Talk on ‘Designing With Privacy’
by Niyam Bhushan — Design Thinker & Mentor
Is it Fakebook or is it Facebook? — A thought to ponder.
How to articulate privacy?
- Is it perception?
- Is it space?
- Is it a private world?
- Is privacy empirical?
No single definition of privacy, it changes and evolves.
Privacy is not security and it is not about control. It is about whether my cultural, social economic perception of self is successful. It is my ability not to share. When we go on social media, we are seeking validation from our audiences in the context of various local/ timely factors. So, one could define privacy as the opposite of seeking validation from others in accordance with the changing environment.
We understand the need for privacy when we start facing the consequences of the lack of having it.
The digital world today is giving us an illusion of privacy. Passwords with the **** or “lock symbols”, all are things we accept as being good enough. However, we tend to forget that the companies we seek services from may not be ethical. They take data from us, more than is needed and we usually have no clue what happens to the data once we give it away.
In a talk held at Srishti Institute on 29th September 2018, Niyam Bhushan asked us to wonder about where privacy is born in humans? According to him, when you get information from the outside world, a thought is born in your mind and when you hold back that thought, it is called privacy.
Designing with Privacy
There is no single tool kit to design for privacy.
Privacy has to be the Mental Mode.
He spoke about metaphors in design and that we as designers are designing the direction of thoughts of our users as verbs and not as words (eg: logging in and logging out, drag and drop,etc).
Any interaction are verbal thoughts in VERBS not words.
- Private action
- Private intention — layers of privacy building
- Private thoughts
Designers design for the thoughts.
In a sense, you are privacy designers before UX designers as you are very obviously directing the mind of the user.
Design with Anticipation.
- As you come closer to the doors, the door automatically open up.
Design for sentiment analysis.
The designer has invaded your privacy- apps and systems are designed to tell you how to eat, when to eat, get frisked at airports or buy popcorn at the movies, etc. He urges us as designers to stop giving the users the illusion of privacy and instead aim to design without cognitive hacks (see dark patterns).
He also spoke about practicing “digital subversion” where, as a consumer, you try to subvert the databases of corporations instead of fighting them.
Challenges while designing
Will people pay for the Facebook and WhatsApp to avoid ads?
What is Privacy in Indian culture?
How to design something whose definition changes as per environment and situation?
Are women more concerns about their privacy?
When we don’t know what is privacy then how can we design for it?
Privacy has already been eroded in China — when a child is born in China, he has to get a unique mobile number. As this number tells — how soon one can become income tax payer?
In reality, there is no privacy and we have been made comfortable with it.
About Niyam:
Over 33 years of experience in multiple dimensions of design: print, graphics, UI, UX, textile, Sound, Video-compositing, font-design, design-thinking, and more. Consulted with Apple, Adobe, Google, Intel, Xerox, and more. Founder of DesignRev, and won the support of NASSCOM to kickstart a revolution in Design from India. Niyam is driven by the vision and passion to transform India into the super-power of Design in the world.
