Summary
The overarching theme of my research revolves around cross-cultural design and study of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs).
In so doing, I draw from and contribute to multiple disciplines such as Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC), Privacy and Security, User Modeling and Personalization, and Software Engineering.
My work has primarily been focused on two areas:
| (1) | Design and evaluation of usable privacy and security technologies that can be deployed internationally. I develop novel software systems and evaluate them empirically. | ||
| (2) | Cross-cultural design and study of computer-mediated communities such as blogs, forums, games, and social networking sites. |
Understanding people and their practices across cultures has been a cornerstone of my research. I employ both quantitative (e.g., statistical analysis) and qualitative (e.g., fieldwork) methods.
Internationally-Deployable, Usable Privacy and Security
Personalized services have become commonplace on today’s Internet. Prominent examples include Amazon, Google, Netflix, Pandora, etc. Studies have shown that personalization can bring benefits to both users and service providers. However, this win-win situation may be jeopardized by privacy issues because personalization usually entails collecting and processing data about users. My dissertation research aims at reconciling privacy and personalization. More specifically, I develop a Privacy-Enhanced Personalization (PEP) infrastructure that provides high-quality web personalization while respecting applicable privacy jurisdictions and users’ privacy preferences. I also evaluate the proposed approach empirically, both through user testing and through simulation-based performance testing. I am currently conducting an experiment to assess the effectiveness of this approach from a user’s standpoint. The results will be compared with the findings of a similar experiment conducted by collaborators in Germany. From this, we aim to gain a cross-cultural insight into people’s perceptions and attitudes towards privacy-enhancing techniques.
In addition to the above PEP work, I have also worked on a number of projects in this area including a comparative usability study of secure device pairing methods, a privacy-enhancing recommendation mechanism based on Bloom filter, and a privacy-enhancing corporate email sharing system.
Related publications
Y. Wang, A. Kobsa. Performance Evaluation of a Dynamic Privacy-Enhancing Framework for Personalized Websites In Proceedings of the 1st and 17th International Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation, and Personalization (UMAP09), Trento, Italy, pp. 78-89, 2009.
S. A. Hendrickson, Y. Wang, A. van der Hoek, R. N. Taylor, A. Kobsa Modeling PLA Variation of Privacy-Enhancing Personalized Systems To be presented in Proceedings of the 13th International Software Product Line Conference (SPLC09), San Francisco, CA, 2009.
A. Kobsa, R. Sonawalla, G. Tsudik, E. Uzun and Y. Wang (authors in alphabetical order) Serial Hook-Ups: A Comparative Usability Study of Secure Device Pairing Methods In Proceedings of the 5th Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS09), Mountain View, CA, pp. 1-12, 2009.
Y. Wang, A. Kobsa. Respecting Users’ Individual Privacy Constraints in Web Personalization In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on User Modeling (UM07), Corfu, Greece, pp.157-166 , 2007.
Y. Wang, A. Kobsa., A. van der Hoek, J. White. PLA-based Runtime Dynamism in Support of Privacy-Enhanced Web Personalization In Proceedings of the 10th International Software Product Line Conference (SPLC06), Baltimore, Maryland, USA, pp. 151-162, 2006.
Y. Wang, A. Kobsa. Impacts of Privacy Laws and Regulations on Personalized Systems In Proceedings of the CHI06 Workshop on Privacy-Enhanced Personalization, Montreal, Canada, 2006.
Cross-Cultural Design and Study of Computer-Mediated Communities
I have a keen interest in studying how people perceive and interact in computer-mediated communities such as blogs, forums, games, and social networking sites. I was a core research member in the first multilingual blog study to investigate the influence of regional culture on a blogging community. I have also conducted an ethnographic study of virtual currency (VC) use in China. Based on 5 weeks of fieldwork in four cities in China, our study reveals that how VC is perceived, obtained, and spent can critically shape gamers’ behavior and experience. This study was quoted in news media such as BusinessWeek. Our recent work investigates the culture, policies and practices around a virutal currency, a form of incentive, in a vibrant online community.
Related publications
Y. Wang, S. Mainwaring. Incentives in the Wild: Leveraging Virtual Currency to Sustain Online Community To appear in iConference 2010, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA, 2010. [Conference paper, acceptance rate: TBA]
S. M. Lindtner, S. Mainwaring, P. Dourish, Y. Wang. Situating Productive Play: Online Gaming Practices and Guanxi in China In Proceedings of the 12th IFIP Conf. Human-Computer Interaction (INTERACT09), Uppsala, Sweden, pp. 328-341, 2009.
Y. Wang, S. Mainwaring. “Human-Currency Interaction”: Learning from Virtual Currency Use in China In Proceedings of The 26th International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI08), Florence, Italy, pp. 25-28, 2008.
S. M. Lindtner, B. Nardi, Y. Wang, S. Mainwaring, J. He, W. Liang. A Hybrid Cultural Ecology: World of Warcraft in China In Proceedings of The 21th International Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW08), San Diego, USA, pp. 371-382, 2008.
N. M. Su, Y. Wang, G. Mark, T. Aieylokun, T. Nakano. A Bosom Buddy Afar Brings a Distant Land Near: Are Bloggers a Global Community? In Proceedings of The 2nd International Conference on Communities & Technologies (C&T05), Milano, Italy, pp. 171-190, 2005.