Data transparency and notification

The Singapore Design Jam addressed issues around, and explored potential solutions for, data transparency, notification and consent.

Industry shares a challenge with regulators and policymakers in finding appropriate ways within services to communicate to users how and why their data is used in a way that doesn't disrupt their experience; one that clarifies their understanding of how their data is used so that they can make meaningful and well informed choices.

To modernise the way we help people understand data and the way that people are notified about its use, we have to to match the pace of technological innovation. Industry must lead to create designs for trust, transparency and control that keep up with these innovations.

Design an innovative user interface or interaction for a digital service that provides transparency around consent and notifying people about data use while also providing them with a great user experience.

The Design Jam was co-hosted by Singapore's Info-communications Development Authority IMDA and we welcomed experts from a variety of disciplines, including the Singapore design community, industry and public bodies such as the Singapore Personal Data Protection Commission PDPC, as well as academics and legal practitioners.

Below is an outline of the stages and exercises that took place at this Design Jam. For everything that you need to facilitate your own workshop, please follow the links to the relevant part of our toolkit.

Discover

On the morning of the Jam, participants were welcomed and Introduced to Design Jamming. They then took part in discovery exercises around stations: Design with Words, Analyse transparency in context and Explore Permssion Patterns.

A subject matter expert presentation was delivered by Yeong Zee Kin, Assistant Chief Executive (Data Innovation and Protection Group) of the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore (IMDA) and Deputy Commissioner of the Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC).

There then followed a short panel discussion about data and design with Ryan Goodman, Manager of Product Design at Facebook, Chris Downs, Managing Director at Normally, Leong Yeng Wai, digital consultant and Doralin Kelly, UX and UI consultant.

All participants worked to Identify opportunities by writing How Might We's on Post-Its during these presentations, and these notes were collected by the facilitation team who placed them on the wall of the day, grouping them into key thematic areas. Some of the unique groupings of questions that emerged from this Design Jam included ideas on how might we:

• change the way we experience consent and provide control?
• make consent more conversational?
• inform people about how information is being used in a touch or voice-based environment?
• design technologies with a non-linear experience curve: one that grows with the user and what they do or don't accept over time?

Ideate & Prototype

After lunch, the wall of the day was reviewed before moving into the Team kickoff. The facilitators Set brainstorming rules and introduced the teams to Sketching ideas. The teams were also given personas of young people and parents to Understand users.

It was vital to conduct market research beforehand in order to adapt the Fictional service templates to the local Singaporean context.

Each multidisciplinary team focussed on imagining transparency-focussed design patterns on different areas of fictional mobile apps, with the following focus areas:

• Friendlee - social app which allows people to organise their different friendship groups and share photos, videos, messages and manage events within each group.
• Vidi - a live video sharing platform aimed at young people. Teens can stream live video from their phone and are alerted to their friend’s live broadcasts.
• Tale -an augmented reality story-sharing and messaging mobile application which connects people to ephemeral media created by people or other entities near them.
• Ditto - a companion app for a connected speaker system with a voice-activated virtual assistant
• Suppa - a food delivery service that allows people to order meals to be delivered to their home. Suppa collects and delivers the food from restaurants nearby.
• Chariot - a ride sharing app with location sharing and travel tracking
• Garms - Peer-to-Peer fashion marketplace with suggested content and identity verification for e-commerce
• Ayr - an app to check air quality and local environment

Teams completed Challenge statements to define and refine their focus on a specific part of the challenge for each fictional app. Teams moved from sketching ideas and receiving Feedback from other teams to Building digital prototypes of a single idea. Each team filled out a presentation board to Create a pitch, telling the story of their design patterns back to the whole group and receiving Feedback from experts at the end of the day.