Creating Effective Labels

This talk is based on research conducted in collaboration with Ece Gumusel, Peter Caven, Jayati Dev, and L Jean Camp.

This talk is motivated in part by President Biden's Executive Order on Improving the Nation's Cybersecurity, which required the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to issue labeling guidance for software and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. The focus of this presentation is on how to create more effective and usable labels. A consumer's perception of a label is influenced by the usability of the interaction, embedded information, as well as common psychological biases in decision-making. Often, even technically proficient and knowledgeable consumers are not able to make accurate comparisons across a products' provision of security or privacy. In this presentation, we integrate research from behavioral economics, usable security, and risk communication design to inform the creation of effective labels.