Security as a Practical Problem: Some Preliminary Observations of Everyday Mental Models
Paul Dourish, Jessica Delgado · 2003
Although security is normally thought of as a technical problem, we believe that it is more appropriately formulated as a practical problem that users routinely enounter and solve. Essentially, their problem is to determine the match between a system’s configuration and their needs. However, the resources to make informed decisions are rarely available. As a first step towards solving this problem, we present some preliminary findings from a study currently under way, which seeks to investigate the mental models and conceptual arrangements by which people understand the problems of everyday security.