Privacy is Not One-Click: Designing Robots That Adapt to Older Adults’ Changing Boundaries

Social robots in the home bring new privacy risks and concerns for older adults. Yet, current technology privacy mechanisms typically use a one-time and universal consent mechanism (e.g., user agreement checkbox, browser cookie setting, etc.), lacking consideration of how privacy is holistically experienced. Designing for privacy requires a multidimensional approach to support how older adults experience privacy. To investigate older adult-centered privacy mechanisms for social robots, we conducted two participatory design (PD) workshops at local assisted living facilities. Our findings from these workshops suggest that older adults do not treat privacy as static, but as a temporal and situational practice that requires continuous negotiations and revisions. We subsequently conducted a post-PD speculative design (SD) process that extracted three design features for privacy—aware social robots-privacy profiles, real-time privacy feedback, and data ownership tools—that can support older adults’ multidimensional privacy experiences.