Shao-Yu Chu, University of California, San Diego
Developers' decisions about data collection, sharing, and defaults directly shape users' privacy. In practice, however, developers frequently make problematic design decisions. Even when privacy experts are available, low privacy awareness can prevent developers from recognizing issues in the first place, leaving concerns unescalated.
In this talk, we present Ace Privacy Detective, an Ace Attorney-inspired investigation game that turns enforcement cases into hands-on training materials for developers. We'll show how we translate legal documents into game levels where players examine real-world data practices, gather evidence, and report violations with feedback grounded in the alleged violations. We'll demo the game and walk through how levels are built from public complaints. We will also share results from a between-subjects study comparing the game to a reading-based baseline that mirrors how many developers learn about privacy today.
Authors: Shao-Yu Chu, Xu Wang, Haojian Jin
Shao-Yu Chu is a PhD student at the University of California, San Diego. She develops tools and learning interventions to help developers build software that respects users' privacy.
author = {Shao-Yu Chu},
title = {Training Developers{\textquoteright} Privacy Awareness with Enforcement Cases},
year = {2026},
address = {Santa Clara, CA},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = jun
}
