The ethics of personalization

Recently, I had the opportunity to write for Vanguard UX, the user experience area of The Vanguard Group. The goal of Vanguard UX is to provide thought leadership on various topics in the user experience profession. In this case, I decided to focus on a contentious topic in ethical design: the ethics of personalization.

What’s personalization?

Personalization refers to tailoring the experience of a website or application for different users, based on personal information that the site or app collects from those users. In other words, the site or app will collect people’s data. Then, it will use their data to change what they see on that site or app. In general, the point of personalizing a site or app is to make its content more relevant to each user.

For instance, we often see personalization at play when we see recommendations. E-commerce sites or apps may provide helpful recommendations on what you can buy online. Video streaming services may list interesting recommendations on what you can watch next. And eLearning platforms may offer valuable recommendations on what courses you can take.

The potential dark side of personalization

That’s all well and good. But personalization can have a dark side, especially if it’s not designed in the best interest of the people using the site or app.

For example, we can see this problem very clearly with many social media sites and apps. Not uncommonly, these technologies will collect private data from people (sometimes without their clear consent) in order to addict them to these platforms—say, though click-bait ads or viral content. (See my summary of this problem in what I call the “manipulative algorithms and addictive design” of social media.)

For this reason, I believe we UX professionals need to articulate a clear ethics of personalization.

Articulating an ethics of personalization

In particular, I believe we need to articulate some ethical heuristics, or rules of thumb, that can guide web and app designers and developers on how to create personalized experiences online. In my article for Vanguard UX, I argued for a couple ethical rules of thumb:

• Apps must safeguard personal information to protect the privacy and security of users, and this information should be relevant for creating a personalized experience that helps people complete tasks.
• The tasks that apps help users complete ought to align with (or at least not run contrary to) goals that are in the best interest of people using the app (such as enabling favorable habits, not adverse addictions).

Feel free to check out the full article online and let me know what you think. The ethics of personalization is just my first take on what I intend to be a series of professional articles about ethical design heuristics.