Investigating how people install, interact, and manage internet of things (iot) devices in their homes

One of the largest projects that I have worked on was the capstone for the “Living in the Internet of Things” grant where we conducted an in-home experiment where we deployed IoT devices for participants to use and collected feedback on installation, device usage, customization, design elicitations, and plans of future adoption. Collaborating with other students former PhD from Indiana University: Jayati Dev, DongInn Kim, Shakthidhar Gopavaram, and Vafa Andalabi, postdocs who transitioned to faculty: Shrirang Mare and Tatiana Ringenberg, and Prof. L. Jean Camp.

Example wireframe showing dashboard of information for multiple Internet of Things devices.

My main contributions to the project included:

  • Leading capstone project team

  • All the instructions and documentation for setup of IoT devices

  • Wireframes for design elicitation

  • Scheduling and conducting all qualitative interviews with participants

Devices sent to participants

TP Link router, Philips Hue lighting system, Ring Alarm system, an Android tablet, two Raspberry Pi, an Amcrest IP camera, two ESP8266 boards with motion, humidity, and temperature sensors, a TP Link network switch, a Yubikey, and USB-3 to R345 adapter.

Kids, Cats, and Control: Designing Privacy and Security Dashboards for IoT Home Devices
Jacob Abbott, Jayati Dev, Donginn Kim, Shakthidhar Gopavaram, Meera Iyer, Shivani Sadam, Shrirang Mare, Tatiana Ringenberg, Vafa Andalibi, and L. Jean Camp. In Proceedings of the Symposium on Usable Security and Privacy (USEC) 2023. https://dx.doi.org/10.14722/usec.2023.236290

Privacy Lessons Learnt from Deploying an IoT Ecosystem in the Home
Jacob Abbott, Jayati Dev, Donginn Kim, Shakthidhar Gopavaram, Meera Iyer, Shivani Sadam, Shrirang Mare, Tatiana Ringenberg, Vafa Andalibi, and L. Jean Camp. In Proceedings of the 2022 European Symposium on Usable Security (EuroUSEC '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 98–110. https://doi.org/10.1145/3549015.3554205

All photography provided by Jacob E. Abbott