Privacy : a decisive factor in design

Abstract EN

Privacy, like territoriality, is a process that is at once an extremely important dimension of our daily lives, yet one we often manage at a low level of awareness.

To accomplish our privacy goals, we must be skilled at balancing our own desires, those of others, and the physical environment.

Privacy is a relatively new concept.

While the word "privacy" first appear in the 15th century, the meaning most closely related to how the word is used today did not emerge for another four hundred years.

(Gordon, 2004).

To many people, privacy means one of two things.

One of these is being apart from other people.

The other is being sure that other individuals or organization do not have access to certain information about them.

These two everyday meanings represent only part of the meaning of privacy.

For example, one view of privacy in environmental psychology is that privacy processes sometimes lead individuals to seek more social interaction.

Dictionaries tend to provide an excellent insight into the way a word is commonly used defines privacy as "The quality or state of being apart from company or observation ; freedom from unauthorized intrusion," and does not specify whether this relates to people or data (Webster's, 2003).

"The state or condition of being alone, undisturbed, or free from public attention, as a matter of choice or right ; freedom from interference or intrusion.

(OED, 2003) The invasions of privacy occur when someone physically intrudes on us or when someone collects information about us that we do not want them to have.

Some of us need more privacy than others ; some of us need different kind of privacy ; all of us need more privacy at certain times and less at others.

Privacy is closely tied to territoriality, crowding, and personal space.

It is even related to how we speak, to our nonverbal, and to our developmental processes.

It is intimately involved with other important psychological processes, including emotion, identity, and our sense of control.

All of these faces of privacy are interesting in their own right, but understanding privacy serves a larger purpose : assisting in the design of better-built environments.

We cannot accomplish this goal without knowing how to measure privacy, what personal and situational factors influence it, and how privacy is related to other behavior processes.