2011 Summer Interactive Innovation Project - Privacy Project
By Cat Rabenstine
September 5, 2011
Consumers are often unaware of their lack of online privacy
until an incident illuminates their vulnerability. Students in the Summer 2011 Interactive
Innovation Project hoped to prevent this by developing interactive, privacy-centered
media products that inform and captivate a young and educated, liberal audience
about a seemingly dry topic.
The team of 17 students demonstrated two products during
their final presentation on August 24: Dynamic Deal, a game for Motorola’s
Droid phone, and Privacy Boss, a series of comic-strip based tutorials on privacy.
Watch the presentation.
Visit the project website.
“We
demonstrated that journalism can, indeed, come in many more flavors and shapes
than traditionally has been thought, and be fun, to boot,” said Assistant
Professor Scott Anderson, who was the project director.
Dynamic Deal is an interactive memory game for Motorola’s Droid phone that
introduces dynamic pricing – the act of raising prices depending on a
consumer’s online shopping history and browsing cookies – and encourages
players to take action to protect themselves from price discrimination. The
game is based on evidence that retailers are increasingly monitoring consumers’
shopping behavior online to see what they will pay, possibly increasing
revenue.
Privacy Boss is a
series of email tutorials based on existing online memes (ideas, behaviors or
styles that spreads from person to person within a culture) that uses
four-panel comic strips to relate stories about the ways consumers can protect
their personal data online. The utility of the product rests in an email
mechanism that allows consumers to share step-by-step tutorials.
“It's a stealthy way to reeducate the target user and remind
them of what they already know by not beating them over the head with the
message,” said Zach Wise, a new associate professor at Medill and former
multimedia producer for The New York Times who worked with the team. “The
comics act as a "hook" and entertain the viewer while subversively
delivering a message and encouraging him/her to share that message.”
Ana-Maria Udrica, one of the project team leaders, said that
team chose games, comics and memes based on research reflecting the best way to
get privacy information to their target audience. The team created two personas
based on their competitive analysis and consumer research and came up with more
than 100 different project ideas for both personas.
In a span of 10 weeks, students tackled the topic of
privacy, performed extensive audience research, prototyped six of their
strongest ideas, created workable demos of Dynamic Deal and Privacy Boss and presented
a business plan.
“When your plan goes from strategic vision and product
lifecycle charts all the way down to the budget for office supplies, you’ve
done your job. Oh, and it was journalists doing that,” Anderson said, “Their out-of-the-box
appreciation of, and enthusiasm for, finding and building creative new ways to
connect consumers with content, particularly content that is important for them
to have, but they tend to shun or only pay attention to in a crisis.”
The faculty team for the project included Jeremy Gilbert,
Rich Gordon, Rachel Davis Mersey and Zach Wise.
Sponsored by the Medill National Security Initiative
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