Field Deployment of IMBuddy: A Study of Privacy Control and Feedback Mechanisms for Contextual IM

We describe the design of privacy controls and feedback mechanisms for contextual IM, an instant messaging service for disclosing contextual information. We tested our designs on IMBuddy, a contextual IM service we developed that discloses contextual information, including interruptibility, location, and the current window in focus (a proxy for the current task). We deployed our initial design of IMBuddy’s privacy mechanisms for two weeks with ten IM users. We then evaluated a redesigned version for four weeks with fifteen users. Our evaluation indicated that users found our group-level rule-based privacy control intuitive and easy to use. Furthermore, the set of feedback mechanisms provided users with a good awareness of what was disclosed.