Pairing devices for social interactions: a comparative usability evaluation

When users wish to establish wireless radio communication between/among their devices, the channel has to be boot-strapped first. The process of setting up a secure communi-cation channel between two previously unassociated devices is referred to as “Secure Device Pairing”. The focus of prior research on this topic has mostly been limited to “personal pairing ” scenarios, whereby a single user controls both the devices. In this paper, we instead consider “social pairing” scenarios, whereby two different users establish pairing be-tween their respective devices. We present a comprehensive study to identify methods suitable for social pairing, and comparatively evaluate the usability and security of these methods. Our results identify methods best-suited for users, in terms of efficiency, error-tolerance and of course, usabil-ity. Our work provides insights on the applicability and us-ability of methods for emerging social pairing scenarios, a topic largely ignored so far. ACM Classification Keyword