ITIS 6010/8010: Usable Security and Privacy

Spring 2010                            6:00pm - 8:45pm Tuesdays            Atkins 143

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Project

A major component of the course is the class project. The project will give you hands-on experience in evaluating privacy or security from a user's perspective. Project teams may suggest any kind of project that relates to the course. However, most projects will be a preliminary user study of a privacy or security mechanism, or a formative evaluation on the privacy or security needs of users for some application or domain. There are a number of deliverables and deadlines associated with the project. Read each below carefully. 

IRB Certification: due

Everyone in class is expected to complete the IRB certification if not already done. The online tutorial can be found at http://www.research.uncc.edu/tutorial/index3.cfm. Please use your UNCC id as your id. Results automatically get emailed to the IRB office on campus. This certification takes approximately 2 hours to complete.

Project Group Formation: due

Project teams will consist of 3-4 students. Team sizes will depend upon overall class size. We will spend time in class brainstorming and discussing project ideas to help teams form. I will create groups on Moodle for each team for team deliverables.

Project Idea: due

A two paragraph description of the project idea is due, posted on Moodle. The first paragraph should describe the background or problem area that the team will be focusing on. The second paragraph will describe the questions the team will examine, and the user study idea or other solution idea that the team will be doing.

Initial Project Plan: due

This plan is a work-in-progress of the final project plan due in two weeks. This plan should be submitted on Moodle and consist of at least two sections:

• A detailed description of the background, motivation, and problem the team is studying. The team should justify what problem or issue they are studying, and why it is important, and what question(s) they hope to answer in their project. Other highly related research results should also be mentioned.
• A detailed description of the user study, including drafts of all study materials. Each user study will be different, some may involve observing users performing tasks, others may involve an online survey, others an interview, others a combination. What is important is that the study answer the questions or address the issues the team is interested in. The study you actually perform will be preliminary, not using very many participants. Still, you may design a study you would like to be bigger, but then only carry out the study on a limited number of participants for the course. We will pilot and provide feedback to each other on study materials, surveys, interview questions, etc. during class on

A project that is not a user study should have a detailed description of the expected project and outcomes. Talk to the instructor if you have questions.

Project plan: due

The completed project plan should be an edited and expanded version of the initial project plan, based on the feedback from the initial project plan. The plan must contain all study descriptions and materials, including consent forms, final task descriptions, interview questions, and surveys. Additionally, the IRB protocol for the study must be submitted by this date. Work may not begin on the study until the IRB protocol is approved and this often takes several weeks. Thus the earlier this can be completed the better.

Project report: due

The project report is due on the last day of class. This report should mostly focus on the results of the user study you have done. The report should consist of the following:

• summarize background, motivation, etc. just to remind me
• describe the study as it was carried out - how many users, what happened, any modifications that needed to be made to the study plan
• describe the results that you gathered, quantitative or qualitative
• discuss the implications of those results - how do they answer your question, what do they add to the knowledge about users and privacy or security?
• suggested future work

Project presentation: due

We will do project presentations during the final time for this course. Each team should prepare a 20 minute presentation covering the entire project.