Rethinking usability in a world of data ownership by Rachel | Devcon SEA

[Music] all right hey everyone I want to start with a little poll of the room so uh can you raise your hand if you ever opened a social app to connect with a friend that was your intention only to get lost in some content that you can't look away from okay yes so relatable experience um maybe even this week while you're in Chang my you meant to check in with a friend send them or sorry we're in Bangkok now um you meant to check in with a friends send them photos of your trip um but you got busy catching up on important content and maybe you're thinking yeah Rachel that's ads based social media it's for dopamine hits and you're not wrong but here's the thing these platforms were built on a promise of bringing people together many still claim human connection as their core Mission so today I want to examine this disconnect for those of us genuinely seeking meaningful relationships through these social apps are they actually helping us achieve that and more importantly how does our lack of data ownership undermine our ability to truly connect let me take you back a little bit before um I was a designer I had my fair share of rage over government websites and Healthcare portals that made it really hard to be an informed law-abiding citizen and when I learned about the field of ux I was giddy over this idea that uh Services could actually be improved to the point of making it easier for people to do hard tasks uh I couldn't wait to start honing this craft and when going into the field I think um a lot of us are introduced to this book that gets recommended as essential reading uh called don't make me think it's filled with a lot of amazing principles for removing friction for users so that they can achieve their goals and um while many public service applications um at least in the states are still decades behind by usability standards social media apps have nailed these principles um they're so easy that your ser exactly what you like before you even have to think about what you want from the app but my question is when does easy become too easy when do thoughtfully crafted ux principles cross the line from enabling to exploitative what happens when frictionless design and our surrendered data serve profit rather than people when social apps makes us feel good for at least some of the time we often end up entrusting a lot of our personal data to these centralized systems but that convenience to entrust others to custody manage and use our data introduces some additional vulnerabilities the cost can come in different forms like losing sentimental things we thought were permanently ours uh or potential genuine connections with other humans lost um if we get if our accounts get hacked or uh we get banned for maybe unjust reasons um so yeah imagine losing all of these things um but perhaps most relevant right now is uh what if we lose genuine quality time with the people that we care about um to successful attention capture and as a Devcon attendee this might be old news for some of you but for the average consumer it may not be obvious that the companies will use our behavioral and informational data to bait us into opening their and keeping it open longer to maximize the number of eyeballs on ads and I believe all of these costs are making us feel less connected to the people we actually want to connect to I think it's really important to remember that designing for usability isn't as simple as ease of use it's about designing systems that help users actually achieve their goals there was this time when I believed these popular social apps could be a place to connect and it always felt strange that these connections happened publicly by riding on each other's walls or that all of my interests were broadcast to all of my friends I remember exactly when it clicked for me that the promise of connection here was an empty one so when this ad ran in 2022 that claimed personalized ads make for a better world by helping us fit in and be happier by buying more products the tagline was good ideas deserve to be found and for this brief moment there was full Embrace of the truth the video has since been deleted from YouTube so I don't know maybe they realized they couldn't convince users that buying things would make them feel less empty inside and while we see now the return to human connection rhetoric externally you'll find a focus on content consumption if you look a little deeper I thought I would find empowering users in a lot of designers bios uh with a quick search but the focus um seems to be Empower primarily on empowering creators creators of content the goal is getting more people creating more content that keeps folks on the apps longer the user desire for a genuine human connection remains unmet so what happened happens when we flip the script when we put data back in users hands genuine connection becomes more than just website copy let's examine this through the three pillars of usability Effectiveness efficiency and safety and I want you to like do some thought exercises with me what might it feel like like to use a more effective social app that helps us you know go back to achieving that goal of connecting with other people maybe we reconsider the don't make me think philosophy instead of algorithmic suggestions that keep us scrolling past our bed times imagine apps that aren't trying to hijack our attention imagine no more for you page bombarding you with content the moment you open the app to message a friend instead you see tools for intentional connection you not an algorithm decide what connections would be meaningful you choose what to share when to share it and who sees it by utilizing your private private portable social graph now let's consider efficiency when we own our data could we more efficiently connect with other users instead of broadcasting information perhaps we would narrowcast it what if instead of putting your life on display by posting and liking on public Pages you could in intentionally connect with specific people by only revealing your private data to those who meet certain match criteria almost like putting digital pheromones out into the ether you might do this to find friends who share your interests connect with mentors who complement your skills discover people in your community with similar or differing perspectives or discreetly signal that you're open to new work opportunities only if they meet certain requirements lastly how might safety be enhanced when users own their data uh I like to think about these three varieties of safety for users there's uh technical social and psychological from a technical standpoint safety can increase for users when Builders commit to using open-source code for encrypting user data instead of saying trust us I say verify imagine being able to control what you share with who go back to that and the feeling of social safety that that might bring if we had even more control over this process than we currently do and now put yourself in the future when these applications have been refined through many iter ations by awesome builders that are in this community um lots of user testing has been done and you have full control over defining the experiences you want to have utilizing your data imagine the psychological safety that might bring if the expectations remain consistent and remain consistently met this isn't just theoretical it's ux principles in practice instead of optimizing for purely engagement metrics we're optimizing for actual human connection when we own our data we're free to connect on our own terms not through the lens of uh what's most profitable for the platform so now picture yourself opening a social app and actually connecting with a friend instead of getting lost in a feed designed to keep you scrolling to me that's the promise of user owned data where technology enhances our relationships instead of competing with them at Cur we're experimenting with these ideas you can get an NFC chip at our booth on the first floor to start building your own private portable social graph to make uh MPC queries over um so you can do you can try out some of these examples that I gave in the presentation where you add your things that you're interested in um ways that you want to connect with people and while our servers don't see the data you're adding um we're running this cool cryptography that um if you do have a match over private data with another person um on the app you'll uh be notified and connected um there's a lot of design challenges in this space I think they're really fun to think through and I'm excited to meet people who um are excited to talk through these challenges um I would love to invite all of you to join us in redefining usability for an era of data ownership because I believe authentic connection is worth designing for our work is um funded by privacy and scaling Explorations who I've been with for the past 3 years um they have an we have an impact Booth right out here in the hallway so you can check out more of this open- Source tooling that makes um app experiences like the cursive one possible um thank you so much thank you for a super interesting talk um yeah uh I think we we have a few questions uh from the audience the first one besides cursive can you give classic or future use cases or examples what are current projects that meet the ux and decentralized ownership um that's something honestly that like I want to learn more about so if you have ideas um please share them with me because like doing more comparative research and testing these tools is a really important part of like all of us improving the next question ads are a way of supporting and paying for Services how should Builders and designers balance businesses with usability yeah this is a great question um and I think like we're in this privileged position that I think is like so valuable um you know that this work is funded in the way that it is so that we can run these experiments um and like I I think that there is some learning to be had and the discovery like to the answer to that question will come uh through like through trial and error and testing um I think a lot of these ideas felt like uh pipe dreams a year ago like oh it' be crazy if we could do this if we could actually put this into production and like the only reason that like everyone here can even try the app that is in production now is from like so many cycles of um testing these like Advanced cryptography in production um so yeah I don't know if I have the answer to that question at this time but I think that this Builder an experiment phase is really important uh here's some related questions but this one's a bit different can you talk about the underlying consent models baked into C cursive I um really want [Music] to encourage everyone who's interested in more of the like technical aspects of this like you know I'm really brushing the surface to go to Vivic talk at um 3:30 today um because he's going to be talking he's going to be getting into um how we achieve what is going on um in the app that you can experience um ads are a way of supporting and paying for services how should Builders and designers balance business needs with usability so okay this is something I'm excited to yeah explore if you want to talk about it like come find me because I want to try and understand this better but like um when I was kind of looking at my maps of things for this talk it's like we have in the classic models with ads users um the application company and then advertisers so like you're optimizing for uh that relationship between the advertisers and the business but like what if I don't know you can remove that party are there uh I wanted to check the question but it's gone are there ways like uh to try and balance those things I mean I think that like you know less like paid Services is one route to explore um another question right now users already have the option to control whom their data is shared with on Facebook people don't bother to go into those settings and change them how will this would be different with web 3 um I think that you know there is this feeling of like nobody cares no one cares about privacy um But as time goes on I see more and more um people in my life like caring but it's not until they actually experience the consequences that I kind of like you know dug into a little bit in this presentation to give like some personal examples um that have made my friends like stop and like think about how they're managing their privacy and their thinking about conceptualizing data ownership um one of my friends got her Facebook hacked and she lost all of her photos like that was where every photo from like our middle school high school college was stored and um like feeling that Collective boss of all of these memories in a friend group um I don't know hit everyone as like this isn't ours this isn't this person's um so I think it will I think we'll see it change over time and people wanting more optionality uh we have I think we have time for one more question um Love The Talk have you considered that without the attention economy social apps might not be sticky enough to onboard enough people to actually feel useful yeah I definitely think that um this is a valid concern and I think you know I'm interested in exploring like what is useful what utility could we bring to people and um one thing that's been on my mind is like maybe it's not about uh maximizing the time you're on the app and spending like making your Connections in it maybe it's just about like the starting point of realizing oh there's someone in this room that I could have like a really cool conversation with if I just have some amount of awareness that we're we're both here um so I'm like trying to conceptualize this different relationship with the applications we're using where it's not like so much I'm in my hotel room and I'm um you know sending messages to catch up it's more like uh in the moment how can it change the experience I'm having in a community in a space in a group I think we're running out of time for questions but if if anybody else uh has a question they can go to the cursive booth and I I think uh Rachel will be there to answer them later today yeah and lots of other amazing teammates who are helping build this experience so