I Can't Be Myself: Effects of Wearable Cameras on the Capture of Authentic Behavior in the Wild

Abstract

Wearable sensors can provide reliable, automated measures of health behaviors in free-living populations. However, validation of these measures is impossible without observable confirmation of behaviors. Participants have expressed discomfort during the use of ego-centric wearable cameras with first-person view. We argue that mounting the camera on different body locations with a different lens orientation, gives a device recording affordance that has the effect of reducing surveillance and social discomfort compared to ego-centric cameras. We call these types of cameras "activity-oriented" because they are designed to capture a particular activity, rather than the field of view of the wearer. We conducted an experiment of three camera designs with 24 participants, collecting qualitative data on participants' experience while wearing these devices in the wild. We provide a model explaining factors that lead to an increase in social presence and social stigma, which, therefore, create social and surveillance discomfort for the wearer. Wearers' attempts to reduce this discomfort by modifying their behavior or abandoning the device threatens the validity of observations of authentic behaviors. We discuss design implications and provide recommendations to help reduce social presence and stigma in order to improve the validity of observations with cameras in the wild.

Keywords: activity-oriented camera; free-living populations; groundtruth; privacy; social presence; stigma; wearables.

Fig. 1.

Researchers have studied the effect of ego-centric cameras (first-person view with the lens pointing outward) on wearers and bystanders or have studied the effects of surveillance cameras (third-person view). We extend these efforts to study what we call activity-oriented cameras (such as [55, 68] and the three cameras used in this study) - cameras designed to record a specific activity rather than the gaze or the view of the participant, like the ego-centric camera [27, 28, 65], nor the total scene, like the surveillance camera [2, 50, 77].

Fig. 2.

Wearables used in this study. Three camera designs: (A) Chest camera, (B) Wrist camera, and (C) Shoulder camera. Six neck-worn devices for participants to choose one from. Wrist-worn sensor (mBand2).

Fig. 3.

Video reviewing software that allows the participants to view the videos collected, delete segments (shown in red) or mark the start and end of an activity (shown in yellow).

Fig. 4.

Our proposed model explains the factors that influence perceived social presence and stigma. When the camera is worn while alone or among familiar people, privacy-preserving techniques applied on data-related factors (such as restricting data attributes and limiting the type of people who have access to data) can decrease social presence both in ego-centric and activity-oriented cameras (if these settings are known by the wearer and bystanders). However, when among strangers, communication of privacy-preserving techniques on data factors is not feasible. Therefore, only device recording affordances based on visible characteristics can affect social presence among strangers. Unlike the ego-centric camera, activity-oriented cameras can reduce social presence among strangers via device recording affordances. Changes to device recording affordances and framing - especially ensuring that a device is not perceived as threatening - in turn, reduce social stigma.