This article is published in the April 2015 issue.

Privacy by Design – Privacy Enabling Design


The second in a series of four CCC Visioning workshops on Privacy by Design, Privacy Enabling Design will be held in Atlanta, Georgia on May 7-8th.

Building on the first workshop, this workshop will explore in depth privacy design practice. The goals are to survey current research on privacy tools and motivations and consider the effect this research should have on real-world problems, regulatory frameworks, and design practices in the public and private sector.

Examples of topics to be explored include:

  • How do designers and privacy professionals engage with privacy challenges in industry and research? What works today? What are the obstacles?
  • How do designers and implementers of products make decisions about tradeoffs with respect to privacy? How explicitly are various criteria considered when decisions are made?
  • What if any education, research, methods, policy, or organizational changes need to happen to empower designers?
  • How do we know when a product design or research framework is effective in respecting users’ privacy? What methods if any have proven themselves useful for privacy design or for evaluating privacy frameworks?
  • How is designing for privacy similar to or different from designing for security? How does trust factor into this process?
  • What privacy design challenges are posed by non-traditional technologies and interfaces, such as mobile devices, wearable computing, or the Internet of Things?
  • What can academia do to support work by practitioners and policymakers?
  • Does academic privacy research have any bearing on how privacy design is currently being addressed in industry? How can we improve the transfer of academic research into industrial practice?

For more information, please see the Privacy by Design website or contact Ann Drobnis.