From Instinct to Interface – Co-Designing Intuitive Privacy Cues With Vulnerable Groups

Traditional privacy literacy approaches rarely play out the strengths in vulnerable groups’information processing, such as understanding through tangibility. Calo (2012) specificallysuggests the potential of more intuitive, experience-based privacy cues. In 12 co-designworkshops, people with cognitive disabilities (CD) and children designed their own privacycues based on a story completion task and evaluated visceral notice demonstrators providedby the researchers. Findings indicate that participants preferred a combination of pictorial,textual and auditory elements to enhance clarity and salience. Familiar analogies (e.g., acamera shutter sound) supported ease of understanding but were limited by contextual gaps,whereas psychologically evocative cues (e.g., a pair of eyes) heightened emotionalengagement while sometimes introducing ambiguity. We propose hybrid cue designs thatcombine affective impact with familiar framing and argue that visceral notices hold potentialfor supporting vulnerable groups. We provide design recommendations, including the role ofinformation, control and autonomy.