Research Interests

See also my activities in the area of Conferences and Peer-Reviewing and my various other Timekillers.

Privacy in Ubiquitous Computing Systems

My main research interest lies at the intersection of privacy and ubiquitous computing. It is easy to imagine that in a world full of invisible sensory systems, comprehensive digital dossiers could be easily and inconspicuously collected. This poses several challenges to the design of ubiquitous systems: Which communication protocols ensure adequate levels of privacy protection? How can user interfaces be structured to provide users with control over their personal information? And how feasible is a comprehensive protection in a world of countless "smart" devices?

Interacting with Ubiquitous Computing Systems

Much is still unclear when it comes to managing the interaction with hundreds of digital services that might be available to us in the future. How can we design interactions that feel like Mark Weiser's "walk in the woods", rather than being frustrating experiences?

Past Projects

DC Privacy Troubadour

To investigate privacy issues of projects within the Disappearing Computer Initiative, I was visiting a number of DC projects in 2003 as a so-called Troubadour. The results of this project have been incorporated into privacy design guidelines of the DC initiative.

P3P/APPEL

As part of the Platform for Privacy Preferences Project (P3P) I was chairing the APPEL Subgroup at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). I am one of the authors of the P3P 1.0 Specification, as well as the editor of A Privacy Preference Exchange Language (APPEL), which can be used to describe and exchange personal privacy preferences. See the slides of my (slightly outdated) Internet Privacy and P3P tutorial at WWW10.