The Gentle Interventions for Security (GIFS) project draws together an interdisciplinary team to develop and evaluate ambient displays to support cyber security behaviours, across the home and workplace.
This 12-month project has several phases:
1. User interviews
We will be conducting a series of interviews with users, focusing on home and occupational contexts. In combination with expert recommendations, these interviews will allow us to identify which cyber security behaviours we should focus on, and in what ways ambient displays might be useful for these behaviours.
2. Participatory design workshops
With the information gleaned from our interviews, we will hold participatory design workshops to further hone how displays could be made to support users, and what these displays should look like and operate.
3. Ambient display design
The participatory design workshops will then lead to the design of a working, testable prototype display, incorporating insights from existing literature and the previous stages of the project.
4. Experimental testing
Finally, and most importantly, we want to know whether our developed ambient displays work in supporting cyber security behaviours. We will be testing the displays in controlled lab environments before leveraging our contacts with the local community and organisations to run a six-week long field study in homes and offices within the South West.
From here, we hope to further refine and develop our prototypes into a useful and scalable tool for users to support them in making secure decisions.
Gentle Interventions for Security 