Today’s post is about the idea of privacy as a design problem. It focuses on the privacy control settings found on many publishers’ web sites, often powered by a company called One Trust.

Designers don’t often pay much attention to these things, but privacy, more and more, is becoming an essential aspect of the user experience. And so, in my opinion, privacy should be considered part of what a product designer does.

If you’re intrigued by this idea of how design can effect good privacy experience, I would encourage you to read about the work of the non-profit organization Simply Secure. Their mission reads, in part:

“We empower practitioners through open research, professional education, community building, and hands-on support.

“We support user experience designers and researchers who are building security skills to engage users in protecting their privacy. We partner with developers of ethical technologies to improve the user experience of their tools and build skills conducting user research.”

This is a new frontier where designers must be proactive, and the sooner we all recognize it, the better off will be our products, our users, and our profession.

Cheers from San Francisco,
Khoi