This year, three LERSSE papers got accepted at the most prestigious conference on Human-Computer Interaction (CHI 2021) and we invite youto join the presenters in the sessions to learn more about the research studies conducted at LERSSE.
Continue reading “Tune In At CHI 2021 And Learn More About LERSSE’s Research”
Over the past years, the cryptocurrency domain has grown substantially. As of May 2021, there exist over 6,000 different cryptocurrencies with a combined worth of over $2.5 trillion USD. The corresponding user base has also changed significantly and is no longer only made up of cypherpunks and computer experts as was the case in the early days of Bitcoin. One of the main reasons for this phenomenon is widely accessible software tools that lowered the entry barriers and made it possible to purchase and own cryptocurrencies with a single click. Managing these cryptocurrencies, however, has been found to be challenging for the users and it remains largely unknown what features of current wallets contribute to the poor UX, why, and to what extent.
Continue reading “Why Mobile Crypto-Wallets Are Hard to Use”
Crypto-assets are unique in tying financial wealth to the secrecy of private keys. Prior empirical work has attempted to study end-user security from both technical and organizational perspectives. However, the link between individual’s risk perceptions and security behavior was often obscured by the heterogeneity of the subjects in small samples. This paper contributes quantitative results from a survey of 395 crypto-asset users recruited by a novel combination of deep and broad sampling. The analysis accounts for heterogeneity with a new typology that partitions the sample in three robust clusters – cypherpunks, hodlers, and rookies, – using five psychometric constructs. The constructs originate from established behavioral theories with items purposefully adapted to the domain. We demonstrate the utility of this typology in better understanding users’ characteristics and security behaviors. These insights inform the design of crypto-asset solutions, guide risk communication, and suggest recommendations for future digital currencies.
Continue reading “On the Heterogeneous Behaviors of the Crypto-Asset Users”
Implicit authentication (IA) has recently become a popular approach for providing physical security on smartphones. It relies on behavioural traits (e.g., gait patterns) for user identification, instead of biometric data or knowledge of a PIN. However, it is not yet known whether users can understand the semantics of this technology well enough to use it properly. In a study conducted by PhD students Masoud Mehrabi Koushki, Borke Obada-Obieh, and Samsung Researcher Jun Ho Huh, we investigated how Android’s Smart Lock (SL), which is the first widely deployed IA solution on smartphones, is understood by its users.
Continue reading “Why Implicit Authentication is Hard to Understand”
We are happy to announce that three research papers were accepted at CHI this year. Masoud Mehrabi Koushki led a mixed-methods study on implicit authentication (IA) on Android and investigated the reasons for which users struggle with IA. Artemij Voskobojnikov led two studies investigating the challenges of crypto-asset users. The first study investigated the UX issues of mobile cryptocurrency wallets and the second project studied the heterogeneous crypto-asset user population and was co-led by Dr. Svetlana Abramova.