Hey friends,
It’s already been a month since my internship ended, and it has been a lazy one. I have taken the time to reflect on my recent work and am ready to move into the next stage of my life in a new country among new people, but that’s for some other time.
I have been somewhat interested recently in privacy and security systems in the digital space and have just taken on a small side project thinking about people’s control over their privacy. I came across a new concept that I thought you all would find interesting as well.
Creepiness-Convenience Tradeoff
The concept is about the pros and cons that we often consider before buying a new product or subscribing to a new service. The tradeoff is when people are willing to overlook the negatives for the sake of the benefits, even when it invades their privacy.
There must have been times when you felt you should completely avoid something or let someone else try it first, and only when you feel left out, do you decide to go along with it. And soon, you are comfortable using the product or service. Personal experience, I remember being skeptical about location tracking being turned on at all times on my mobile. I used to actively check and turn it off frequently. Now, I do the opposite. I prefer keeping my location on just because I use Maps a lot and like location-based suggestions.
It might seem like this tradeoff is a hazard to our free-thinking, but this is also a standard trick in the design industry. As people are more concerned about sharing their data, companies are rolling out certain features slowly while gradually asking for more. When you can balance great features with a little compromise on personal data, many are ready to give in.
While I am looking into this, I am also thinking about these balances that one can create to nudge a person giving up a little more about themselves — a discount offer, a big brand name, or a shiny new trending platform. There’s certainly a lot to explore.
The Cycle of Give and Take
Now, all of this makes me wonder if it really is a natural pros and cons comparison like I mentioned earlier, or as the Nielsen-Norman Group suggests, a cost-benefit analysis. When designers (or, in general, decision-makers) trick people into seeing a few more benefits than the drawbacks to getting opt-in, it just helps them collect more data and information about people. When they learn more about what people like, dislike, and prefer, it just builds up to getting more opt-ins from the same people or new customers.
What if people could see a full list of pros and cons, a true one? Instead of “share your location data to see nearby stores, “ people are also made aware of potential dangers, like tracking data of someone visiting the same place regularly or using the same route every day can lead to identifying specific people. The choice people make after they are presented with all positives and negatives, only then can it be a true choice.
This is definitely not something easy to do even for designers, engineers, and other decision-makers in building today’s products simply because of the scale of connectedness that we live in. However, there are better ways to help people make good choices, and it is time we seriously dive into them as we move towards immersive and decentralized worlds.