Increasingly data is being collected about a city’s visitors, their experiences and activities in public spaces. This workshop explores what data may be captured by pervasive devices in a smart city environment and how one could control such data collaboratively and collectively through tangible devices as engaging data access points. This workshop explores novel tangible devices for controlling data capture and flows in public spaces. We will demo a series of modular objects that can be connected to form different data flows. These tangible modules can inform new consent models to control how we would like data about ourselves and our activities be collected, shared or used (or not). As part of the EPSRC-funded research project PACTMAN which explores issues of ‘Trust, Privacy and Consent in Future Pervasive Environments’, researchers in Design Informatics are aiming to rethink the current digital consent model of one-click agreements and reimage novel, more dynamic and tangible privacy modules that make it easier for everyone to understand data flows and practices and how they can use data to their own advantage.

Why is it important to understand the increasing amount of personal data being collected about oneself?

Can data controls be incorporated into tangible everyday objects and practices?

How do we design accessible tools to understand our own data and how it is being shared or used?

This workshop is being organised by Dr Bettina Nissen and Joe Revans - researchers in Design Informatics working on the EPSRC-funded research project PACTMAN (EP/N028228/1).