User Perceptions of Privacy Interfaces in the Workplace

Intelligent workplace systems that support well-being offer the potential to reduce stress and burnout, promote physical activity, or increase creativity and collaboration while at work. However, such systems rely on the collection of sensitive personal information that can pose significant privacy risks to users. In this chapter, we investigate how user perceptions of privacy vary with privacy interface designs and framing scenarios. In a user study with 60 participants, we present participants with four privacy interfaces based on different privacy frameworks and study how perceptions of comfort and control vary depending on the owner of the sensing technology and the user’s relationship with that owner. We find that participants express greater comfort and control with interfaces that foreground contextual information and provide relationship-based access control. Moreover, participants display lower feelings of comfort and control when the technology is deployed company-wide or by a manager with whom they have a negative relationship. Concerningly, we find that interfaces based on technical privacy metrics are poorly understood and have the potential to promote a false sense of security. Taken together, our findings have implications for the design of privacy interfaces and can inform future large-scale studies on privacy attitudes in the workplace.