Designing for Privacy: A Book!

Design for Privacy will advocate for the practice of “privacy by design” and examine specific and often alarming examples of these issues. Designers will learn the four pillars for privacy-centered experience design and best practices, with both good and bad examples to visualize problems along the way, so they can design more confidently with privacy in mind. And they’ll learn how to cultivate a culture which enables privacy by design.

For more about the book, visit its page over at Rosenfeld Media, where you can also signup for updates.

Brooklyn Product Design Meetup: Presentation on AI & Privacy

I had a wonderful time presenting to the Brooklyn Product Design meetup on the topic of AI and Privacy—especially from the perspective of how UXers and product designers can position themselves to help mitigate these emerging issues. It’s a fascinating topic, which is evolving at a pace we can hardly keep up with. This is the second time I’ve presented to this group, and they’re always such a lovely and engaging audience!

Poster Presentation & Mentoring: Information Architecture Conference 2024

I was very happy to attend the Information Architecture Conference in Seattle, WA for the first time this year, where I presented my poster on “Designing for Privacy in an Increasingly Public World” on the evening of April 11th. A large PDF version of this poster is available on my Technique website. It’s free to use with attribution. I also enjoyed mentoring some of the attendees and meeting many smart and talented IAs there. I only wime sh I hadn’t taken so long to get around to attending!

Pamphlet: Designing for Privacy in an Increasingly Public World

I've been presenting on the topic of privacy by design to companies and organizations, as well as my students at SVA for several years now. I just took an Illustrator class, and, for my final project, thought it'd be fun to boil that presentation down to fit into a tri-fold pamphlet, which I could distribute or folks could download if they'd like. The pamphlet version of “Designing for Privacy in an Increasingly Public World” highlights 7 best practices for privacy by design, as well as some high-level reasons our clients will want to pay attention to their customers' privacy concerns.

🔗 https://shorturl.at/syDOQ (PDF)

Update: You can also read an article version of this topic over on both UX Collective and UX Magazine.

I hope to use Technique to develop and distribute artifacts like this in the future, too. And I'm trying to determine whether this topic can be translated into a book, which would allow me to address the topic much more comprehensively, accompanying each point with case studies, illustrations, and even suggested redesigns for problem examples.

Reach out if you're interested in a presentation to your company or organization on the topic.

Article: The Tyranny of Consistency

In 2020, Google changed the icons for their most popular apps from the ones in the top row to the ones in the bottom. Some confusion ensued. They had become too consistent—to the point of sometimes becoming almost indistinguishable from one another.

My latest article for UX Collective, “The Tyranny of Consistency” has been shared widely within the design community. In it, I argue that consistency is helpful as a tool for designing user-friendly experiences—until it isn’t. I discuss how to consider when breaking from ostensible consistency can actually improve user experiences and provide a few examples of how such variations work in practice.

Update: Thanks to UX Magazine for reprinting my piece, as well.

Project: Editing an Ongoing Publication for NYU's Global Affairs Program

I edit the publication Gender, Human Rights & International Affairs for two classes in NYU's Global Affairs program: Gender & International Affairs and Human Rights & Development. Students in the program voluntarily submit their final papers here if they are approved by the Professor Raymond Smith. I edit pieces for consistency, grammar, and punctuation and source images for them if needed. We started this project back in November 2020 in Professor Smith’s Gender & International Affairs class and it’s growing as new students are added and adding the second class, Human Rights & Development.

Update: NYU’s Center for Global Affairs recently highlighted this initiative.