Somebody Is Peeking!: A Proximity and Privacy Aware Tablet Interface.

As smartphones and tablets are now widespread, accessing or even sharing sensitive content in public areas has become commonplace. This applies to both personal contexts (e.g. checking banking information in a coffee shop) and professional contexts (e.g. sharing patient information in a hospital ward). It is important to explore ways to support visual privacy that are appropriate for mobile device use in public settings and in dynamic workflows. In this paper we present the design, prototype implementation, and ongoing evaluation of a range of privacy notifications and privacy control mechanisms for tablets. Preliminary results show that: 1) spatial information such as distance and orientation can be used to mediate privacy management for tablet interfaces. 2) Privacy notifications and control mechanisms should be designed to complement our existing physical awareness and protection mechanisms. 3) Selecting a specific design is highly context-dependent.