Jingjie Li

Ph.D. Candidate

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Emerging smart devices, such as smart home appliances and augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) systems, have enabled immersive interactions with users. For many users, however, it is intimidating when devices engage in perceived “mind-reading,” often without explicit consent. Such concern is not over-exaggerated, as users’ interactions with these devices expose numerous attributes about users’ physiological, psychological, and environmental traits that must be kept private. To tackle this challenge, I have presented user-centric solutions to enhance privacy-preserving interactions with these devices. In this talk, I will introduce techniques to make privacy more controllable in smart devices and help users control their privacy better. I will first present a user-facing privacy control layer designed to protect real-time eye tracking, a critical interaction modality for AR/VR. Next, I will present research on how smart home users think of and react to privacy issues, which further inform privacy-preserving designs and practices. Finally, I will present my research plan to systematically provide privacy support for users in the forthcoming interactive and interconnected world. Research website: https://www.jingjieli.me/