IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Fall 2013 - 63

salient perceptions, attitudes, and
intentions should be a consideration at the forefront of the minds
of those who introduce any new
technology.
There are a number of different
approaches to introducing the ideas
and concepts behind the technology, and in this article we see there
is a strong relationship between
attitudes towards technology and
attitudes toward behavior related
to that technology. Therefore any
efforts made to improve users
views of the technology could help
influence their initial (and longterm) intentions to use it.
The long-term acceptance of
monitoring technology is important given the likely permanence of
their installation. The results from
this paper indicate a weak relationship between facilitating conditions
and intention to use, suggesting that
if users have a choice, they would
not use the technology. This raises
several issues regarding scenarios where there is no choice, e.g.,
current closed-circuit television
(CCTV), and the effects caused
by such coercive interaction. How
could such systems be first presented and introduced to users?
How can positive views of the system be sustained over time? How
would any tensions be resolved?
Unintentional and
Undesireable Effects
We know from existing research
that when people are observed their
behavior changes and they act differently [2]-[5]. As monitoring systems become more complex, and
increase in scale, this is anticipated
to become a key point in their success. While this is one of the major
and clearest possible undesirable
effects of monitoring systems,
there are likely to be others. for
example, users have been shown
to become stressed, distrustful, and
uncomfortable when observed [2][5]. furthermore, given the scale
and wide range of applications
of new monitoring systems we

anticipate that not only will existing undesirable effects occur, but
they will become amplified. Even
more disconcerting is the potential
for new undesirable effects will
arise. This highlights an important
question of who is accountable for
the consequences of such undesirable and unknown effects? What
are the long-term implications of an
initial or on-going bad experience
with such wide-spread technology?
In most cases, any undesirability
will be highly subjective, and interpreted in different ways depending

45]. What legislations currently exist
to prevent excessive use of this type
of user manipulation? What laws
might need to be introduced to protect users?
Ubiquity and Data Sharing
As monitoring systems become
adopted in different spaces and
places, the boundaries of data collection will grow. Take offices on a
university campus as an example:
a monitoring system may cover a
single office, an entire building or
an entire campus. Do the terms of

Given that much of ubiquitous
computing is embedded and hidden
from view, initially there may be
little to react to.
on the role of the stakeholder in the
system. This brings into question
the intentions of system designers
and owners.
Intended Behavioral Change
and Coercion
One of the long-term goals of this
research is to develop a complete
model of how system characteristics
influence user behaviors in monitoring systems. This model can then be
used to develop a tool that simulates
the effects, and predicts a behavioral
outcome. Although such a tool is
intended to minimize the undesirable
effects, one of its major implications
is that it could be used by designers to
potentially manipulate the behaviors
of the systems users in the ways they
want. for example, the knowledge of
being watched can increase productivity [26]. Hence a workplace may
be designed to have a highly obtrusive monitoring system, consciously
creating a social presence. This arguably leaves the responsibility and
assessment of the morality surrounding the outcomes of the monitoring
system in the hands of the designer:
"wisely or not, users trust system
designers to protect them from [any]
unintended consequences" [27, p.

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

fALL 2013

participation and use of the technology change depending on the
environment? What information
is shared between the local and
global systems? Who has access to
that information and how is it used?
How long is data stored for? Where
is consider a private space in the
workplace, and how could this be
enforced in ubiquitous systems?

Future Work
The next steps are to make a direct
comparison between the salient
perceptions of the device by office
workers in Kyoto University, with
another study exploring the salient
perceptions of office workers in
the University of Reading, U.K.
A series of different, theoretically acceptable, combinations of
relationships within the PSA-BI
model will also be explored. In
addition, the data collected in the
study will also be further analyzed
using a variety of different statistical methods beyond structural
equation modeling. The longterm aim of research involving
the PSA-BI model is to fully test
all the relationships with a variety of technologies, contexts and
participants.
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