Background

I finished the Industrial Design undergraduate programme in July of 2017. After this, I freelanced with i.a. Bureau Moeilijke Dingen and Studio Tast. I then spent six months living in Sydney, where I worked as Front-end Developer with Southern Cross Austereo.

While I enjoyed working from my technical expertise in those adventures, I felt I was missing a more designerly perspective in my daily work, least of all contextual expertise. Hence, I enrolled in the graduate programme in February of 2019.

As I started my masters programme, I focused chiefly on attaining these goals at the end of the programme:

1. to specialise in a domain where design expertise was sorely needed
2. to develop substantive expertise in this domain
3. to publicly establish myself as an expert in this domain
4. to gain a better grasp on an end-to-end design process
5. to collaborate with stakeholders and partners during the process

Overall Development

The goals I have set for my master's programme touch upon themes of domain expertise, design expertise and collaboration. I will treat and evaluate these themes seperately.

Domain Expertise

During my graduate programme, I have gradually worked towards establishing myself as a designer involved with privacy by design. While I first dabbled in personal data with the

project, my first true exploration was in my research project . Here, I explored how designers are complicit in enacting dark patterns. I further substantiated the theoretical implications for this in the course.

As a result, Mathias Funk and I developed the concept of Privacy UX: "the attitudes and design patterns required for designing privacy-friendly interfaces". A paper describing Privacy UX in the context of

was submitted to the International Journal of Design in October of 2020, and is currently in review.

Meanwhile, I further worked towards creating examples of what Privacy UX could look like. In my M21 semester, I researched the practice of data subject access request, which turned out to be slow, frustrating and inaccessible. Hence, I developed

, an application that exercises personal data rights on your behalf.

In my final master semester, I reviewed the implications of such a tool with Bureau Moeilijke Dingen and SURF. As a result, I developed the

, an initiative for standardising access to data rights using tools such as . In my Master Thesis, I describe such drop-in privacy/compliance components as Privacy UX Patterns.

What caught my attention is that you have quite some knowledge of interaction, legislation and technology. This is a rare perspective [...] that is evident in the workshops, interviews and your work.

— Arnout Terpstra (SURF)

I have had many opportunities for presenting this work, for instance at the 2020 Dutch Design Week, at Dezeen and at the 2020 Chaos Communication Congress. Also during my final master semester, I joined the

programme, where I am receiving up to €37k in funding for developing the user experience of the open-source initiative IRMA Meet, in a Privay UX fashion.

These experiences have validated not only the societal need for perspectives on Privacy UX, but more importantly the commercial necessity for incorporating these.

Design Expertise

During the master programme, I have expanded my toolbox of applicable design methods. When it comes to the design process,

has taught me novel ways of incorporating data in the design process. offers real-world experience in approach early design process participants. I have learned user involvement methods such as semi-structured interviews, ethnography and netnography from and , while learning about the history and application of the user experience, as well as the role of empathy in the user experience, in . Lastly, I learned about the phenomenal power of speculative design in the form of design fiction, and speculative enactments in my and .

I have been fortunate to have ample opportunity to apply such knowledge in my

, and . I have specialised in gaining and incorporating deep, qualitative user insights and attitudes in all of these project, as well as having the chance of applying them professionally in my work with . Particularly the last activity and exposure of my graduation project have proven to me, that design perspectives on personal information are not only desirable, but commercially solicited and viable.

Collaboration

I have enjoyed many opportunities for collaborating with industry partners such as

, and in courses. Yet, my real foray in collaborating closely with a client was in the project, where we collaborated with Auping. This collaboration was successful, in that Auping desired to bring the product to market and we briefly worked towards doing so.

This cleared the way for further collaboration in my

, where I collaborated closely with SURF and Bureau Moeilijke Dingen in the form of interviews, workshops and expert involvement. This led to offshoots such as a with Bureau Moeilijke Dingen and the with SURF.

In the end I was able to solidify these experiences by starting a professional collaboration with the

initiative, for which I have received a €7k grant. I see the continuation of this collaboration as a strong start for a career in which I hope to be increasingly involved with consortiums of such industry partners.

Expertise Areas

I have made strides in multiple expertise areas during the course of the graduate programme. Particular focus is on the expertise areas I have selected as part of my unique expertise profile: User and Society and Math, Data and Computing.

Before discussing the integration of all areas, I will shortly discuss each expertise area: how I define it and how it applies to me and my development. Afterwards, I will discuss the integration of expertise areas in the practice of privacy by design, Privacy UX and Privacy UX Patterns, as discussed in my

.

User and Society

When considering the user, I focus on the individual experience a user encounters. This individual experience forms the basis for user experience in user experience design. The coming together of individual perspectives makes a society. Mediating between the two requires user insights and understanding, awareness of and reflection on societal issues and trends, ethics and understanding of context.

An important addition to the expertise model for me is the consideration of legislation as a design perspective. I will define it as "the rules that govern society". This means it is a part of the society aspect of user and society.

Math, Data and Computing

For me, understanding this expertise areas means starting from the data: an abstract, machine-readable representation of mostly a set of attributes. We represent such data through mathematics on computing platforms. When such platforms become sufficiently advanced, they may start generating data themselves (i.e. algorithms). This requires understanding of data formatting, parsing, storage, translation, seeing patterns and critically assessing data value.

Technology and Realisation

Where Math, Data and Computing is concerned with data on a theoretical level, technology and realisation is concerned with how such data comes alive. It involves the technologies in which data is described, parsed and rendered to become meaningful for individuals. In this process, it is important to understand technical architectures and systems design, and to gauge technical feasibility through continuous experimentation. Only by understanding the limits of technology, can a user experience be truly tailored. Lastly, software should be well-documented and accessible in terms of developer experience.

Creativity and Aesthetics

Creativity signifies the ability to turn a challenge on its head; finding solutions in previously unconceivable or unrelated ways. Aesthetics refer to material form of a design. It refers to graphical aspects, as well as the means in which they are conveyed (i.e. interaction). When taking those together, they cater to my craft of interface design. For me, this means understanding of graphic design, interaction preference, functional minimalism, creative representations of data, as well as incorporating first, second and third perspectives.

Business and Entrepreneurship

Business is the traditionally transactional approach of creating value, mostly in the commercial sense of the word. While it may take form in literal entrepreneurship (i.e. becoming an entrepreneur), I more broadly consider entrepreneurial attitudes as well: taking initiative, showing leadership and taking risk. Hence, I recognise creating collaborative structures and recognising new forms of value as important.

Design and Research Process

The design and research process is the iterative loop that compels designers to pragmatically and speculatively create solutions to ill-defined and ill-informed problems. Through short loops that gather knowledge, apply such knowledge and validate the application, designers can accessibly tackle a host of complex issues. This requires fast iteration, differing perspectives and modes of thought, fearless embrace of complexity as well as a deeply reflective attitude.

Integration

I have long held the view in my education that specifically my role as a designer is bridging design and technology. And while that statement has always remained true, it is the specifics that bring life to that role. The expertise areas I selected (User & Society; Math, Data and Computing) reflect this initial view: looking at societal perspectives through applied software.

Yet, this cherry-picking of specific aspect of expertise areas was shallow to begin with it. I now consider the expertise dimensions we have at our disposal much more broadly. While I still consider user and society two separate entities, I realise, through my work, how societal problems and individual perspectives are interlinked, and how through elevating individuals, more societal change becomes feasible.

User Experience

Let us first address the user experience angle. When it comes to data privacy, we are in a digital environment, and the means of interaction are (mostly) user interfaces. Thus, we can consider these interfaces as an interaction between the user experience (i.e. user and society) and the user interface (i.e. creativity and aesthetics).

Amusingly, the interaction between user and society is inescapable here, as we find flaws in interfaces (i.e. dark patterns) translated in individual user manipulation. Exacerbated by the scale of these interfaces, this manipulation becomes a societal problem.

This becomes more and more true as the GDPR requires specific interfaces (e.g. consent notices and data processing notices, i.e. consent interfaces), and legal perspectives (user and society) being translated into interfaces (creativity and aesthetics). In order to resolve these societal issues, a close integration of individual perspectives, societal perspectives (i.e. legislation) and applied aesthetics is required to resolve these issues.

Applied Technology

Then let us consider technology. Unavoidably, we find again the explicit interlinking of problems for individual users that are exacerbated by algorithms (i.e. math, data and computing) and accessible, at-scale applications (i.e. technology & realisation).

Yet, mediating these issues requires understanding of this process and subtle interventions: considering data as individual (i.e. user) property and operationalising legal principles (i.e. societal rules) in algorithms and application code. Understanding mediation between those forces is essential to reach an intervention that is beyond awareness: a feasible solution.

Economics

Lastly, we find business as a more dualistic force in these circumstances. On the one hand, we can consider overt economic focus (i.e. business and entrepreneurship) to have overridden individual interests. Yet again, legislation (i.e. society) has offered counter-force to this balance in establishing practices which must be incorporated in business models. Moreover, a lack of investment (i.e. business) in these societally-prescribed user experiences (i.e. user and aesthetics) has arguably exacerbated the problem, rather than solving it.

Conclusion

As solutions again offer such counterweight in other perspectives (e.g. UX) they must however be feasible (i.e. affordable) and attractive even for organisations to implement. With Privacy UX Patterns, such solutions are counter-intuitively provided for free, with the intent of greatly increasing access to these solutions. As such, we may consider again this overlap between business and society in models that facilitate ongoing development of societally indispensable user experiences.