Evaluating Assistance of Natural Language Policy Authoring

Kami Vaniea, Clare-Marie Karat, Joshua B. Gross, John Karat, Carolyn Brodie

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

The goal of the research study reported here was to investigate policy authors' ability to take descriptions of changes to policy situations and author high-quality, complete policy rules that would parse with high accuracy. As a part of this research, we investigated ways in which we could assist policy authors in writing policies. This paper presents the results of a user study on the effectiveness of providing syntax highlighting in a natural language policy authoring interface. While subjects liked the new interface, they showed no improvement in accuracy when writing rules. We discuss our results in terms of a three phase authoring process that users move through when authoring or modifying policies. We describe this process, discuss why and how our interface failed to support it and make recommendations to designers on how to better support this process.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 4th Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security
Place of PublicationNew York, NY, USA
PublisherACM
Pages65-73
Number of pages9
ISBN (Print)978-1-60558-276-4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2008

Publication series

NameSOUPS '08
PublisherACM

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • design process, natural language interfaces, privacy, privacy policies, social and legal issues, syntax highlighting

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Evaluating Assistance of Natural Language Policy Authoring'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this