A transcript of Episode 238 of UX Podcast. James Royal-Lawson, Per Axbom, and Tim Kariotis talk about what privacy is and how to embed it into design as well as understanding the privacy, information and even social norms around information.
This transcript has been machine generated and checked by Tomasz Koper.
Transcript
James Royal-Lawson
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Computer voice
UX Podcast episode 238.
[Music]
Per Axbom
I’m Per.
James Royal-Lawson
And I’m James.
Per Axbom
And this is UX Podcast, balancing business technology and people every other Friday since 2011, with listeners in 194 countries around the world from Singapore to Tanzania.
James Royal-Lawson
Tim Kariotis is a research fellow in Regulation and Design at the Melbourne School of Government and is currently researching in the space of digital health ethics, privacy and smart cities.
Per Axbom
Tim has been talking about privacy and contextual integrity for many years, particularly in relation to healthcare. So he joined us to talk more about embedding privacy into design.
James Royal-Lawson
So Tim, maybe we can start off just by asking you what is privacy?
Tim Kariotis
That’s a really great and surprisingly hard question to answer. And I’m pretty sure there’s more than a few books on this issue. I think that privacy is both a legal concept and I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t spend too long thinking about the legal side of things apart from how it intersects with the things I’m interested in, which is, I guess the social idea of privacy. I would also say that privacy is a social concept. We use it a lot in day-to-day life to talk about when someone’s usually breached our privacy.
But I think most importantly, privacy is a feeling like when you feel like your privacy is being breached, it’s a feeling that it was a bit, something feels wrong and when someone introduces something new to you that you think breaches your privacy, you know, somewhere deep inside, that that feels wrong. And usually we ascribe that feeling to privacy. And I think that for most people, they might then link that to some legal idea. But I think it really starts with a feeling and I think that’s something which needs a lot more investigation, especially as we enter a new digital world about how these feelings play out and how people adapt to those feelings. But for me, it’s a legal concept, it’s a sociology concept but it’s also something that we feel.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, so I guess you’ve also got that privacy is a data thing so it’s kind of things about me but it’s also a physical privacy. Or physical of myself and physical of the domain that I see as my my own. So like, this is my private office, you could say. And I have some privacy while I’m in my private space and I can share things privately in that space. So I can see and feel straight away what a lot of levels, a lot of concepts around privacy.
Tim Kariotis
Yeah, definitely and I think it’s interesting to think back to where privacy first started and into the first discussions about privacy. And it’s interesting thinking about privacy is a very masculine concept, because, I would say, it’s very patriarchal in that it was about the man having domination over his household. And there’s a wonderful feminist scholarship, actually critiquing privacy and how it’s developed from those roots, which I think is really interesting to consider when we think about issues such as domestic violence and family violence and how privacy can act against people in that situation where people feel like they can’t question what goes on behind someone’s closed doors.
James Royal-Lawson
Now it’s the degree of ownership, of course. Well, privacy is ownership.
Tim Kariotis
In a way.
Per Axbom
Yeah, I love that insight about that it’s also emotions. It’s also about how I’m feeling about my space, my belongings, and sometimes you can’t really put a finger on what was it that made me feel this way, which also implies that privacy can be very different for different people. So that makes it really hard to regulate around it because who gets to decide what privacy is? And if the patriarchy is deciding that, perhaps because they define themselves as having the most to lose, then loss is a big part of it, who loses what and in what perspective?
Tim Kariotis
That’s a very good point. And I think that in my space of healthcare, I think a lot about who gets to define the privacy norms in the healthcare setting. And there’s a really wonderful theory and book by Helen Nissenbaum that situates privacy as being about information norms. And the work I’ve been doing is trying to really think about how those norms come about and how they get challenged by technology and who gets to decide how those norms develop.
And for me in healthcare, it’s fascinating to think about the increasing role that our service uses play and starting to define what information is important and when it’s important. But also, you know, for me, critical theory comes in here because there’s a lot of surface level understandings of health, of government, of any sector of our lives. But when you dig a little bit deeper, that’s using feminist theory, decolonization theory, you can start to really see some complex power dynamics here, which are really shaping what we consider as legitimate information and legitimate reasons to share or not share information.
James Royal-Lawson
So when we’re talking about norms around privacy. Is this when we consider what we feel is okay information to be shared? So like, if I’m talking to you now, the norm around that would be, of course, I think it’s okay to share my name with you. Maybe kind of weird not to share my name with you when we’re doing an interview. But there might be other things about me that I would consider in this context not to be normal, I guess, to share with you.
Tim Kariotis
Yes. And that’s a really great example. The example I always use is, um, if I’m out at a bar with one of my friends and I point over at some guy at another table and tell him that I think that guy’s cute and they go and tell the guy I said that, that that might be breaching a norm, I would probably not expect my friend to go do that. But then if we end up getting married and have a happy life, I might not worry about it, the actual outcome might be very different.
But the way Helen Nissenbaum describes norms that she says you can break it down. You can say that in any norm situation there’s different actors. There’s the sender of information, there’s the receiver of the information and there’s the subject of the information. There’s the type of information – is that information about my feelings towards some guy at the bar, is it the information about my health. And then there’s these things called transmission principles. So it’s kind of this expectation. So if you tell me your name, you probably don’t attach too many principles around how I should use that. But if you would share with me something really personal, you would probably expect that I wouldn’t share that with anyone who doesn’t already know that. Well, you might expect there’s some information that you might share with me, and you would expect I will reciprocate that information. And if I don’t, you might find that a bit weird and not following the social norms of this conversation.
Per Axbom
Wow. So tell us a bit about how this applies to our work in design, because it seems really, really difficult to understand the thinking that each individual user of your site has of course around what they want to protect, and what is okay for them to share with you and for you to share with third parties.
Tim Kariotis
So the way I think that this fits into design, and I think a lot about privacy by design, and for me privacy by design is really saying that we should consider design in the way we build our processes, our technologies, our systems, so that it’s not about things going wrong as an artist having a recourse in the law. Sadly, privacy by design is really engineering by design at the moment. It’s mostly engineers creating technologies that are privacy preserving but I would argue that designers have a real key role in the design process in terms of questioning the norms in any situation before technology is developed, questioning the technology and the assumptions behind it.
So I do a lot of work in electronic health records. And in Australia we have a thing called the My Health Record, which is a national electronic health record. And when I think about the national electronic health record, and how that defines the norms and even just defines the context of healthcare, it’s very different to the norms and contexts that we actually see on the ground in healthcare. So I would say that’s a perfect place for a designer to actually start to say “Okay, well, what are the different norms assumed in the technology and what are the actual norms in practice? How can we close that gap in the design decisions we’re making?” And this is also a great place not just for UX designers, also for service designers to work together in this space in terms of defining the norms. And if you’re feeling really adventurous, I could start to think about how did these norms come about? And if I introduce the technology, a certain part of stakeholders is going to appropriate that in ways that other stakeholders might find are not to their privacy expectations.
Per Axbom
So we’re living in a world where having information about people is very profitable. So I agree completely with challenging the norms and that being the role of the designer, but how do you get the mandate to also act on that insight and act on that knowledge?
Tim Kariotis
I think consumers are moving with their feet. I think that’s one thing. I think we’re increasingly seeing, especially in the technology space, we’re seeing a convergence of privacy norms. So when I think about Apple and Samsung over the last decade or so, we’ve seen that their privacy features have become very similar because people have started to expect certain privacy features. And whether or not those privacy features are good or not the fact that they expect them means that any technology company, which now doesn’t have those features, is seen as an outlier.
So I think that you can sell these privacy norms and that feeling I spoke about at the start, that icky feeling when you feel like someone has breached your privacy – that’s a really powerful feeling and I think in Australia, once again, the My Health Record, many people had that icky feeling, and it led to the government passing legislation to try and address those issues. The same now with things like COVID-19 tracing apps, we know that in Australia and other countries, governments have worked really hard to address feelings that many people couldn’t pinpoint to a legal issue or to any actual risks into technology, that feeling that it didn’t really sit with the norms that they expected in their relationship with government. So I do think it’s a really powerful thing for designers to bring to the team. And I don’t think anyone else in the team is probably going to be doing that role.
James Royal-Lawson
I think it’s a really interesting example about contact tracing apps right now. There you’ve got a specific context and I can imagine that for many people there’ll be an implied or implicit agreement as they go into using the app to use certain data in that context. And that context is very relevant now. But how do we manage and maintain context that shifts over time? Because I might not want them to have this information or do anything with it at all in a year’s time or so on.
Tim Kariotis
Yeah, and I guess that’s a really good point around how context change and this is of great interest to me and I think we things like the COVID-19 tracing apps, this is why we’ve seen in Australia, the federal government being very clear in the legislation about what context this data will not leak into, being very clear that it only been used in certain contexts. I’m unsure if it have actually set a time limit to that, which I think is an interesting question. Because I think in a crisis we do make a trade off, we do say that there are certain societal values and certain goals and ends that we’re happy to change these norms for.
But I think context is an interesting thing. Because context can be defined in many ways. And I think of several that is the context that we defined for institution. So if you think about healthcare, the hospital is a context. But then that might be very different to my experience of the healthcare system. To me healthcare is actually my friends and family who I go to for support. And then as a technology designer, and usually you’re already given a technology, you’re given a general idea of something you’re designing and that in itself comes with a context and I think the challenge for designers when they’re thinking about context, if that’s context in one time and space or over time, is what context are they being forced to see through the lens of the technology? And how can they actually look at other ways of viewing that context, because I think that’s going to bring out different privacy norms that they might not ever realise if they keep looking at the context through the lens of the technology.
James Royal-Lawson
That’s the thing also now – when we design on so many different levels is one thing designing the collection of information from the initial interface between the user or the provider of the information, another person who’s giving up privacy for your purpose, and various interfaces or views of that information behind it. I mean, it might be like if I’m giving that information directly to my doctor is one thing, but further down the information chain, there might be other medical stuff looking that information? I mean, how do we make sure that the initial context travels with it?
Tim Kariotis
That is a huge challenge and I think it’s something that I think we’re still trying to grapple with, even in the age of artificial intelligence and machine learning where one piece of data can take on so much meaning. I think the first thing we can do is we can start to think about privacy as less of an individual issue and more of a social issue. I think that’s really important. Because when we start to think about groups of people – so I work in the mental health space, mostly with my research, and we started to critically think about what mental health service users or lift experience users want and need. I think it makes it easier because we’re not just focusing on service user by service user – so thinking about that social value of privacy- and how do we take the context with it.
To me I think it’s looking at ways that we can capture context, how do we capture context and in what words and language. I’m a sociologist, I tend to draw in a lot of sociology theory from people like Paulo Freire who spoke about grounding meaning in the language of those right at the bottom of the pyramid. So he was working with very poor people in Brazil and trying to teach them English. And he was thinking “Why isn’t this working? I’m using these flashcards of oranges and apples on them” and they didn’t even know what oranges and apples were so he said “Well, maybe if I start by understanding their context, in the words that they put to things I can better move this forward”. So I think the design is actually understanding the language of all the different stakeholders – it’s a key point to then working out how context is different and viewed differently between different people in the chain and then working how you design for that.
Per Axbom
Yeah, that’s really good. I’m instantly thinking actually of something simple that we all have on our websites – cookies, and we all have these disclaimers around: “Accept these cookies and these cookies we have because we want to create a better user experience for you”. But that is the designers of the system deciding what is the better experience based on that type of data. So they’ve never ever had the design process where they include the people whose information they are taking to improve the experience to actually debate or ascertain whether or not it’s worth it.
Tim Kariotis
Mm hmm. And I’m a big proponent of participatory design in all its flavours. I think that actually bringing in people whose data is being used and, actually… Participation for me is a weird thing. Because I think sometimes we can get so caught up in ideas of co-design and really deep ideas, we’re hindering the theory of it all – I think it’s having that letter of participation all the way from consultation to citizen control and then using all those different tools and now process.
And it could be as simple as some of the work I’m doing at the moment where I’m just calling some of my participants and going “Hey, we had this conversation, and this is how I’ve interpreted that. Does that make sense how I’ve understood it and how I’m applying it?”. And that’s really just consultation. But it’s really powerful. And I think when we get too caught up in trying to do co-design over time, we sometimes lose those other elements of participation that can be just as important for designers – just to check in and say “Hey, does this make sense?” and then moving forward.
Per Axbom
Yeah, I have to share what I’m actually doing now with with nurses as well. I’m sending short clips of videos of interfaces out to them explaining what we’re changing and their feedbacking. And they do it in their own time, because it’s video so you can do it in their own time, because these are busy people. And that’s the same thing. They’re actually just – it’s sort of consultation. But then over time, they also can see “Hey, I had that idea and you changed it” and they realise “Oh my god, I’m part of the process!”.
Tim Kariotis
Those loops are so important.
Per Axbom
Yeah.
James Royal-Lawson
I mean, we think now as well about going back to the beginning, we talked about legal privacy as well and what you Per just said about cookies. We have those ‘terms and conditions’ things as well as cookie disclaimers, that massive bits of long legalese that no one reads, no one understands. But this is what we ground, the rights that we give up in many cases, websites in. So I guess, reflecting on what both of you saying here, we really should be working on checking in with our users according to that text and saying “Hey, I know we’ve got all this legal text, but if I put it like this to you, does that sound okay?”
Tim Kariotis
Mhmm. And I think doing some journey mapping is a really powerful tool – I think it’s ,you know, it’s an essential tool for any UX designer – but doing some journey mapping around norms. And if you’re going to introduce something which is going to change those norms and working out when someone gets that icky feeling that could be a really great time to introduce a bit of a check-in and say “Hey, just a little reminding , this was in the terms and conditions and that might be a good or a bad thing that might be a “Hey, we’re using your data for this but you know, just in case you didn’t realise” or “Hey, we’re actually protecting your data”. But I think the fact that you’re acknowledging that people are going to have that bit of an icky feeling, I think that’s really powerful. And obviously, we would like to move on to mitigating that but I think the acknowledgement is, is just as an important step.
Per Axbom
That means you’re actually adding again, you’re adding context, because you’re actually presenting the idea of taking that data within the context of taking it, instead of having them read something that they’ve read maybe a year ago in terms of service statements.
Tim Kariotis
And that temporal element, I think, is really key because I think about the type of services I engage with and sometimes they send me a little link saying “Hey, we’ve updated our terms and conditions”. But we’re really engaging in a relationship with our customers or our clients. So as soon as this fuses in, like in any good relationship, it’s always good to have a bit of a check in. It’s always good to say the things that seem common sense, but once again, that icky feeling in any sort of customer-client relationship, sometimes that’s really hard to voice so if the actual service provider or product maker actually just creates that space, I think it can be really powerful for people.
James Royal-Lawson
I think now it’s all about how, that icky feeling you were saying about, some organisations might not have the same feeling as you when it comes to this and that, I know many of us have struggled with that over the years where you find yourself in organisations where you’re a bit shocked maybe about how data is used or manipulated and realised through your own work how little knowledge sometimes maybe people have about it.
Tim Kariotis
And one of the things I guess that I am thinking of more recently, in terms of the role of design, is actually where designers fit into data governance process and I think things like the general data protection regulation – the GDPR, really do push us towards needing good data governance strategies. And I think that’s where designers can play another really big role. For me, I’m thinking more and more about more participatory data governance, right now we have a very laissez faire data governance, where as long as you’re following the rules of what not to do, you can kind of do whatever you want, and you have your noticing consent.
But I think that you can really sell engaging participants into data governance process and setting the values around data and use and the principles around and use is actually a selling point, because that makes you different to any other company, if you can point to a data governance process, which has participatory elements, has certain values and say, “Hey, we’re only going to use your data for these things that you’ve helped us outline” I think people will look at that and go “Ah, that’s really different to other organisations who just want me to sign my notice and consent and never talk to me again”. So that’s where I’m moving to with my work – really thinking about how designers run their role in creating really good data governance processes that actually bring participants into the process of discussing this long term use of data.
James Royal-Lawson
This also brings us to trust. I mean, what you’re talking about there is building up trust, trustworthy relationship between clients and organisations that – if I see that you behave like that with my data from day one, then I’m going to maybe have that expectation, or rather, I’m going to understand that should your use of identity or how you wish to use my data changes, are you actually going to ask me, and you’re gonna have a dialogue with me? Because we’ve built that relationship up.
Tim Kariotis
Yeah, definitely. And I always think with my own example, I look out to the rest of the world and think where has this happened before and I think in terms of participatory deliberation on data, we can look at things like participatory budgeting which happens in Brazil, and in some states to the US, and in other places around the world as well. And participatory budgeting is kind of like it’s a trusting relationship between citizens and in that case government where they’re deciding around how money should be used. And it’s not easy, like people have fought to set up those participatory budgeting processes over decades.
And I think that in our work, we need to realise that this stuff doesn’t happen overnight, and that it might take a long time. And I think that some of its going to come from the consumer, some of its going to come from government, I think that many governments will not sit still on this and we will see new data governance strategies imposed in organisations in the near future, I would say the GDPR is one step in a very long and winding journey we’re going to have towards new conceptualizations of privacy and data governance. So I would say that organisations that can get on to this today are going to be well set up to what the changes that are going to come in the next few years and decades.
Per Axbom
So if you’re a designer today, and you really aren’t thinking about privacy at all, because it’s hasn’t been part of your work specification essentially – where do you start? How do you get started thinking about this? Because I’m going to probably argue that most designers who work at least on large websites haven’t even read their own websites Terms of Service and privacy policy.
Tim Kariotis
That’s a really great question. And I think it’s really hard, like even me as a researcher, I have very rarely read a Terms and Conditions policy. And I’m like, in some ways I feel a bit ashamed saying that but in other ways, I think that ,you know, even if I did read these, websites I access are essentials like you know, their essential I could not access them. Look, I think a great starting place is that I love reading, so I would recommend a lot of books. A book I kind of always go back to, it’s a bit of my Bible, is “Privacy in context” by Helen Nissenbaum. And the reason it’s a bit of a Bible for me is because it does provide a bit of an outline of privacy as a legal concept, but then goes into that icky feeling that we were talking about and how we actually start to conceptualise that in words that we can use in our work.
I also think that just actually list – like our customers, and our service users tell us so much like any Reddit, blog, forum, you’re going to read streams and streams of people talking about how they’re conceding privacy and when they think privacy is being breached. So that’s probably going to give you a good starting point in terms of thinking about a more social idea of privacy that you might not get in some of your other user testing. But I would say, you know, read, listen and talk to people. If someone wants to have a coffee Zoom date with me I’m happy to chat about it for hours on and I think that having those interdisciplinary connections across the organisation and across organisations is a really important way that we should be moving forward in this space.
Per Axbom
Thank you so much. That was a perfect note to end on.
Tim Kariotis
Wonderful.
Per Axbom
Thank you, Tim.
[Music]
Per Axbom
So something I think is going through a lot of listeners minds as we’re talking to Tim, is that “Okay – so you want me to be able to code, you want me to consider accessibility, you want me to understand download times. And now you also want me to be an expert on privacy?”. And it seems like we keep adding and adding and adding all these things that the UXer has to be responsible for.
James Royal-Lawson
Did we ever say this was simple?
Per Axbom
And my response to that is yes, and that is exactly why we can’t always be only one UXer per project. That’s why we need many UXers because everything that impacts human well being is our responsibility.
James Royal-Lawson
Responsibility, responsibility, I mean, well, I think…
Per Axbom
It’s within our interest.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, exactly. This the the whole thing of awareness and that is something we’ve touched on many times – we’re like magnets when it comes to these kind of things. We are the hub. We are where all these little bits and bobs connect together in many organisations and you can’t possibly be a specialist in all of them. There’s just not enough hours in your career to be a specialist in all of these different things. But, and you’re right, when you talked about should we code? The one thing that we said was “no, you don’t have to actually do the coding”. But by understanding coding, by understanding how you develop CSS, understanding how information systems work, and how the privacy laws work, and how consent works, all this kind of stuff, helps you as a designer produce a more robust and more beneficial experience to the people on the other side.
Per Axbom
Exactly. So yeah, you’re right. It’s not always the responsibility. But it’s, I mean, it makes us better designers. Just that awareness. And that’s why reading books other than design books also makes us better designers because it’s part of understanding the human experience.
James Royal-Lawson
And then we’re down to again, I guess, the whole thing of curiosity. And I personally think the best designers I work with are the most curious ones. Because if you’re just producing then there’s so much that’s just passing you by and that’s where the risk creeps in of doing things that harm others, doing things that are sub-optimal, doing things that you know aren’t going to be a good way of doing something.
Per Axbom
Right and you have to explore stuff to understand what you will learn from them. You will always be surprised, you will always learn something that will be of use and value to you – maybe not now but somewhere along the line.
James Royal-Lawson
And in this conversation with Tim my geek bells were tingling all the time. I mean we could have literally talked for hours about information, concepts and flow and structure and interfaces between information points. There’s so much we could talk about here and when we’re not academics in this area, but I start seeing how this impacts on so much that we do. And I get excited by that.
Per Axbom
Yeah, but I actually think his example was so good. We didn’t linger upon it really. But the example he had, where he’s with a friend in a bar, he says “that guy looks cute” and his friend walks over and tells “Oh, my friend over here says you look cute”. And that perhaps passes a line. But then he also said “Well, what if it happens then that we get married in the end?”. So the outcome is always more interesting than the the ethical standpoint you may have in the moment of were you actually thinking well “you passed the line there, I didn’t want you to do that”. But the outcome of it turned out really, really well. You never know.
James Royal-Lawson
No, no.
Per Axbom
That was makes it so difficult. That’s why you always need to be communicating.
James Royal-Lawson
And I’m going to do a “yes under” part of that one. Because what I was thinking of as well with just that example, it was so good, it was used as an example on how… You know, that was information he gave to his friend and then the friend did something that was out of the rules of the game of such. But then I was thinking “Yeah, but what if it was one of those situations where he said that because he actually wanted the friend to actually go over? And it was one of those kind of like implied things “Oh, yeah, he’s really cute”. And he didn’t go over himself. So he said it to his friend because he knew his friend was the type of person that would go over and say something. So he actually was planned all along. It gets complicated. We’re into psychology again.
Per Axbom
It does. And again, you acknowledge how different we all are, how different our sense of privacy is, that some people are okay with people walking into homes and grabbing stuff, but others just are not. And so that it, it makes it so much more complicated, but it also really, really emphasises the point that you have to always, always be aware about these different feelings that people may have and actually treat people not perhaps as you yourself would like to be treated, but ask them how they want to be treated. That’s important. Always be asking people how they want to be treated, never assume.
James Royal-Lawson
Which is interesting. So if we think, well, Jared Spool talks about current knowledge, you know, to rather than talk about consistency, he talks about current knowledge and understanding what is the user’s current knowledge of a situation? Here, we’re talking about current relationship, what is the current relationship between the user of a system and the system or the organisation itself? How do you assess the current relationship and the level of trust?
Like, going back to the example in the bar, how do I know whether it’s one of the situations where I’m telling my friend and it is a friend that I would tell stuff in confidence to. Or it’s a friend that I would use as a proxy to do something for me because I don’t do it myself. They’re very specific to those relationships. And you’ve learned that over time over years, maybe even decades. Whereas in the context of a digital product or website we’ve got to understand this or at least ask – do we ask about it all the time, we can’t ask too much because it destroys the relationship too. It’s a dynamic and interesting and powerful mechanism this we’re talking about.
Per Axbom
That understanding of it actually being relationships is so important. I remember seeing a tweet yesterday, where someone got an email from an organisation that started with “Since you used our services in the past and we’ve had contact and treated like, uhm, sounded like friends” and he realised “Well I attended a course from this company eight years ago and hasn’t heard a word from them since but now all of a sudden out of the blue, they they’re treating him like “You’ve used our services and we would like to have you back”. That’s just creepy.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, I think I got an email the other week. And I had no idea who the company was. So I checked out a bit. And it turned out that they’d change name or they’d been bought or so, so it wasn’t the same company as when I’d last use them. But of course, they just moved the data to the new company, and lost me on the way. So this is one of the things again about context, the context had changed, the relationship had changed, relationship was old. And that then became really weird and I guess got frustrated, I mean, what do you mean by emailing me? You shouldn’t be emailing me – I don’t know you.
Per Axbom
That’s when you get the icky feeling. I’m going to be using that because I think we need icky feeling tests and icky feeling workshops where people really talk about what could actually creep people out or make them feel uncomfortable.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. So if you’re the one in charge of doing that newsletter or news email. How do you assess who’s going to get that icky feeling? How would you? How would you check the validity of the information you’re using to reach out and do that?
Per Axbom
Right? It’s interesting. Yeah. I always say to people -“never send something, the first version, to your full lists, always – sent to a segment”. Always be aware that you will always need some feedback before you send to everyone.
James Royal-Lawson
Freshness of data, I mean, the GDPR kind of covers some of this, that you shouldn’t keep data forever. And I think some of the examples we’re talking about now actually show in a practical way, rather than just a legal way why it’s risky using stuff that you don’t know where it’s coming from, or how old it is or the context it was gathered in.
Per Axbom
Exactly.
James Royal-Lawson
You know and so on.
Per Axbom
And we did touch upon, of course, the topic of terms and conditions. And you dug up an old episode of ours as a recommendation to listen to next. It was like seven years ago.
James Royal-Lawson
Yes, seven years ago in 2013, when we talked to Pär Lannerö about simplifying terms and conditions. It’s a really good chat. We do had problem with your sound, Per, during that episode – your mic broke.
Per Axbom
That one.
James Royal-Lawson
But if you ignore them bits, then it’s still a good listen.
Per Axbom
It’s the other Per who you need to listen to.
James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. Thank you for listening. Always a pleasure. Quick reminder, you can contribute to funding UX Podcast by visiting uxpodcast.com/support.
Per Axbom
And don’t forget to volunteer to help us with publishing.
Remember to keep moving.
James Royal-Lawson
See you on the other side.
[Music]
Per Axbom
What did the termite say as he walked into the bar?
James Royal-Lawson
I don’t know, Per, what did the termite say as he walked into the bar?
Per Axbom
Is the bartender here? Get it?
James Royal-Lawson
Oh…
Per Axbom
The “bar tender”.
James Royal-Lawson
I was just about say I don’t get it and then the penny dropped. He’s gonna eat the bar, isn’t he?
This is a transcript of a conversation between James Royal-Lawson, Per Axbom, and Timothy Kariotis recorded in May 2020 and published as Episode 238 of UX Podcast.