Author Archive
FTC in Favor of Strong Privacy Policies
What happens to your user data is the company that collected it goes bankrupt? Nothing, according to the FTC.
When XY magazine/XY.com collected user data during their 11 year history it promised, via a strong privacy policy, that it “never sells its list to anybody.” However, it appeared that when the company went bankrupt all bets were off and the collected data was listed as a saleable part of its estate. Now the company’s creditors want to sell the data to recoup their losses.
But what about the privacy policy that XY subscribers had put their faith in? Did it cease to exist along with the company that created it? Hopefully not. The FTC has decided to weigh in on the issue and, in a letter to those involved, strongly warned against any attempts to sell the XY user list. In a statement a spokesperson for the FTC wrote, “Subscribers and members were told that their personal information would not be sold, shared, or given away to ‘anybody.’ Therefore, any sale or transfer of the data to a new company, new owner, or other third party would directly contravene the privacy representations and could constitute a deceptive practice by the original company or its principals.”
So, what does this mean for those of us who make our living trading in user data? It’s hard to say, since these issues have yet to go to court. But for Pontiflex, at least, it means that the FTC has affirmed one of our core values: respect the user’s wishes by never reselling their data. It seems pretty obvious to us but it never hurts to have a US government agency come down on your side.
Check out the original article.
Don’t Let Great Concepts Ruin Your Website
The other day Joel Speasmaker, the designer behind the latest rebuild of pontiflex.com, asked my opinion on the user interface concepts used by thinkingforaliving.org – a site of essays and musings on design-related topics. Thinkingforaliving segments its content into page-size chunks which it displays horizontally. The user must click next and back buttons, or use the arrow keys, to page through each section of the site.
It’s a bit unconventional, and while it still feels like a website, it also feels like a magazine. The experience is something akin to using an eReader. It’s odd, and I’m generally wary of anything out of the ordinary, but it works for the type of content being presented. The site even has an essay that defends the concept. It’s one of the few gimmicky UI’s that I’ve encountered that actually makes the site more useable.
So why did I tell Joel that the site annoyed that heck out of me?
The problem is me. Well, more like the problem is us. We users have expectations when it comes to user interfaces on the web – expectations that have been reenforced again and again since the first time we saw Mosaic1.0 back in 1995. Anything that subverts those expectations tends to annoy us. And anyone who wants to introduce something new must do so very, very carefully.
The problem with the thinkingforaliving UI isn’t that it’s a bad idea, but that it’s not implemented perfectly. It has minor issues with keystroke capture, scrollbars, and button animations. But minor issues become deal-breakers in the context of a new user interface. Because we’re unaccustomed to the new navigation scheme we identify issues that are merely irritating as fundamental problems with the entire interface. It’s not that the designers at thinkingforaliving didn’t do a good job; it’s that they fell short of doing a great job.
Does this mean that we should never try anything new? Of course not. It just means that we need to be extra careful when challenging our users expectations. Good, innovative design ideas keep people coming back to our sites, but the best ideas are often the ones that can do the most damage. The challenge is figuring out how to utilize all our ideas without letting them get the better of us.
Arun Krishnan
Jason Penta
zlasker
Roshan Bangera
Jordan Cohen
eadlman
Geoff Grauer
Jerrie Gullick
Jon Beardsley
Nick Herman
Stacy Huggins
Tiffany Sumner
Avantika Banerjee
Daniel Egan
Lisa Khan
pontiflexrob
