Privacy Starts with UI: Privacy Patterns and Designer Perspectives in UI/UX Practice

TL;DR

This paper systematically investigates privacy considerations in UI/UX design, synthesizing key factors and creating a validated Privacy Pattern Catalog to guide designers in implementing privacy-preserving interfaces.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive Privacy Pattern Catalog for UI/UX design, validated through expert workshops and surveys, advancing practical guidance for privacy-aware design.

Findings

14 primary privacy design considerations identified

14 key privacy factors across four axes

Validated Privacy Pattern Catalog for practitioners

Abstract

In the study of Human-Computer Interaction, privacy is often seen as a core issue, and it has been explored directly in connection with User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) design. We systematically investigate the key considerations and factors for privacy in UI/UX, drawing upon the extant literature and 15 semi-structured interviews with experts working in the field. These insights lead to the synthesis of 14 primary design considerations for privacy in UI/UX, as well as 14 key factors under four main axes affecting privacy work therein. From these findings, we produce our main research artifact, a UI/UX Privacy Pattern Catalog, which we validate in a series of two interactive workshops and one online survey with UI/UX practitioners. Our work not only systematizes a field growing in both attention and importance, but it also provides an actionable and expert-validated artifact to guide UI/UX designers in realizing privacy-preserving UI/UX design.