Envisioning future experience for online data privacy

Abstract

Data privacy has become increasingly complex and critically urgent in today’s digital society. As individuals engage with various online services, vast amounts of personal data are continuously collected and analyzed through different digital platforms and services. Even with the protection of GDPR in the EU, privacy risks persist in everyday life, which could become more subtle and complex due to the rapid development of the socio-technological context. 

While privacy goes beyond mere compliance, it’s about empowerment. Privacy threats are deeply embedded in everyday digital experiences, often invisible, making it difficult for individuals to recognize them. Besides, privacy is inherently subjective, meaning its significance and interpretation vary widely among individuals. Traditional privacy research, often grounded in legal or technical compliance, tends to overlook these personal, situated experiences. This project argues that it is crucial to help people become aware of and reflect on privacy, as it is essential to developing more nuanced understandings of the concept.

Additionally, speculative design and future studies played a key role in this project, which were used to challenge conventional thinking and propose a range of alternative futures. Future design and speculative design are used to open up new possibilities for the transformation and innovation of services. In doing so, the work contributes to an evolving body of research that views design as a tool for critique and change, inspiring various future possibilities. The project advocates for future design practices rooted in individual empowerment and reflective experience.

Based on these, the study focuses on two interrelated and progressive objectives: 
Raise awareness and gather collective insights
Envision the alternative future intervention of online privacy in users experience

To achieve these goals in the research, the research unfolds in three primary phases:

Grounding privacy risks in context: Understanding the risks within the current socio-technical context of online privacy. The findings include privacy threats towards individuals developed from the theories, case study grounding in real-world risks, and individual concerns, as well as insights from an auto-ethnography study. 

Raise awareness: we expand the research by exploring “preposterous futures” in the collection, processing, and storage stages of data practice. Set in  “preposterous futures”, three speculative design artifacts were developed based on the collection, processing, and storage stages of data practice, with follow-up participatory workshops to raise awareness. The findings reveal collective concerns about individual future privacy, which helped us build a deeper understanding of online privacy.

Towards a meaningful future intervention: Leveraging collective insights, we explore plausible future possibilities, where insights collected from individuals are translated into concrete future service and design concepts. In this phase, the alternative future intervention “Echoes of Privacy” is developed. Set in a near-future world, this intervention envisions a new paradigm of sustainable privacy that, with the proper structure, could empower individuals. The alternative service can be accessed by participants with a tangible prototype and a future narrative.