25th Aug 2017
How might we...
...get out of the way of people's goals
A playful approach to privacy
Getting people to move through a time sensitive process, without unnecessary roadblocks, requires us to streamline data collection.
Product Context
Munchbox is a food delivery service that serves lunchtime meals to work locations. In order to provide the service, Munchbox is powered by some of the following data:
- Location data, to connect a person to the nearest restaurants and make deliveries
- A history of orders, to make recommendations based on food habits
- An API is made available to 3rd parties so they can offer discount based on eating patterns. APIs expose some of a product or service’s internal functions in a controlled environment. This API requires people to give explicit permission to 3rd parties. The APIs exposes some of a product or service’s internal functions in a controlled environment. For example, businesses can use social networks API to streamline sign-up on a site or app or to make sharing content quicker and easier
- Payment credentials are stored for digital payment
Problem & Opportunity
Munchbox, like many other apps and services, relies on location to work. Location based services need to work hard to build trust as there is an innate caution about sharing location.
The cross-functional Design Jam team challenged themselves to consider ways in which Munchbox could gather minimal personal data while someone was 'hangry' (hungry and therefore angry!) to limit the amount of frustration that might come from having to provide lots of data.
Munchbox's team prototyping
Design Features
Displaying contextual tips to explain data use
At every step of the food ordering process, Munchbox explains what data it's using and why. By displaying a circle icon in context to any point in the flow that requires data, it creates a pattern where people know where to look to understand more:
- Near Me - The tip explains, 'We use your location to find food nearby to ensure you get a hot meal'
- Credit Card - The tip explains, 'We use card details to process your payment. We will only share this information with our payment provider'
Design Features
Making privacy playful
Munchbox doesn't really need to know a person's real name to deliver them food. The team created a fun option in the app to give people the freedom to generate a random nickname (minimising personal information) and printing a mask to go with the random name!
Next steps
Richard Gomer, team member and Research Fellow at the University of Southampton’s Meaningful Consent project puts it this way: ‘Delivering meaningful control over personal data requires co-ordination, communication and understanding between digital citizens and the digital services that they use.’
If people are to become more involved with their data and privacy management, it might as well be an enjoyable experience, making it frictionless. 'How far can we take these designs...' is one of the questions Design Jams are eager to explore!
