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Sarah Delgado Rodriguez, Anh Dao Phuong, Franziska Bumiller, Lukas Mecke, Felix Dietz, Florian Alt, Mariam Hassib
Padlock, the Universal Security Symbol? - Exploring Symbols and Metaphors for Privacy and Security
In MUM '23: Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia. December 25, 2023. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. (bib)

The use of symbols and metaphors can be a fast and effective way of conveying abstract concepts. At the same time, misconceived symbols can lead to misunderstandings and errors. Therefore, when it comes to privacy and security, clear communication is essential to avoid putting usersâ personal data at risk. In this paper, we elicit 32 symbols and metaphors associated with privacy and security through two brainstorming sessions (n = 8, each). Six experts further separated this collection into security and privacy-related symbols and generated clusters based on similarity. Using participantsâ clusters, we derived underlying themes. As a result, we present a symbol and metaphor space for privacy and security and discuss their perceived meaning. Our findings can serve researchers, designers, and developers to find suitable symbols or metaphors for a given scenario (e.g., to decide on the interaction metaphor for a tangible security mechanism) and to understand if a symbol is ambiguous or how it may be understood (e.g., is an eye associated with privacy configurations?). Our work provides an initial knowledge base supporting effective communication in this field.