Usability heuristics on parental privacy controls for smart toys: From an exploratory map to a confirmatory research

In this paper, we aimed to indicate usability heuristics for the design of parental privacy controls for smart toys. During a snowballing mapping process, we examined 589 candidate studies. Our mapping findings draw from 13 included studies and indicate the heuristics for IT Security Management, proposed by Jaferian et al., as the best to address problems that affect laypeople’s interaction with privacy policy tools. With the participation of 14 inspectors, we compared the effectiveness of Nielsen’s and the IT Security Management heuristics in heuristic evaluations of a parental privacy control model for smart toys. The results show that the IT Security Management heuristics have better coverage of usability problems (Kruskal–Wallis, p-value ≈0.01), which confirms the mapping findings. Future studies can compare these heuristics based on outcomes from test with users as a benchmark. Also, future studies can explore the creation of domain-specific heuristics for parental privacy controls for smart toys.