How a privacy-friendly interface for mobile avatars enables sick children to participate in school lessons

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The challenge

Existing solutions for the remote participation n school fail to provide sufficient privacy protection. This is a big Thing! Children do not want to show their backgrounds or disclose their current health status, while teachers don’t want their lessons observed by third parties. There’s a clear need for a user-friendly, data-efficient solution that addresses these concerns.

Our approach

PRIVATAR is a research project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. As UX-Design-Expert our focus is on co-creating a simplified interface concept that enables sick pupils to participate in school lessons via a remote-controlled robot which is placed in the classroom. Central to this is the conception of a communication interface, enhanced by privacy features.

Our approach is based on the usage of best practices and learned patterns from standard videoconferencing tools, to ensure a simplified usage. Together with our project partners from the Georg-August University in Göttingen, University of Duisburg-Essen and University of Bonn, relevant privacy functions are evaluated and tested with steakholders in real contexts and usage scenarios.

The privacy settings offer pre-configured presets that provide different levels of privacy, from full visibility to digital avatars to complete invisibility. Another important aspect is the clear indication of the active mode, so that sick children as well as teachers and classmates can immediately see what information is currently being shared.

Dive into the details at: https://privatar.de/en/

»I Don’t Want Parents to Watch My Lessons«
Quote of a Teacher during an analysis workshop, 2024

Our solution

The proposed solution will allow sick children to participate in lessons seamlessly and with minimal data exposure. With clear, easily understandable privacy presets, customizable interface features, and flexible navigation options, we aim to provide a solution that is adaptable to the individual needs of the (sick) users.

This will enable participation in the classroom without compromising privacy — offering a concept that can be scaled to other contexts in the future.