Displaybook - Bringing online identity to situated displays

Abstract

This work is part of a study in which we aim to explore multiple bridges between on-line and off-line forms of socialisation by creating bi-directional connections between Facebook and situated social interactions. In this paper, we specifically describe a study on the use of public displays for the public presentation of data from the Facebook profiles of people near the display. The key challenge is how to map the concept of sharing information within a social network, to the concept of sharing information with the places you visit. For this to be viable, people must have full control over what they share and in what circumstances they will share it. This paper addresses this issue by studying the sharing alternatives, how this sharing of profile data in a public display is perceived by people and what are the main factors affecting that perception. The results suggest that, overall, people seem to be willing to expose parts of their Facebook profiles if given proper privacy controls. However, the study has also revealed a clear gap between privacy control in Facebook and the type of privacy controls that would be needed for this particular use of Facebook information.