Tuesday, 30 July 2013

Five potential issues with biometrics

                               I have recently become involved in the growing field of biometrics standards and believe the various technologies should be of great interest to digital marketers.
                              However, when I searched the E-consultancy site, I establish that biometrics was mainly seen as an instrument for market and user research. 
                             Given the detonation in digital deception and the complicatedness of combining secure admittance with easy access, I believe biometrics have a great part to play in creating an attractive user experience.
                              I use fingerprint acknowledgment for logging in to my laptop. This has two advantages.
                              Firstly I don't have to keep in mind which of the different passwords I use is correct in this circumstance and, more importantly, I can login on the train in full view of other passengers without being troubled that they are seeing my password. 
But there are many other biometric acknowledgment systems including:
·         Face image.
·         Iris image.
·         Signature.
·         Vascular image and hand geometry.
As you might imagine, there are several possible user knowledge issues and I would like to flag up five.

1. Privacy or more importantly, the invasion of privacy                          

Biometric data is very personal and many people do not feel contented sharing such data. The current revelations about the Prime project in the US additional fuel our concern that governments and big business already know much more about us that we might like (or indeed know about). 
Even though such technology may seem to offer user benefits for example for devotion schemes, concerns about space to yourself may make biometrics a dark horse in some environments.

2. Reasonableness

Whilst it might be rational for strict gearshift to be compulsory at border crossings or for admission to secure environments, other controls may be seen as a step too far.  In the US, biometrics have been optional as appropriate for scheming the access of children and others to school building or even school buses. 
It may be that this is just an opportunistic rejoinder to recent school shooting tragedies but I find it hard to suppose that many people will think it rational to go to such lengths. 
And for many, fingerprinting is unavoidably linked to crime thanks to the success of forensic TV shows like CSI.

3. Proportionality

Whilst we may be enthusiastic to wear a wrist tag or accept a rubber stamp on the hand as proof that we have paid and can re-enter an event, biometric data says far more about us. 
I already disallow shopping websites that insist on register before telling you the price of delivery so I’d be very disinclined to provide them with even more superfluous and inconsistent data. 
I doubt that I am alone in this.

4. Fear

Placing your eye so that a laser can scan it frightens many people. It doesn’t matter that there are labels claiming its safe – after all they used to claim that smoking was good for your throat. 
This is one reason why non-invasive techniques such as analyzing facial images are attractive popular. But fear can also apply to how the data is used and who else it might be approved on to.  There is the disagreement that innocent people have nothing to fear but that’s not totally believable at present. 
Biometrics may give the impression of infallibility and I can imagine tremendous action being taken because someone’s side view wrongly triggers an alert.

5. Behavior

Tomorrow’s World, the BBC science programmed of the seventies and eighties frequently got into trouble when the stress of live broadcast kicked in. 
In one example, an early voice acknowledgment system, which had worked in practice, failed despondently on live TV when the presenter’s voice rose in pitch as a result of stress. 
People frequently behave differently from what system designers expect and biometrics represents a rich arena for confusion and error.
Given the huge growth in fraud, biometrics has an important role to play. 

However, as with many new technologies, it will not be accepted extensively unless the user experience is considered and tested as part of the development and accomplishment process.

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