Family accounts: a new paradigm for user accounts within the home environment

ABSTRACT

In this paper we present Family Accounts, a new user account model for shared home computers. We conducted a study with sixteen families, eight who used individual profiles at home, and eight who shared a single profile. Our results demonstrate that Family Accounts is a good compromise between a single shared profile and individual profiles for each family member. In particular, we observed that because Family Accounts allowed individuals to switch profiles without forcing them to interrupt their tasks, family members tended to switch to their own profiles only when a task required some degree of privacy or personalization.

REFERENCES

• 1: Anne Adams , Martina Angela Sasse, Users are not the enemy, Communications of the ACM, v.42 n.12, p.40-46, Dec. 1999 [doi>10.1145/322796.322806]
• 2: Ronald M. Baecker, Readings in GroupWare and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work: Assisting Human-Human Collaboration, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco, CA, 1994
• 3: Brush, A. J. Bernheim and Inkpen, Kori M. Yours, Mine and Ours? Sharing and Use of Technology in Domestic Environments. UbiComp 2007: Ubiquitous Computing. {ed.} John Krumm. Berlin: Springer-Verlag (2007), pp. 109--126.
• 4: Prasun Dewan , Honghai Shen, Controlling access in multiuser interfaces, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), v.5 n.1, p.34-62, March 1998 [doi>10.1145/274444.274446]
• 5: Frohlich, D. M. and Kraut, R. The Social Context of Home Computing. Inside the Smart Home. {ed.} R. Harper. London: Springer-Verlag (2003), pp. 127--162.
• 6: Nathaniel S. Good , Aaron Krekelberg, Usability and privacy: a study of Kazaa P2P file-sharing, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 05-10, 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA [doi>10.1145/642611.642636]
• 7: Horrigan, John B. and Smith, Aaron. Home Broadband Adoption 2007. Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2007. http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/217/report_display.asp (Accessed: March 21, 2008).
• 8: Robert Kraut , William Scherlis , Tridas Mukhopadhyay , Jane Manning , Sara Kiesler, HomeNet: a field trial of residential Internet services, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: common ground, p.284-291, April 13-18, 1996, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada [doi>10.1145/238386.238531]
• 9: Butler W. Lampson, Protection, ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review, v.8 n.1, p.18-24, January 1974 [doi>10.1145/775265.775268]
• 10: Rosa R. Heckle , Wayne G. Lutters, Privacy implications for single sign-on authentication in a hospital environment, Proceedings of the 3rd symposium on Usable privacy and security, July 18-20, 2007, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania [doi>10.1145/1280680.1280714]
• 11: Roy A. Maxion , Robert W. Reeder, Improving user-interface dependability through mitigation of human error, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, v.63 n.1-2, p.25-50, July 2005 [doi>10.1016/j.ijhcs.2005.04.009]
• 12: Ravi Sandhu , Kumar Ranganathan , Xinwen Zhang, Secure information sharing enabled by Trusted Computing and PEI models, Proceedings of the 2006 ACM Symposium on Information, computer and communications security, March 21-24, 2006, Taipei, Taiwan [doi>10.1145/1128817.1128820]
• 13: Supriya Singh , Anuja Cabraal , Catherine Demosthenous , Gunela Astbrink , Michele Furlong, Password sharing: implications for security design based on social practice, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 28-May 03, 2007, San Jose, California, USA [doi>10.1145/1240624.1240759]
• 14: U.S. Senate Sergeant at Arms. Report on the investigation into improper access to the Senate Judiciary Committee's computer system. United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, March 4, 2004. http://judiciary.senate.gov/testimony.cfm?id=1085&wit_id=2514 (Accessed: March 21, 2008).
• 15: Alladi Venkatesh, Computers and other interactive technologies for the home, Communications of the ACM, v.39 n.12, p.47-54, Dec. 1996 [doi>10.1145/240483.240491]
• 16: Mary Ellen Zurko , Richard T. Simon, User-centered security, Proceedings of the 1996 workshop on New security paradigms, p.27-33, September 17-20, 1996, Lake Arrowhead, California, United States [doi>10.1145/304851.304859]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.m Miscellaneous

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.4 OPERATING SYSTEMS
      D.4.6 Security and Protection

  H. Information Systems
  H.1 MODELS AND PRINCIPLES
      H.1.2 User/Machine Systems

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Human Factors

Keywords:
access control, file sharing, home computers, personalization, ubiquitous computing, user account models