RFID: Contextual Awareness & Understanding

Details

Techniques: interviewing, surveys, contextual observation, report writing
Tools: online survey software, rfid reader, rfid chips in various items (credit cards, passports)
Team: 4 School of Information Masters Students with backgrounds in Medical Informatics, HCI, Graphic Design & Computer Science (myself), 2 researchers at the Samuelson Law Clinic.

Design Objective

To assess lay people's understanding of and perceptions toward Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) tags. Because lay people tend to be the passive users of RFID tags (in contrast to active users, thus far mostly businesses and governments), their perceptions and needs have largely been ignored by RFID applications.

Design Solution

A report of our findings and recommendations for how to focus further studies in this area.

Result

This report added to the slim collection of research documenting how lay people understand RFID and the risks they associate with it.  Our report was later used in a paper, "Where’s The Beep?: Security, Privacy, and User Misunderstandings of RFID."

Please email me if you would like to know more about this research or read about our findings.