Visual vs. compact: a comparison of privacy policy interfaces

Authors:
Heather Richter Lipford;Jason Watson;Michael Whitney;Katherine Froiland;Robert W. Reeder
Affiliations:
University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, USA;University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, USA;University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, USA;University of Minnesota, Morris, Morris, MN, USA;Microsoft, Redmond, WA, USA
Venue:
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Year:
2010

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Abstract

In this paper, we compare the impact of two different privacy policy representations -- AudienceView and Expandable Grids -- on users modifying privacy policies for a social network site. Despite the very different interfaces, there were very few differences in user performance. However, users had clear, and different, preferences and acknowledged the tradeoffs between the two representations. Our results imply that while either interface would be a usable option for policy settings, a combination may appeal to a wider audience and offer the best of both worlds.