William Seymour
Research Associate at King’s College London
Research Interests
The modern connected home can be a busy and confusing space. My research uses a diverse set of methodologies to understand the concerns that people have when they use smart/IoT devices, both for themselves and their families. This insight is used to develop solutions and design artefacts that empower people to take control of their privacy, security, and autonomy, allowing them to shape their usage of technology to better support them.
Many of the questions asked by my research are centred around the nature of people’s understandings of and concerns about digital technology; fundamentally, what is it that makes people uneasy about using these systems, and what can be done to mitigate concerns both now and in the future? In many cases this requires both helping people to form effective mental models, as well as addressing problems with platforms and devices.
Projects
2021 - 2023
Secure AI Assistants, EPSRC
Secure AI Assistants (SAIS) is a cross-disciplinary collaboration providing an understanding of attacks on the AI assistant ecosystem, exploring the feasibility and severity of potential attacks from a strategic threat and risk approach, methods to specify & verify the security behaviour of AIS, and the generation of co-created privacy/security explanations for AIS behaviour. I am conducting the human-factors research for the project.
2018-2019
Respectful Things in Private Spaces, EPSRC and Building Research Establishment
I led a study exploring people’s perceptions of ‘smartness’ with respect to connected devices in the home, and how these perceptions relate to ethical concerns about the use of these devices. Drawing on thinking from Kant to the present day, I also conducted a preliminary exploration of how philosophical accounts of respect might be integrated into the design of devices for the smart home.
2019
IoT in the Home Demonstrator, EPSRC
I led a study exploring privacy-empowering technologies for the connected home, including the development of the Aretha smart home network disaggregator. Aretha analyses and visualises network traffic flows in the home, presenting users with a breakdown of the companies to which their devices send data, as well as their geographic location. Aretha was deployed to three families over a period of six weeks, and was also demonstrated to members of the public at the BRE Watford smart home test bed.
Education
2016 - 2021
DPhil Cybersecurity University of Oxford
- Supervised by Max Van Kleek
- Human Centred Computing Group, Department of Computer Science
- Thesis: Re-Thinking Smartness: Designing More Ethical Connected Devices for the Home
2012 - 2016
MEng Computer Science University of Warwick
- First Class Honours
Awards, Talks, Positions, and Outreach
2022
CUI Best Short Paper Award
- 2022 Conference on Conversational User Interfaces
Consent on the Fly: Developing Ethical Verbal Consent for Voice Assistants
- Talk at the 2022 Conference on Privacy Engineering Practice and Respect (PEPR ‘22)
2021
Is it Time Our Devices Showed a Little Respect? Informing the Design of Respectful Intelligent Systems
- Talk at the 2021 Conference on Privacy Engineering Practice and Respect (PEPR ‘21)
Judge, ACM SIGCHI Student Research Competition
- CHI 2021
Program Committee, International Workshop on Privacy Engineering
- IWPE21
2019
Winner, ACM SIGCHI Student Research Competition
- CHI 2019
Smart-Home Study Weighs the Privacy Risks Involved
- Article in Privacy Laws and Business, September 2019
Digital Privacy and Wellbeing
- Exhibit at the 2019 Oxford Science and Ideas Festival
2018
Runner Up, ACM SIGCHI Student Research Competition
- CHI 2018
Who’s Storing your Conversations?
- Article in Inspired Research, Summer 2018
Can a Machine Pick a Perfect Christmas Gift?
- Oxford Sparks Podcast, December 2018
2016-2020
EPSRC PhD Studentship
Teaching and Supervision
Lecturer
Security Management
- KCL Part-time, Fixed-term Lectureship
AI and Ethics
- Oxford UNIQ Spring & Summer Schools
Supervisor
MSc Dissertation Projects
- KCL
Undergraduate Group Projects
- Oxford
Teaching Assistant
Advanced Security, Imperative Programming I & II
- Oxford Undergraduate Courses
Interaction Design and Structured Data
- Oxford Postgraduate Courses
Internships
2016
Context Information Security, System Administrator
2015
Civil Service, Software Developer
2014
NextJump, Web Developer
Research Skills
Methodology
- Designing interviews, surveys, and user studies
- Developing and deploying technology probes
- Creating speculative and fictional design artefacts
- Thematic Analysis
Software
- Programming: Python, Julia, Java, Javascript, Typescript, Bash
- Data Processing/Visualisation: R, SQL, Pandas/NumPy, Matplotlib
- Documents: LaTeX, Vim, Pages, Keynote, MS Office
Publications
2022
Can you meaningfully consent in eight seconds? Identifying Ethical Issues with Verbal Consent for Voice Assistants
- W. Seymour, M. Cote, J. Such
- Proceedings of the 2022 Conference on Conversational User Interfaces (Short Paper)
- Awarded Best Short Paper
When It’s Not Worth the Paper It’s Written On: A Provocation on the Certification of Skills in the Alexa and Google Assistant Ecosystems
- W. Seymour, M. Cote, J. Such
- Proceedings of the 2022 Conference on Conversational User Interfaces (Short Paper)
Respect as a Lens for the Design of AI Systems
- W. Seymour, M. Van Kleek, R. Binns, D. Murray-Rust
- Proceedings of the 2022 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society
2021
Exploring Interactions Between Trust, Anthropomorphism, and Relationship Development in Voice Assistants
- W. Seymour, M. Van Kleek
- Proceedings of the ACM on Human Computer Interaction, Presented at CSCW 2021
2020
Informing the Design of Privacy-Empowering Tools for the Connected Home
- W. Seymour, M. J. Kraemer, R. Binns, M. Van Kleek
- Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Strangers in the Room: Unpacking Perceptions of ‘Smartness’ and Related Ethical Concerns in the Home
- W. Seymour, R. Binns, M. Van Kleek, P. Slovak, N. Shadbolt
- Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems
‘I Just Want to Hack Myself to Not Get Distracted’: Evaluating Design Interventions for Self-Control on Facebook
- U. Lyngs, K. Lukoff, P. Slovak, W. Seymour, H. Webb, M. Jirotka, M. Van Kleek, N. Shadbolt
- Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Strangers in the Room: Unpacking Perceptions of ‘Smartness’ and Related Ethical Concerns in the Home.
- W. Seymour, R. Binns, Petr Slovak, M. Van Kleek, N. Shadbolt.
- Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems.
2019
Aretha: A Respectful Voice Assistant for the Smart Home
- W. Seymour, M. Van Kleek, R. Binns, N. Shadbolt
- Living in the Internet of Things 2019: Cybersecurity of the IoT
IoT Refine: Making Smart Home Devices Accountable for Their Data Harvesting Practices
- M. Van Kleek, W. Seymour, R. Binns, J. Zhao, D. Karandikar, N. Shadbolt
- Living in the Internet of Things 2019: Cybersecurity of the IoT
2018
Respectful Things: Adding Social Intelligence to Smart Devices
- M. Van Kleek, W. Seymour, R. Binns, N. Shadbolt
- Living in the Internet of Things 2018: Cybersecurity of the IoT
Workshops & Abstracts
2022
Consent on the Fly: Developing Ethical Verbal Consent for Voice Assistants
- W. Seymour, M. Cote, J. Such
- Ethics of Conversational User Interfaces (CHI ‘22 Workshop)
2020
A Design Philosophy for Agents in the Smart Home
- W. Seymour
- Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Does Siri Have a Soul? Exploring Voice Assistants Through Shinto Design Fictions
- W. Seymour, M. Van Kleek
- Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Responsibility and Privacy: Caring for a Dependent in a Digital Age
- M. J. Kraemer, W. Seymour, I. Flechais
- Privacy and Power: Acknowledging the Importance of Privacy Research and Design for Vulnerable Populations (CHI ‘20 Workshop)
Beyond the Individual: Exploring Data Protection by Design in Connected Communal Spaces
- M. J. Kraemer, I. Flechais, N. Nthala, P. Fiddi, W. Seymour
- 2020 USENIX Conference on Privacy Engineering Practice and Respect
2019
Privacy Therapy with Aretha: What if your firewall could talk?
- W. Seymour
- Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Informing The Future of Data Protection in Smart Homes
- M. J. Kraemer, W. Seymour, R. Binns, M. Van Kleek, I. Flechais
- New Directions for the IoT: Automate, Share, Build, and Care (CHI 19’ Workshop)
The Internet of Kant: Respect as a Lens for IoT Design
- W. Seymour, M. Van Kleek
- Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: Exploring the Intersection of Philosophy and HCI (CHI ‘19 Workshop)
2018
How loyal is your Alexa? Imagining a Respectful Smart Assistant
- W. Seymour
- Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
The Need for Sensemaking in Networked Privacy and Algorithmic Responsibility
- M. Van Kleek‚ W. Seymour‚ M. Veale‚ R. Binns, N. Shadbolt
- Sensemaking in a Senseless World (CHI ‘18 Workshop)
Social Acceptability and Respectful Smart Assistants
- W. Seymour
- (Un)Acceptable!?! – Re−thinking the Social Acceptability of Emerging Technologies (CHI ‘18 Workshop)
Detecting Bias: Does an Algorithm Have to Be Transparent in Order to Be Fair?
- W. Seymour
- BIAS - Bias in Information, Algorithms, and Systems (iConference ‘18 Workshop)
Software
Aretha: Smart home network disaggregator and data flow visualiser
Oxford Human Centred Computing Group Blog