Chapter 10: Data Analysis, Interpretation and Presentation

Chapter Introduction | Web Resources | In-Depth Activity Comments | Teaching Materials

We suggest that you explore the website labinthewild.com for a while before starting the activity, so you get to see the range of content covered in this website. Then go to "What is your privacy profile" as suggested in the Interaction Design book and spend 10 – 15 minutes completing the activity. It’s worth taking the time to think carefully about the issues raised. You might want to get a friend or family member to do the exercise in parallel, so that you have someone to discuss the ratings you each get face-to-face as well as comparing your ratings with what those of the other people who have completed the questions and generated privacy profiles in labinthewild. When you do the comparison think about why your profile might be different from your friends’ or from the collection of people who did the exercise on the website. Perhaps it is because you are more aware or less aware of privacy issues? Or maybe it is because you assume that nothing is private online and much of what we do offline is also no longer private? Or maybe you are very sensitive about your privacy and completing this activity was troubling for you?


If you think there are other more compelling scenarios for getting people to think about privacy what might they be and how might they compare with this one. For example, how might privacy around bank accounts, compare with privacy concerned with your academic record, or health records, or your travel itinerary. Do you think about privacy as you go about your everyday life? If you get involved in political campaigns, are you concerned about privacy? Does it concern you that Labinthewild is collecting people’s opinions about privacy? What might they do with all the data that they collect? If you use Instagram or Facebook are you concerned about privacy? And what about your online purchases from Amazon or other vendors? How does privacy on sites like these compare with labinthewild collecting your’s and other people’s opinions about privacy?