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: Another death knell for accessibility on Twitter

I interviewed Portland-based developer Hannah Kolbeck to discuss how Twitter’s proposed API changes will further undermine accessibility for its users.

Hannah created two apps—AltTextUtil and AltTxtReminder—which utilize Twitter's API to enable accessibility for images on the platform. When Twitter eventually added (some) similar functionality, Anil Dash noted that the debut of Twitter’s feature lacked acknowledgment of Hannah and others, who had such tools "that have been helping with accessibility on the platform for years.”

Anecdotally, Hannah says, a couple of Blind people have told her when her bot becomes inactive, Twitter will cease being usable for them.

While writing this piece, I noticed that Twitter has suspended AltTxtReminder. Hannah told me Twitter never notified her about that suspension, nor have they provided any reason for it since.

Teaching STEM Club at Unity Prep

Teaching with my colleague Kyle at Unity Prep in Bedford-Stuyvesant and Brownsville neighborhoods of Brooklyn.

Our group of us from our team at Razorfish/Publicis Groupe developed a curriculum to teach at the STEM Club at Unity Preparatory School in Brooklyn, starting mid 2020. Since then, we’ve taught each semester, expanding and developing our curriculum along the way. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed teaching this smart bunch of kids about AR/VR technology, collaborative sketching and user experience design in general.

We began by teaching remotely, so it was a real joy to join them in person this year for the winter session, when we brought in Google cardboard VR kits donated by the good folks at Google and had a great time demonstrating how to use them with the students. Each student got to take a VR kit home, too.