It is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate the digital world without a care in the world. All sorts of large organisations are collecting data and personal information everywhere. They use our behaviour to serve us links and videos that we’ll end up watching or clicking on. Not because it’s relevant or good for us, but mainly because they profit from it.

Our private lives are barely protected online. We know this deep down, but it’s difficult to do anything about it on an individual level. It’s the little things: just try refusing every single cookie you come across for a week. That’s much more work than simply accepting them. And so the average user repeatedly trades off their privacy for a bit of convenience. It’s deliberately designed that way. There are more and more products that don’t treat your privacy fairly; it’s almost impossible to avoid them. Whether you’re quickly looking something up on a search engine or signing up via social media for an event you’d like to attend, you’re automatically passing on your data to big tech. More and more often, there’s no alternative. You simply need the websites you visit and the technology you use. And that’s a problem if you care at all about your privacy.

As designers and creators of digital products, we have an important role to play. We must treat end-users’ personal lives with care and respect. This is not only morally right, it also makes better business sense: if you want to build a long-lasting, healthy relationship with users, it pays to be open and honest. After all, good relationships are built on trust.

Without trust, society won’t become warmer

We have seen time and again that a lack of transparency and honesty leads to major problems. Think of the 2008 financial crisis. Banks sold high-risk products without properly informing consumers. When the value of these products fell and customers could no longer pay, the banks collapsed. The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal is another good example. Without consent, the data of millions of people was collected and used to influence political campaigns. And then there was the Dutch benefits scandal, in which thousands of citizens were wrongly labelled as fraudsters. It was almost impossible to fight back against this. We all know the outcome.

We live in a world with increasingly automated decision-making. This affects every aspect of our lives: from the news stories we see to decisions about our income or health. How these decisions are reached is often not transparent. The algorithms and spreadsheets that determine whether someone is flagged in a particular way are usually not accessible. Of course, they should be. If a decision is made about you, there must be clarity about the criteria. What source data has been used? Is it accurate? If we know that, we can form an opinion – as individuals and as a society. And unjustified decisions can be reversed. But that’s not how it works at the moment. It’s ‘the computer says no’ and that’s the end of the story.

Unfair and non-transparent practices erode trust. And when there is little or no trust, society does not become a better or warmer place. We have seen this in recent years. So when we talk about a fair and transparent digital world, we’re not talking about something trivial: we’re talking about people’s lives. About what sort of society we want to be.

Choose sustainable relationships, not short-term profit

What can we do to become fairer and more transparent? To regain people’s trust in the digital world? We ask ourselves these questions constantly. And the answer is: quite a lot.

The most important thing is to have a clear, moral and ethical compass at the very top of your organisation. A compass that steers towards long-term value creation. Working on the basis of customer relationships means setting a different kind of goal. You focus much more on tomorrow than on today’s results. Or, as we say in the jargon: customer lifetime value over order value. Being open and transparent about the principles you use to persuade people, about what data you collect and how you use it. Designers, developers and product owners increasingly adopt an ethical perspective in this regard. They ask themselves: would I want to share this data with a stranger myself? Or does that go too far for me? Part of the solution lies with suppliers. For example, choose to stop using the free solutions offered by major tech companies – such as Google Analytics or Google Fonts. If services are free for you, you’re paying with your users’ data. So you do have a choice, but it does require a shift towards a different, more critical way of working.

Ultimately, it’s very simple: by treating your users and their data with care, you build a foundation of trust. And relationships built on trust last much longer. We see proof of this in our personal lives. So if you’re looking at the long term for your organisation, honesty and openness aren’t just the right thing to do; they’re also the wisest move from a business perspective. Don’t go for short-term transactions or quick profits, but for meaningful interactions on which you can build your organisation’s future.