There is a lot of conversation about giving both control and value of data back to users - mostly prompted by revelations of data abuse in social networks. This post is an exploration of some user experience principles that could become standard practice.

  • Freedom to Access - All personal data is accessible via an API
  • Freedom to Transfer - All data can be verifiably transferred off any service. If I want my information to be gone from a social network, I should be able to do this easily.
  • Freedom to become anonymous - Related to above - Users should be able to instruct AI models to be reconstructed without their data. This is a very complex
  • Trust in Data Formatting - All data is preserved or converted into a format that is easy to use / move around. Proprietary storage formats can become a form of data hijacking.
  • Compliance - Whether its HIPAA or GDPR, compliance will become a more important factor for users trying new services.
  • Anonyminity + Privacy - The ability to stay (or become) anonymous should a user choose. I think we’re moving towards a world where privacy is going to become a central topic and factor in the buying / using decision.
  • Transparency - It will have to be clear how data is being used - in what way, and how value is being derived from it.

This is a much larger topic and these are only some principles. As with most things - my hypothesis is these will be adopted by a popular product. This will then make it a standard across all new products.