Exploring Augmented Reality Privacy Icons for Smart Home Devices and their Effect on Users’ Privacy Awareness

Smart home devices often blend in seamlessly into the environment and operate ubiquitously, providing almost no contextual information such as data collection or activated sensors. Augmented Reality (AR) could, for example in form of head-mounted-displays (HMD), offer users a non-intrusive way to query the devices and to get privacy-related information. This pilot study explored how privacy icons, displayed by an AR-HMD and co-located with smart home devices, affect users’ privacy awareness. In a qualitative within-subject study, 16 participants experienced first a setup without AR privacy information and then one with such information. Participants’ answers indicate a high potential and excitement towards such a setup. Among others, they stated changed privacy awareness after experiencing AR privacy icons: While the icons prioritized privacy-related information for users and educated them to promote conscious decision-making, they sometimes also reinforced existing negative attitudes towards smart home devices. Further, the display of icons in AR has the potential to inspire trust towards manufacturers and providers, potentially leading to a false sense of security. Next to the discussion of participants’ answers, we outline the implications of our findings and provide recommendations for future research including trust and learning effects.