Futurice Blog

Privacy is a techie problem… isn’t it?

Last week I gave a presentation at OtaSizzle project’s workshop on privacy. OtaSizzle is an initiative for building a living lab and services on four campuses around the world. Social interaction and related privacy questions are at its core. Here is a short(ish) version of my talk (although with a conclusion I wrote specifically for this blog).

Which is worse: having your credit card stolen and used, or having a photo of you half-naked and drunk publicly available on the Internet? If presented with an option to choose between the two, most of us would rather have our credit card stolen than have a (presumably) unwanted photograph of ourselves in the web.

Embarrassment, losing face, and damages to our reputation are the kind of privacy and security threats we are all familiar with. We have seen and read about social blunders on social networking sites (e.g., forgetting that our mom/boss/ex-spouse can read our status updates). The tabloid newspapers have also found social media to be a goldmine in getting access to private information about the social life of public figures and celebrities.

From the point of view of computer security and privacy protection in the cyberspace this change is fundamental. Traditionally, computer security and privacy has seen the most common threat to ordinary citizens being a malevolent third party hacking into bank accounts and credit card numbers. However, in the age of Facebook, the privacy and security threats people are more concerned about come from our friends, family, friends-of-friends, acquaintances, and their networks. How to protect ourselves from a relative who keeps on posting embarrassing baby pictures? What kind of a firewall can save us from friends who share all photographs, tweets, and status updates with the whole world?

Virus protection, secure protocols, P3P, and other tools from the computer security toolbox are impotent in the face of social media privacy threats.

To make matters even more complicated, we really can’t predict what kind of privacy risks and problems future technology holds for us. The Helsingin Sanomat Kuukausiliite (8/2011) had an excellent column: the journalist was killing time at a café looking at expensive cars, typing in the license plates into a text message service to get the name of the owner, and then googling who they were (and probably using Facebook and LinkedIn as well). Quite easily he was able to get basic information to amuse himself in the sense of “a-ha, so that kind of a person owns that kind of a car… and there he walks away from his car”.

The thing about this mash-up technology is that no one ever designed it as a whole. Nobody ever sat down, planned, and implemented such a service. Rather, the clever journalist only combined common and easy services together. And he was probably not the first one to amuse himself and others with this idea. But because the combination was emergent rather than specifically designed, it just points how difficult it is to predict what the bits and pieces of services and open databases enable tomorrow. Services are like Lego blocks and practically anyone can put them together to make something new. No crystal ball can anticipate all possible combinations and the privacy issues related.

With these two points in mind (a. traditional computer security is impotent, and b. future mash-ups are impossible to anticipate) few questions push themselves to the front row: Can the privacy issues in social media be solved with more computer science and engineering? Are we building technology to solve problems originally created by technology?

To answer the first question: No. The concept of privacy captures so much of our lives that applying solely scientific and/or technological approaches to it is simply silly. Privacy is one of those topics that shows how computer science and engineering has to change and adapt to influences outside its comfort zone, such as social sciences, humanities, and legal studies. Nevertheless, go ahead and google, for example, “privacy as a service” and you get 2 billion results trying to use computation and engineering to solve the problem.

To answer the second question: Yes. We live in a society where technological advancement is intertwined with continuous economical growth, and our way of living relies on the latter, and hence, we rely on the former as well. In other words, continuous technological change is integral to our society and culture. To sustain that, it is actually kind of comforting to think that we will never run out of requirements and needs for new technologies, because the old ones are prone to create the need for the new.

To wrap this up: Yes, the geeks will inherit the Earth (i.e., the technologists will have a growing influence in our society) but the geeks need to open the front door and let in lots of new people with fresh new non-technological (and dare I say antipositivistic) thinking. And once the geeks embrace the non-techies, perhaps our future is not written solely by engineers and scientists.

Posted by Risto Sarvas 

Slut Innovations

The Slut Walk events in Finland last weekend reminded me of an innovation seminar I attended last February.

One of the studies presented in the seminar was on household innovation in consumer products (Von Hippel & al. Comparing Business and Household Sector Innovation in Consumer Products: Findings from a Representative Study in the UK). In the study the researchers had interviewed a representative sample of over one thousand people in the UK aged 18 and over.

Their study suggested that a typical consumer innovator was a technically educated male. In other words, non-technically educated women were less probable to innovate. The feminist in me raised an eyebrow!

The researchers themselves showed some reserve in making the point that women are less innovative, but on the other hand, they did not want to undermine their study by questioning its results. Neverthless, they had no explanation why their study indicated that when it comes to consumer innovation, bet your money on the men.

Well, I have an explanation: the world of technology research, development, design, engineering, and innovation has been for ages a man’s world. The language, concepts, and examples we use to think and talk about innovation come from a world where men are a clear majority. It is not surprising that women, when asked, do not find themselves innovating as often as men do.

Women are, of course, very innovative but seldom call their creativity in relation to consumer products as “innovation”. I bet there are, for example, mothers of small children who are very innovative in running their daily chores with the help of consumer products. For example, making a nappy out of a used t-shirt in 5 minutes or building an edible catapult based on an image in a children's book (see below). If a researcher was to ask these creative women “did you innovate today?” these mothers would probably not see their clever ideas as “consumer innovations”.

What about the Slut Walks? Where is the connection?

A very visual characteristic of the Slut Walks is that many women dress up as “sluts” to demonstrate their right to wear what they want. Check the latest news about the events and you can not miss images of women dressed provocatively.

The provocative dresses have a point to make and they are making it in the language of men: visual language in the images and in actual
language in the written slogans. The word "slut" itself is a man's word chosen purposefully. Due to the specific visual and actual wording, the Slut Walks have gathered lots of attention globally.

So the Slut Walks and the way in how they use male language reminded me of the world of technology innovation and how its language is the language of men.

If our Finnish "Innovation Society" wants to harness consumer creativity we can not limit our perspective to the world of men. And because “innovation talk” is very male-oriented there is a risk of excluding lots of creative activity that does not fit the traditional labels of “technology” and “innovation”. We run the risk of overlooking everyday creativity from a fresh angle – a rich source of innovation we should not leave unused (see, e.g., the famous Niksi-Pirkka that clearly has a less manly angle to its innovativeness).

The Slut Walks have drawn attention to the fact that we live in a men's world. Let this also be a reminder that when it comes to policies and initiatives to harness innovation, we live in the same male dominated world.

P.S. For those interested in women and technical progress in history I recommend one of my favourite books: Ruth Schwarz Cowan, "More Work For Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology From The Open Hearth To The Microwave". Also, thanks to Vilma Lehtinen for commenting on the draft of this post :)

Posted by Risto Sarvas 

The Danger of Asking Users

It is well known that a successful product or a service must resonate with its users – that is what user-centered design (UCD) is about. However, often the idea of "user-centredness" is interpreted so that the users know best what a new product or a service should be. This can go very wrong when the users have little idea what the future technology is. Here are few examples:

It is year 1887. Imagine a photography company thinking about new ideas for its business. The gelatin based glass plate business is too competitive to bring in much profits – something new must be invented. How about a consumer camera so easy that anyone could take and enjoy photographs. The photography company sends its UX researcher to ask potential users if they would like to take photographs.

Photography in 1887 was hard. The cameras were expensive and the glass plates cumbersome to use. The new dry plates were more usable and faster than the old wet plates but still the process of getting paper prints from those plates took time, money, patience, and experience. The idea that every man and woman would take photographs had to compete against this image of a tedious and cumbersome task dominated by men with long beards (the geeks of late 19th century).

What would the UX researcher ask his sample of potential users? "Would you like to take photos?" or perhaps "Would you like to take photos if you had <insert hand waving and a vague description of some new technology that the ordinary person has hard time understanding>?" or perhaps "Would you take photos if it was easy?". Whatever the question, the way it is formulated will critically shape the answers.

Jump to year 1980. An electronics company has an idea that people could listen to music while they are moving by foot. They send out their UX researcher to ask whether people would like to listen music while they walk, jog, or sit on a park bench.

What would have the potential users answered? "No, I think a record player on my lap would be very inconvenient!" or perhaps "No, I listen to music in my living room with a glass of red wine and together with my husband".

We are lucky that George Eastman and his company that later became Kodak did not listen to the consumers in 1887, and that Sony in the 1980s built the Walkman although the thought of "mobile music" was probably quite alien. And yes, supposedly Henry Ford said that if he would have listened to the users, he would be building faster horse carts.

User-Centric Design (UCD) principles have been fighting an upstream battle last two decades. However, once these principles gathered mass and speed they became hard to stop. UCD has such a stronghold that it is hardly questioned. In other words, criticizing UCD today is not politically correct because the user is the king, isn't he/she.

It is time to reign in those galloping horses of UCD and acknowledge the great work done in changing software processes to acknowledge the end users. It is important to understand that the users and the context of use are critical for good design. However, at the same time we should re-think the proper role and weigh of UCD in projects.

The role of UCD is different in coming up with wild new ideas and in planning the implementation of those ideas. If the new product is radically different, how on earth can the users relate to it before they can get their hands on it? How to ask users about something radical?

Second, the weight of UCD in development should vary depending on the kind of technology being built. If the goal is to make software to sell ideas or sell other products, the software must support the idea more than end users' preferences. Software is so inexpensive to make that it is often built only to demonstrate an idea, much like a powerpoint presentation.

However, my point is not that we should throw all UCD principles out of the window. We should understand those principles in the context of what is being built and for whom, and why some UCD principles and methods apply better to project A than to project B. So pick up all those UCD school books but this time read them with a pinch of salt.

For further reading I recommend:

Norman. Technology first, needs last: the research-product gulf. interactions (2010) vol. 17 (2).

Anderson and Tushman. Technological Discontinuities and Dominant Designs: A Cyclical Model of Technological Change. Administrative Science Quarterly (1990) vol. 35 (4) pp. 604-633.

(Thanks to Mikael Johnson for the discussions preceding this post)

Posted by Risto Sarvas