As a User Experience (UX) and interaction designer, I am fascinated by how technology can be utilized to make life more engaging, fun, more efficient and easier. Though when I was working with students to complete an app that would provide a innovative shopping experience, I was in for a surprise.
The design of interfaces for human computer interaction mainly focuses on minimizing friction by minimizing the user’s cognitive load. This however, turns out to have negative side-effects for that user, sometimes with dramatic consequences.
Submitting personal data through smart artefacts to the makers of these artefacts seems to have become a matter of fact. Why do we seem to trust these artefacts and services even when we could know we should not?
How would interface designers working on smart artefacts be enabled to set up an informed design process that would help to discover and clarify possible ethical and judicial issues concerning the recording, storage and use of personal data by that smart artefact?