Methods: Lab-based Mixed-Method Study (Semi-Structured Interview & Task observation)

Current Status: Completed Data Collection & Data Analysis

Duties:

• Interviewed 19 pairs of parents and teens on Zoom to test an Android mobile app titled “CO-oPS” to understand whether such an app helps family members co-monitor their mobile app safety.

• Analyzed transcripts to find emerging themes and conceptually grouped themes based on the research questions.

CO-oPS App: CO-oPS is an Android app that allows family members to review one another's apps installed and the permissions granted to those apps. Through CO-oPS, users also can communicate and give their feedback if they see any concerning apps or permissions on one another's phones. However, this app also ensured user's personal privacy. So, it allows users to turn off the visibility of any apps from their family members.

Research Questions: ·

• How do they currently manage their mobile app safety?

• How do they evaluate the features of such a collaborative approach where parents and teens have equal powers in monitoring one another's app safety?

• What are the factors we should consider in the future design, based on their overall concerns about using such an app for their families?

Findings:

• Most parents and teens installed apps with little consideration about privacy and security. They also accepted app permissions just to make sure that their installed apps function properly. Although teens provided general tech support to their parents, parents often manually checked their teens' app usage.

• Both Parents and Teens valued the CO-oPS app for the features that allowed them to review their own apps & permissions. Although they both valued the collaborative privacy and safety management features; parents wanted more control over teen's apps. Most importantly, they both disapproved of the features that allowed them to hide their apps from one another.

• Parents were mostly focused on teens' apps usage, where teens were more concerned about the granted permissions of their parents' phones. While parents expressed that they would use such an app to ensure their families' online safety, teens said they would use it just for their own app safety. Parents overall said they would listen to their teens' feedbacks and change the app settings. However, teens said they would need to verify parents' oversight since parents may not be tech-savvy enough.

Challenges: Initially, we interviewed each parent-teen pair together. However, in our first few study sessions, we observed them sometimes agreeing with each other's opinions a lot or sometimes engaging in arguments. We then revised our study design and interviewed the rest of the parent-teen pairs separately on two breakout rooms. The first few study sessions also helped us identify and fix some usability issues on the app design.

Current Status: Completed the UI Design for Implementation

Duties:

• Mentored the designer/developer team & Designed the User Interface of the app titled “MiSu”

• Design & conduct the user study to evaluate how using such an app helps homeowners share their smart home devices with outsiders while maintaining their security & privacy

MiSu (Mi Casa Es Su Casa): The MiSu app allows a smart homeowner to share their smart home devices with others who live outside of their home (e.g., relatives, neighbors, babysitters, petsitters). Through this access control app, they can’t just share the smart device’s access with others, they can also limit or restrict the access too. The homeowner has the ability to choose what specific action (e.g., switch on/off, brightness) and for how long or how frequently (e.g., recurrent, indefinite, or one time access) they want to allow access to a specific person for each of their devices (e.g., smart bulb). Homeowners also get notifications for each action performed by any of their guests with the shared devices.