Why Do People Adopt, or Reject, Smartphone Password Managers?

People use weak passwords for a variety of reasons, the most prescient of these being memory load and inconvenience. The motivation to choose weak passwords is even more compelling on Smartphones because entering complex passwords is particularly time consuming and arduous on small devices. Many of the memory- and inconvenience-related issues can be ameliorated by using a password manager app. Such an app can generate, remember and automatically supply passwords to websites and other apps on the phone. Given this potential, it is unfortunate that these applications have not enjoyed widespread adoption. We carried out a study to find out why this was so, to investigate factors that impeded or encouraged password manager adoption. We found that a number of factors mediated during all three phases of adoption: searching, deciding and trialling. The study’s findings will help us to market these tools more effectively in order to encourage future adoption of password managers

Encouraging Privacy-Aware Smartphone App Installation: Finding out what the Technically-Adept Do

Smartphone apps can harvest very personal details from the phone with ease. This is a particular privacy concern. Unthinking installation of untrustworthy apps constitutes risky behaviour. This could be due to poor awareness or a lack of knowhow: knowledge of how to go about protecting privacy. It seems that Smartphone owners proceed with installation, ignoring any misgivings they might have, and thereby irretrievably sacrifice their privacy

Disparity between the Programmatic Views and the User Perceptions of Mobile Apps

User perception in any mobile-app ecosystem, is represented as user ratings of apps. Unfortunately, the user ratings are often biased and do not reflect the actual usability of an app. To address the challenges associated with selection and ranking of apps, we need to use a comprehensive and holistic view about the behavior of an app. In this paper, we present and evaluate Trust based Rating and Ranking (TRR) approach. It relies solely on an apps' internal view that uses programmatic artifacts. We compute a trust tuple (Belief, Disbelief, Uncertainty - B, D, U) for each app based on the internal view and use it to rank the order apps offering similar functionality. Apps used for empirically evaluating the TRR approach are collected from the Google Play Store. Our experiments compare the TRR ranking with the user review-based ranking present in the Google Play Store. Although, there are disparities between the two rankings, a slightly deeper investigation indicates an underlying similarity between the two alternatives

Inclusiveness Matters: A Large-Scale Analysis of User Feedback

In an era of rapidly expanding software usage, catering to the diverse needs of users from various backgrounds has become a critical challenge. Inclusiveness, representing a core human value, is frequently overlooked during software development, leading to user dissatisfaction. Users often engage in discourse on online platforms where they indicate their concerns. In this study, we leverage user feedback from three popular online sources, Reddit, Google Play Store, and Twitter, for 50 of the most popular apps in the world to reveal the inclusiveness-related concerns from end users. Using a Socio-Technical Grounded Theory approach, we analyzed 23,107 posts across the three sources and identified 1,211 inclusiveness related posts. We organize our empirical results in a taxonomy for inclusiveness comprising 6 major categories: Fairness, Technology, Privacy, Demography, Usability, and Other Human Values. To explore automated support to identifying inclusiveness-related posts, we experimented with five state-of-the-art pre-trained large language models (LLMs) and found that these models' effectiveness is high and yet varied depending on the data source. GPT-2 performed best on Reddit, BERT on the Google Play Store, and BART on Twitter. Our study provides an in-depth view of inclusiveness-related user feedback from most popular apps and online sources. We provide implications and recommendations that can be used to bridge the gap between user expectations and software so that software developers can resonate with the varied and evolving needs of the wide spectrum of users

Psychological needs as motivators for security and privacy actions on smartphones

Much work has been conducted to investigate the obstacles that keep users from using mitigations against security and privacy threats on smartphones. By contrast, we conducted in-depth interviews (N = 19) to explore users’ motivations for voluntarily applying security and privacy actions on smartphones. Our work focuses on analyzing intrinsic motivation in terms of psychological need fulfillment. The findings from the interview study provide first insights on the salience of basic psychological needs in the context of smartphone security and privacy. They illustrate how security and privacy actions on smartphones are motivated by a variety of psychological needs, only one of them being the need for Security. We further conducted an online survey (N = 70) in which we used questionnaires on psychological need fulfillment from the literature. The online survey is a first attempt to quantify psychological need fulfillment for security and privacy actions on smartphones. Whereas the results of the interview study indicate that Security and other needs play a role as motivators for employing security and privacy actions on smartphones, the online study does not support the need for Security as an outstanding motivator. Instead, in the online study, other needs such as Keeping the meaningful, Stimulation, Autonomy, and Competence show to be rather salient as motivators for security and privacy actions. Furthermore, the mean need fulfillment for security and privacy actions is in general rather low in the online survey. We conclude that there is scope for improvement to maximize psychological need fulfillment with security and privacy actions. In order to achieve a positive user experience with security and privacy technologies on smartphones, we suggest addressing additional psychological needs, beyond the need for Security, in the design of such technologies

Dramatistic User Experience Design: The Usability Testing of an e-Government System in A Non-Western Setting

This dissertation investigates rhetorical situatedness as a factor that culturally designates users’ motives in adopting a new technology. The application of Kenneth Burke’s dramatism extends the discussion about the situation where an interaction takes place to include acting and meaning-making in Non-Western settings as contextual and situated. This expansion is essential to reinforce the understanding of how cultural contexts impact users’ motives, specifically users from Non-Western settings, to adopt a technology. The traditional Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research stresses mechanical and technical aspects between a user (agent) and a technology device (agency) in order to reduce user errors. This approach isolates the rhetorical situation of interaction in a computer interface, thus eliding the cultural situatedness by regarding the situation as something fixed, such as in a laboratory. Adding a cultural context provides a fuller picture of this interaction. Using a civic records online system called e-Lampid, which is administered by Surabaya City Government in Indonesia as a case study, I discover five elements of situatedness that contribute significantly to weave acting and meaning-making into a culturally informed interaction. User motives are shaped by internal and external situations that are collective, local, and both onsite and off. Dramatism is a tool for analysis and production that prioritizes cultural awareness. Dramatistic User Experience (UX) design offers analytical, comprehensive, and systematic perspectives on the design process. Dramatistic UX integrates three different approaches: usability testing, rhetorical awareness of situations, and needs analysis. The synergy of dramatism, user experience, and design thinking provides a holistic approach to construct a rhetorically grounded and culturally contingent user experience design

Encouraging Privacy-Aware Smartphone App Installation: What Would the Technically-Adept Do

Smartphone apps can harvest very personal details from the phone with ease. This is a particular privacy concern. Unthinking installation of untrustworthy apps constitutes risky behaviour. This could be due to poor awareness or a lack of knowhow: knowledge of how to go about protecting privacy. It seems that Smartphone owners proceed with installation, ignoring any misgivings they might have, and thereby irretrievably sacrifice their privacy

USING FACEBOOK AND WHATSAPP TO LEVERAGE LEARNER PARTICIPATION AND TRANSFORM PEDAGOGY AT THE OPEN UNIVERSITY OF INDONESIA

Facebook (FB) dan WhatsApp (WA) telah menjadi "portal komunikasi" untuk jaringan sosial, yang telah dengan cepat mengubah cara orang berkomunikasi dan tetap terhubung. Dari perspektif pendidikan, situs jejaring sosial telah menerima ulasan ambigu. Beberapa penelitian telah menunjukkan bahwa penggunaan FB menjadi lebih luas dalam pembelajaran bahasa dan dapat menjadi alat yang efektif. FB tidak hanya mudah digunakan, tetapi juga membantu mendorong belajar mandiri dalam lingkungan sosial bagi siswa dan menempatkan kontrol untuk belajar ke tangan siswa. Artikel ini berfokus pada situs jejaring sosial FB, dan aplikasi WA dalam konteks UT. Ia mencoba untuk menjelaskan kegiatan berbagi informasi dilakukan melalui diskusi online menggunakan FB dan kelompok WA dan melibatkan siswa pembelajaran jarak jauh. Penelitian ini meneliti partisipasi siswa dalam diskusi online dan umpan balik mereka pada penggunaan FB dan forum WA sebagai platform untuk activity. FB dan WA diadopsi untuk mendukung tutorial online di Universitas Terbuka Indonesia dengan tujuan untuk meningkatkan guru-murid dan partisipasi rekan-berbasis, dan meningkatkan pengiriman pedagogis dan pembelajaran inklusif di ruang formal dan informal. Temuan menunjukkan FB dan WA berubah pedagogi dengan meningkatkan lingkungan sosial konstruktif untuk guru-siswa dan rekan-berbasis co-konstruksi pengetahuan. Peran guru berubah dari instruktur untuk fasilitator dan mentor memberikan bimbingan pada permintaan. Peran mahasiswa juga berubah dari penerima informasi ke generator informasi, kolaborator, organizer informasi / pencari / pemberi, pemikir kritis dan pemimpin kelompok. Namun tantangan menggunakan Facebook dan WhatsApp termasuk guru 'kebencian penggabungan akademik dan keluarga hidup disebabkan oleh konsultasi WhatsApp setelah jam.   Facebook (FB) and WhatsApp (WA) have become the communication portal for social networking, which has rapidly transformed the way people communicate and stay connected. From an educational perspective, social networking sites have received ambiguous reviews. Some studies have shown that the use of FB is becoming more widespread in language learning and it can be an effective tool. FB is not only easy to use, but it also helps encourage autonomous learning within a social environment for students and puts control for learning into the students hands. This article focuses on the social networking site, FB, and WA application within the context of UT. It attempts to shed light on an information-sharing activity conducted via online discussion using FB and WA groups and involving distance learning students. This study investigated students participation in the online discussion and their feedback on the use of FBs and WAs forums as the platform for the activity.FB and WA were adopted for supporting an online tutorial at the Open University of Indonesia with a view to heighten tutorstudent and peer-based participation, and enhance pedagogical delivery and inclusive learning in formal and informal spaces. The findings suggest FB and WA transformed pedagogy by fostering social constructivist environments for tutorstudent and peer-based co-construction of knowledge. The teachers role was transformed from an instructor to a facilitator and mentor providing guidance on demand. Student roles were also transformed from information receivers to information generators, collaborators, information organizer/seekers/givers, critical thinkers and group leaders. However, the challenges of using Facebook and WhatsApp included tutor resentment of the merging of academic and family life occasioned by WhatsApp consultations after hours

The Role of Social Media in Developing Online Learning Communities

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of social media in develop-ing learning communities in both formal and informal learning contexts. The study was based on a theoretical framework to examine online learning communities from three levels: individual, interactional and group. This study selected two cases: the first case was a formal learning group that used networked learning via Twitter and WhatsApp within a blended learning environment in an academic module; this for-mal learning group was controlled by the teacher of the module. The second case was an informal learning group that used Twitter and WhatsApp to learn and prac-tise English as a second language; this group was created and informally organised by an active member on Twitter who was interested in teaching and practising Eng-lish. Semi-structured interviews, focus groups and WhatsApp discussion samples were the three main data collection methods of this study. The data were analysed using three procedures. Firstly, a thematic analysis of the interviews was conducted to generate a thematic research map and create a coding scheme for analysing the content of the WhatsApp discussions. Secondly, a social network analysis (SNA) was applied to the WhatsApp group discussions to map out the interactions among group members and select the sample of WhatsApp discussion for the third data analysis procedure. The third procedure was content analysis (CA), which was ap-plied to the WhatsApp conversations that occurred during the selected sample (the three most active and connected weeks). Findings from the SNA and CA were used to triangulate the results of the thematic analysis. The findings revealed that the ex-istence of similar learning needs, interactive communication among members and using appropriate communication tools are the main factors that develop online learning communities on social media. Also, it showed that the main function of us-ing Twitter for learning purposes was to develop the academic and social presence of the students/learners, while the main learning function of using WhatsApp was to provide an instant and open communication environment for online learning com-munity members. However, there were different uses of these applications in formal and informal learning contexts, which were described in the study