(Workshop Paper) accepted to Privacy and Power, the Networked Privacy Workshop at CHI 2020 in Hawaii, USA.
Taking care of technology for a dependent can be a daunting task. Often poorly resourced and lacking the formal training and codes of practise available to professionals, those giving informal digital care need to be understood and empowered by the HCI community. These problems are particularly challenging when people who share access to devices must negotiate issues of privacy and security, or when those giving care must do so remotely. For example, situations, where one user is given responsibility for devices in the home, can further exacerbate existing power asymmetries. Using insights from our past and current work on technology adoption in smart homes, we illustrate the reality of informal digital care and highlight how this reality increases the complexity of researching privacy and requires a human-centered approach.