The balance between protecting user privacy and providing usable IoT experiences is a key challenge for smart-home product designers. Traditional notification models assume the presence of screens, yet in IoT environments screens are rare or very small, making conventional privacy controls inadequate. This project explores how non-technical household occupants can understand what data is collected about the spaces they inhabit and how to express their privacy preferences effectively. The research focuses on tangible interfaces, specifically PrivacyCube and the PriviFy toolkit, that act as enhanced privacy notices for smart-home environments. These physical devices visualise how smart-home sensors and connected devices manage personal data, enabling people to make informed decisions about their privacy without requiring technical expertise. Built using Arduino microcontrollers and 3D-printed components, the tangible interfaces provide intuitive, hands-on mechanisms for privacy configuration that complement or replace screen-based alternatives.
The project reviews existing notification methods, designs and prototypes tangible privacy devices, and evaluates how these artefacts affect privacy awareness and control in shared domestic environments. The physical interaction model is accessible to all household members regardless of technical background, offering a more intuitive approach to privacy management than conventional screen-based interfaces.
User studies assess the impact of tangible interaction on privacy comprehension and preference expression among diverse household members. The work contributes to the fields of usable privacy, human-computer interaction, and IoT systems design, advancing understanding of how physical interfaces can mediate privacy management in connected homes.
Bayan Al Muhander, Omer Rana, Nalin Arachchilage, and Charith Perera, *PriviFy: Designing Tangible Interfaces for IoT Privacy Configuration*, IEEE/ACM International Conference on Internet-of-Things Design and Implementation (IoTDI), 2024, pp. 217–218.
Bayan Al Muhander, Omer Rana, Nalin Arachchilage, and Charith Perera, *PrivacyCube: A Tangible Device for Improving Privacy Awareness in IoT*, IEEE/ACM International Conference on Internet-of-Things Design and Implementation (IoTDI), 2022, pp. 109–110.
Bayan Al Muhander, Jason Wiese, Omer Rana, and Charith Perera, *Interactive Privacy Management: Towards Enhancing Privacy Awareness and Control in Internet of Things*, Nineteenth Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2023), Anaheim, CA, USA.
Bayan Al Muhander, Jason Wiese, Omer Rana, and Charith Perera, *Interactive Privacy Management: Towards Enhancing Privacy Awareness and Control in Internet of Things*, ACM Transactions on Internet of Things (TIOT), Volume 4, Issue 3, Article 18, August 2023, pp. 1–36.
