USA Africa Dialogue Series - Understanding engagement with the privacy domain through design research

This paper reports findings from participatory design research aimed at uncovering how technological interventions can engage users in the domain of privacy. Our work was undertaken in the context of a new design concept “Privacy Trends” whose aspiration is to foster technology users’ digital literacy regarding ongoing privacy risks and elucidate how such risks fit within existing social, organizational and political systems, leading to a longer term privacy concern. Our study reveals two challenges for privacy intervention design: the need to develop technology users’ intrinsic motivations with the privacy domain and the importance of framing the concept of privacy within users’ interests. Setting our study within a design context enables us to identify four design opportunities for fostering engagement with the privacy domain through technology design.