameras.
In Proceedings of the 2014 ACM International
Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous
Computing. 571-582.
Kelly, P, et al., (2013). An ethical framework for
automated, wearable cameras in health behavior
research. American journal of preventive
medicine, 44(3). 314-319.
Narrative Clip 2. (2012). Memoto AB Available at:
http://getnarrative.com (Accessed: 23 May
2016).
Zhou, L.M. and Gurrin, C., (2012). A survey on life
logging data capturing. SenseCam 2012.
.