Smart toys and child's privacy: recommendations for designing more usable parental controls

• Grant number: 18/26038-8
• Support type: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Effective date (Start): June 18, 2019
• Effective date (End): June 17, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Computer Science - Computing Methodologies and Techniques
• Principal researcher: Renata Pontin de Mattos Fortes
• Grantee: André de Lima Salgado
• Supervisor abroad: Patrick Hung
• Home Institution: Instituto de Ciências Matemáticas e de Computação (ICMC). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Research place: University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT), Canada
• Associated to the scholarship: 17/15239-0 - New Principles of Usable Privacy and Security (UPS) of Access Control Interfaces Designed for the Average User, BP.DR

Abstract

Smart toys are becoming popular and their sales are expected to grow threefold and exceed $15.5 billion by 2022. Yet, such toys have raised concerns about child`s privacy. However, usability of its parental (privacy) controls remains as a challenge in the literature. In this project, we seek to create recommendations for designing more usable parental controls. We plan to base our recommendations on prior literature, including grey literature, and empirical data to be collected in this study. We will perform qualitative secondary analyses of the literature about usable privacy controls to synthesize a conceptual model of usable parental controls. Usability evaluations and user studies are also planned to enhance this model. In addition, we will employ techniques to indicate users' mental model of information architecture of privacy policies for such controls. Later, we aim to contrast these models against a prototype of a privacy rule conceptual model from the literature. We will discuss the contrasts and compose a descriptive list of recommendations aimed to help designers to create more usable parental controls. Also, we expect to create a new prototype model of parental control shaped by usability attributes. Because the context of use is particularly important for usability, this project will be conducted at the UOIT Human-Machine Laboratory, which is well equipped with different smart toys and technologies that simulate its context of use. It will also be conducted with a pioneer smart toy research group, with multiple domain experts that can contribute to this project. (AU)

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

SALGADO, ANDRE DE LIMA; FORTES, RENATA PONTIN DE MATTOS; DE OLIVEIRA, RICARDO RAMOS; FREIRE, ANDRE PIMENTA. Usability heuristics on parental privacy controls for smart toys: From an exploratory map to a confirmatory research. ELECTRONIC COMMERCE RESEARCH AND APPLICATIONS, v. 42, JUL-AUG 2020. Web of Science Citations: 0.