Rethinking Privacy Indicators in Extended Reality: Multimodal Design for Situationally Impaired Bystanders

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Bukhari, Syed Ibrahim Mustafa Shah, Sajid, Maha, Ji, Bo, David-John, Brendan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Bukhari, Syed Ibrahim Mustafa Shah
Sajid, Maha
Ji, Bo
David-John, Brendan
author_facet Bukhari, Syed Ibrahim Mustafa Shah
Sajid, Maha
Ji, Bo
David-John, Brendan
contents As Extended Reality (XR) devices become increasingly prevalent in everyday settings, they raise significant privacy concerns for bystanders: individuals in the vicinity of an XR device during its use, whom the device sensors may accidentally capture. Current privacy indicators, such as small LEDs, often presume that bystanders are attentive enough to interpret the privacy signals. However, these cues can be easily overlooked when bystanders are distracted or have limited vision. We define such individuals as situationally impaired bystanders. This study explores XR privacy indicator designs that are effective for situationally impaired bystanders. A focus group with eight participants was conducted to design five novel privacy indicators. We evaluated these designs through a user study with seven additional participants. Our results show that visual-only indicators, typical in commercial XR devices, received low ratings for perceived usefulness in impairment scenarios. In contrast, multimodal indicators were preferred in privacy-sensitive scenarios with situationally impaired bystanders. Ultimately, our results highlight the need to move toward adaptable, multimodal, and situationally aware designs that effectively support bystander privacy in everyday XR environments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_07057
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Rethinking Privacy Indicators in Extended Reality: Multimodal Design for Situationally Impaired Bystanders
Bukhari, Syed Ibrahim Mustafa Shah
Sajid, Maha
Ji, Bo
David-John, Brendan
Human-Computer Interaction
Computers and Society
Emerging Technologies
As Extended Reality (XR) devices become increasingly prevalent in everyday settings, they raise significant privacy concerns for bystanders: individuals in the vicinity of an XR device during its use, whom the device sensors may accidentally capture. Current privacy indicators, such as small LEDs, often presume that bystanders are attentive enough to interpret the privacy signals. However, these cues can be easily overlooked when bystanders are distracted or have limited vision. We define such individuals as situationally impaired bystanders. This study explores XR privacy indicator designs that are effective for situationally impaired bystanders. A focus group with eight participants was conducted to design five novel privacy indicators. We evaluated these designs through a user study with seven additional participants. Our results show that visual-only indicators, typical in commercial XR devices, received low ratings for perceived usefulness in impairment scenarios. In contrast, multimodal indicators were preferred in privacy-sensitive scenarios with situationally impaired bystanders. Ultimately, our results highlight the need to move toward adaptable, multimodal, and situationally aware designs that effectively support bystander privacy in everyday XR environments.
title Rethinking Privacy Indicators in Extended Reality: Multimodal Design for Situationally Impaired Bystanders
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Computers and Society
Emerging Technologies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.07057