Dear list members,
I recently came by the new edition of “The Design of Everyday Things” in which Donald Norman addressed his experience with the Google NEST thermostat.
In my opinion the following quote from the book, albeit it provides an immediate explanation for the quality of the design, it also highlights the potential overlapping between the concept of user experience (UX) and information privacy issues.
“My thermostat, for example (designed by Nest Labs), has a colorful display that is normally off, turning on only when it senses that I am nearby. Then it provides me with the current temperature of the room, the temperature to which is set, and whether it is heating or cooling the room [...] It learns my detail patterns, so it changes temperature automatically, lowering it at bedtime, raising it again in the morning, and “going” to away mode when it detects that nobody is in the house. [...] Nest can be connected wirelessly to smart devices that allow for remote operation of the thermostat and also for longer screens to provide a detailed analysis of its performances [....]”
Presence detection (‘...when it senses that I am nearby...’), behavioral pattern recognition (‘...It learns my detail patterns...’) and mobile tracking (‘...Nest can be connected wirelessly to smart devices...’) are some of the issues that the ‘experience’ inevitably brought into place.
In the case of the NEST’s mobile application<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nestlabs.android> the users have to share with NEST many sensitive personal data such as telephone’s contact list and call information among others.
Many researches have proved that is quite hard to distinguish<http://cmuchimps.org/publications/modeling_users_mobile_app_privacy_preferences_restoring_usability_in_a_sea_of_permission_settings_2014> between data gathered in order to deliver the service from data collected for marketing purposes.
In any case NEST Lab was bought by Google Corporation and, as claimed in the Google’s general Privacy Policy<http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/>, there are few or no doubts that such data will be used by Google for his aggressive user’s profiling. Related to this, the UK’s ICO has recently obtained a formal agreement by Google<https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/news-and-events/news-and-blogs/2015/01/google-to-change-privacy-policy-after-ico-investigation/> to “improve the information it provides to people about how it collects personal data in the UK”. Notably, in the attached document<https://ico.org.uk/media/action-weve-taken/undertakings/1043170/google-inc-privacy-policy-undertaking.pdf> Google directly refers to user experience specialists to assess the comprehension of its privacy policy.
Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA)<http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/document/review2012/sec_2012_72_en.pdf> has been promoted by data protection governmental agencies<https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1595/pia-code-of-practice.pdf> as well as by the EU Article 29 Working Party<http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-12-46_en.htm?locale=en>, which is involved in the comprehensive reform of the EU's 1995 data protection rules. For the best of my knowledge DPIA in general refers to methodologies such as online consultation, briefing meetings, working groups, face-to-face interviews, but UX specialists are not directly mentioned.
In my opinion, the UX perspective could represents an interesting starting point in order to think about information privacy from the design perspective.
Thank you in advance to everyone who will add his/hers own opinion to this thread. Any suggestions about facts, references and case studies are more then very much welcomed.
Best regards,
Alessandro
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Alessandro Carelli
Ph.D student
Loughborough Design School, LDS 1.23
Loughborough University, LE11 3TU, UK
T. +39 3484934348 (it)
T. +44 07835121810 (uk)
Skype: alessandrocarelli
Linkedin<https://www.linkedin.com/pub/alessandro-carelli/57/768/728> | Twitter<https://twitter.com/inf_overload>
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