Defining the Usability of Digital Forensics in Criminal Proceedings: Reconciling the Technical and the Legal Sides.

Digital forensic methods and tools play a vital role in the handling of digital evidence within criminal proceedings. To apply these methods and tools in a satisfactorily manner, both digital forensic experts and legal professionals need to understand the scope, the potential and the limitations of these instruments from the viewpoint of their respective side, thus creating a shared understanding on which interdisciplinary collaboration can prosper and which is often lacking in practice. We address this challenge by formulating the creation of a common understanding as a problem of usability. Inspired by usable security approaches, we argue that applying usability to digital forensics in criminal proceedings can bridge the gap between the digital forensics and the legal domain by considering human, organizational, and technical factors.