HW1 | Intro to Usable Sec. and Priv. (Fall 2025)

HW 2: Complete an Interview Study

In this assignment you will be replicated an interview study of my choice.

Find five friends or family members and complete the following short semi-structured-interview about their behaviors when sharing personal details. 2021

For reference, a semi-structured interview is a method of interviewing whereby you have a few core questions, and then you ask followup, probing questions based on responses. These questions can be as simple as, “please elaborate on that some more?” Or more specific, “you said X, can you provide another example where this occurs?”

In this mini-interview, you’re going to explore what mechanisms people use to send sensitive information when requested to do so by posing them with the following scenario and then asking the following questions. Note items in braces [] are directions to you, the interviewer. Again, don’t forget to ask followup questions to get your participants to elaborate.

You are getting ready to prepare your taxes and have hired a Certified Public Accountant (CPA). They ask you to send them the following information.

  • A copy of your Social Security card
  • All income-related tax documents - W-2, 1099, etc.
  • All expense-related tax documents - 1098, rental expenses, etc.

  1. Even if the details are slightly different, have you ever been in a situation like this one? If so, please describe when this occurred. [If participant hasn’t experienced this scenario, ask them to imagine that they had in answering the remaining questions]

  2. Thinking back to when you did this. How did you provide the required information?

  3. How satisfied were you with the method you used?

  4. How satisfied were you with security and privacy of this method with protecting our personal information?

  5. If you were asked to provide the same information to someone else, say a friend or family member, would you use the same methods or something else?

Transcribe your interview as best you can. Then using your three interviews, perform thematic coding, where you try and identify common themes across those interviews. Using your coding, write a summary of the results (2-3 paragraphs) and include it in your submission.

Namely, you should submit the following items as part of your pdf submissios. Make sure each is well labeled.

If you’re interested, this mini-study is based on work done in this paper