On Friday, September 19th, I joined Medium Day to present on the topic of some emerging privacy issues around the use of AI and large language models (LLMs), as well as how designers can address these issues. Here’s a link to the full 30-minute presentation. (Zoom login required.)
Privacy & AI at HOPE 2025 /
I enjoyed presenting on the topic of how AI is affecting our privacy at the Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE_16) on Sunday, the 17th of August. The issues associated with AI and privacy are evolving at such a whirlwind pace, that I’m continuously having to update this presentation. I included a chapter on the topic in my forthcoming book, Design for Privacy, too, and there’s already much I’d add now if I could. Just yesterday, news broke that thousand of X’s user chats with Grok could be surface via a Google search. That would’ve gone in the presentation and the book, as well!
Link to the PDF version of my presentation, “AI Is Undermining Our Privacy: What Can We Do About It?”
More information about my forthcoming book, Design for Privacy.
Cover Reveal: Design for Privacy /
Cover for my forthcoming book from Rosenfeld Media.
Here’s a first for me: a book cover reveal! Above you’ll see the cover for my forthcoming book Design for Privacy, which should be available from Rosenfeld Media in November, 2025. I’m so excited to see this out in the world.
Designing for Privacy: A Book! /
Design for Privacy will advocate for the practice of “privacy by design” and examine specific and often alarming examples of these issues. Designers will learn the four pillars for privacy-centered experience design and best practices, with both good and bad examples to visualize problems along the way, so they can design more confidently with privacy in mind. And they’ll learn how to cultivate a culture which enables privacy by design.
For more about the book, visit its page over at Rosenfeld Media, where you can also signup for updates.
Brooklyn Product Design Meetup: Presentation on AI & Privacy /
I had a wonderful time presenting to the Brooklyn Product Design meetup on the topic of AI and Privacy—especially from the perspective of how UXers and product designers can position themselves to help mitigate these emerging issues. It’s a fascinating topic, which is evolving at a pace we can hardly keep up with. This is the second time I’ve presented to this group, and they’re always such a lovely and engaging audience!
Poster Presentation & Mentoring: Information Architecture Conference 2024 /
I was very happy to attend the Information Architecture Conference in Seattle, WA for the first time this year, where I presented my poster on “Designing for Privacy in an Increasingly Public World” on the evening of April 11th. A large PDF version of this poster is available on my Technique website. It’s free to use with attribution. I also enjoyed mentoring some of the attendees and meeting many smart and talented IAs there. I only wime sh I hadn’t taken so long to get around to attending!
Pamphlet: Designing for Privacy in an Increasingly Public World /
I've been presenting on the topic of privacy by design to companies and organizations, as well as my students at SVA for several years now. I just took an Illustrator class, and, for my final project, thought it'd be fun to boil that presentation down to fit into a tri-fold pamphlet, which I could distribute or folks could download if they'd like. The pamphlet version of “Designing for Privacy in an Increasingly Public World” highlights 7 best practices for privacy by design, as well as some high-level reasons our clients will want to pay attention to their customers' privacy concerns.
🔗 https://shorturl.at/syDOQ (PDF)
Update: You can also read an article version of this topic over on both UX Collective and UX Magazine.
I hope to use Technique to develop and distribute artifacts like this in the future, too. And I'm trying to determine whether this topic can be translated into a book, which would allow me to address the topic much more comprehensively, accompanying each point with case studies, illustrations, and even suggested redesigns for problem examples.
Reach out if you're interested in a presentation to your company or organization on the topic.
Article: The Tyranny of Consistency /
In 2020, Google changed the icons for their most popular apps from the ones in the top row to the ones in the bottom. Some confusion ensued. They had become too consistent—to the point of sometimes becoming almost indistinguishable from one another.
My latest article for UX Collective, “The Tyranny of Consistency” has been shared widely within the design community. In it, I argue that consistency is helpful as a tool for designing user-friendly experiences—until it isn’t. I discuss how to consider when breaking from ostensible consistency can actually improve user experiences and provide a few examples of how such variations work in practice.
Update: Thanks to UX Magazine for reprinting my piece, as well.