The day we externalised our DNA and created a UX design utopia.
Privacy is dead, it’s just that not everyone agrees on that yet.
For centuries we used gold as our main currency, then we transitioned into paper notes and lower valued metals, until recently the tech community agreed that cryptocurrencies are the future, but I disagree. Cryptocurrencies have not and will not replace traditional money. Your privacy has.
Ten years ago we looked down to our first iPhone screen and we haven’t raised our heads up since then. We were too busy checking out that guy on Tinder or sharing photos of our amazing holidays from Mallorca, we have failed to see we were being charged to use those “free” services with the new universal and truly decentralised currency: our personal data.
It’s funny how it works, every single type of currency we’ve ever used is valuable due to its scarcity, quite the opposite to how user data works, the more we have the more valuable it becomes, making it a truly infinite resource as long as we keep on mindlessly rubbing our fingers against that piece of glass.
Creating a product design utopia
User data is not just the most valued currency, but it has become an externalised version of the human species DNA. DNA is a container of information about an individual and his passed lifes transcendenting its “owner” -if it has offsprings-. The same applies to user data, all of our everyday actions are creating a ledger of information about who we are as individuals and as species, which will also far transcend any user’s life. 30 years from now we will have an incredible understating of human behaviour based on that external DNA, to the point where will be able to predict each and one of our actions in advanced -leaving any moral and ethics aside- this is going to create a UX design utopia, the panacea of the design, but we have been sharing our privacy unconsciously, against our will, and that is the issue. We feel betrayed.
‘Your private life belongs to you. If anyone takes it from you it’s theft and it’s the same as theft of property.’ Max Mosley.
Facebook, Google and co, you give data a bad name.
The core of UX design is based on designers trying to anticipate the user’s needs, we do this through user research and gained experience but in a very rudimental and primitive and manul way. Everything can be reduced to data, even something as abstract as your taste in art -look at Spotify’s spot on music recommendations-, can you imagine using humans instead of machine learning to recommend music to each individual user? It would be ludicrous!
Over the passed few years, the words “data collection” have acquired negative connotations, when a company asks some access to your privacy we call that company evil. Facebook and Google are -mostly- to blame, and it’s because they have been lying to us. When you buy any physical products the price never gets hidden away from you, but in contrast, every time you Google something, the last thing that goes through your mind is what that simple and innocent Google search is costing you.
Every time you pay with money for something you get notified, or else it’s considered stealing.
Corporations not applying this logic is what has given data collection such a bad name, we have lost trust in them. Companies should focus on keeping all the gathered data secure, but that’s only part of the problem, it’s also a design issue, we should somehow get notified every time any of our personal information is shared and the only company that I’m aware of that does something vaguely similar is Apple, since their 2018 privacy update iOS, MacOS, tvOS and watchOS let you know whenever any or your data is being shared with Apple through a really well chosen icon of two people shaking hands. This simple design choice creates a sense trust in Apple.
In the perfect world honesty is the norm
When using a free service the user give its data while being fully aware abot it, in exchange the user gets a more personalised and satisfactory experience while ‘x’ company has more information about its users to further improve their products. Everybody is happy, we know exactly when and what data we are giving away, we feel respected and we get extremely personalised and unique experiences.
Mass data collection is not the issue, but the lack of information from big companies is. Our ignorance has become their bliss, and they’ve done nothing to make us more literate.
