Research Meeting Notes

Notes from Meeting on 10/29

Before / after with VRM implementations
Self-tracking - what sorts of changes occur
Look at companies that are willing to share info and what changes this brings to them
Game: profiles of companies (mirror existing companies) - users interacting and measuring
User research around learning perceptions and actions
- How does behavior change when people are ignorant vs. once they understand
- Increase visibility around what users "give away" + then add-in control
People's willingness to give data with control vs. without control
Max - existing research: ranked shopping list based on privacy levels
- Can we use real money? Mechanical Turk?
Testing what people say vs. what they do
How do we do the "invention is the mother of necessity" aspect of VRM - can we test something that doesn't exist yet?
Research Hypotheses:
- Will people be more willing to yield their information if they control it?
- How will people behave if we give them more control over/with their data
Realworld retailer - at checkout, they're given some choices
- give up information in exchange
How do we test removal of guesswork?
Turk experiment with movie recommendations
Test
- 1st group: You have money to buy some movies (simulated stores)
- 2nd group: Create basket and share with stores
Education of customers is an important aspect of example
Problem with secondary markets, e.g. users aggregating happy hour seattle

portland happy hour data without vendor buy-in

LastFM, scrobbling test (e.g. what will people do with their data?)
- What would you pay per song? Then collect data and present it to them, will it change what the song is worth?
Don't forget about selection bias with these types of experiments

testable, concrete, measurable
of use for doc in his new book
appease the berkman gods with productive research efforts
relatively easy and completable with volunteers, internal resources and a limited time-frame
provide businesses with fodder that they need to help make the case internally for opening up user control
- Ben from Zeo needs a list of benefits to openness to bring to his investors: We need to provide that!
- What are the benefits to vendors of VRM?
- What is user data control? Define.
- Relationships -> what are the vendor benefits?
  - eliminate guesswork

Talk to organizations who have opened up and have them describe the http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projectvrm/edit/VRM_Research_opportunitiesbenefits
- What's measurable here?
Test the hypothesis: A free customer is worth more than a captive one
- "worth more" means defining customer value and measuring it
- is the customer valuing the vendor more?
- what is free vs. captive?
before and after giving users their data
altimeter group
- engagementdb.com: report that shows that those who do social media are most profitable
case studies (e.g. HBS format)
backward analysis?
report on personal informatics
- what data comes out of personal informatics?
Company experiences with launching api's?
interviews, surveys
What are some open data efforts?
- VRM spotting -> what are some user-driven organizations?
What are possible frameworks / scenarios for measurement / testing / research
What are the intention economy principles?