The digital world needs to be fairer and more transparent – but how?

It’s difficult to navigate the digital world with confidence.

Our data and personal information are collected by all sorts of organisations. We aren’t properly protected. And we know this, but we feel there’s not much we can do about it on an individual level.

Fortunately, as designers and creators of digital products, we can do something about it. We can design in a more open and transparent way. We can be more honest with the users of the products we create. And that’s not only the right thing to do morally; it’s also a smart business move: if you want a long-term relationship with your customers, it pays to be honest and transparent.

We’ll briefly explain exactly how honesty and transparency work, and what you as an organisation can do with this information.

The ​‘big players’ are always watching

We don’t want to make it sound too serious, but it’s important to take a moment to consider exactly what’s going wrong.

The way companies handle cookies is a good example of just how opaque the digital world is.

Without you, the user, even realising it, major advertising platforms build up a detailed profile of you. They track your clicking behaviour – and not just on their own platform. They’re present on virtually every site you visit, providing services such as advertising data, analytics or free fonts. As a result, they are constantly present in the background on the sites you visit: when you’re shopping online, when you’re reading the news in the paper, and perhaps even on your hospital’s or GP’s online portal. Because they can monitor your behaviour across all these different platforms, they know just about everything about you.

The profile they build of you determines which adverts you see. It determines which search suggestions appear at the top when you look something up. Without you realising it, a large organisation uses your behaviour to make more profit. To present you with things you’re likely to click on.

It’s not in their interest to show you the most relevant results – it just has to feel relevant, but it doesn’t actually have to be.

And of course, you’re not aware of that when you’re just browsing.

As a user, you don’t really have a choice

As a user, there are certainly a few things you can do to protect yourself better. But it’s not made easy for you. Just try refusing every single cookie you come across. That’s a lot more work than simply accepting them. And it goes much further than that. There are more and more products that don’t handle your privacy fairly, and you have almost no choice but to accept them. You often simply need the websites you visit and the technology you use. And that’s quite a dilemma if you care at all about your privacy. 

How can we make the digital world fairer and more transparent?

The solution lies partly in legislation, such as the GDPR, but of course it also lies with us – the creators of digital services and products. It is important that we realise we must do the right thing for the users of our products and for the world around us, and not just for our own profit. 

Here are three ideas for working more fairly and transparently:

#1 Be honest about what data you collect, and why
What data do you collect from your customers? What do you do with it? And are you transparent about it? As creators, we need to be more honest about how we use data. At the moment, this information is often buried deep within the terms and conditions. Users have a right to that information. After all, it’s used to influence their behaviour, to get them to do or buy something they aren’t fully aware of. And if they don’t know about it, they can’t object to it either.

#2 Be transparent about your revenue model 
There are many digital services and products that we can use for free – from a major platform like Instagram to a simple app like Buienradar. But of course, it’s not really free. You pay with your attention and your time. A lot of money is made indirectly, through adverts, for example.

It would be good if users had more control over how they pay for a product or service: with money, with personal data, or with their attention. This would make the price much clearer, even when things appear to be free. The least that organisations with this sort of revenue model can do is be honest about how they make money and state this on their website, so that you can at least look it up.

#3 Make a bit of extra effort; don’t always go for the cheap and easy option
People often choose the easy route without giving it much thought: a tool like Google Analytics, or cloud hosting with Amazon. Even as a smaller organisation, you have a responsibility not to always choose the easiest and cheapest route.

For example, we’ve stopped using Google Analytics. We do still have some Google Fonts on our website, but they’re hosted locally. That way, when you open our site, five requests aren’t sent to the US. As a smaller organisation, you can take measures like this quite easily. 

Always keep asking yourself: what data are we using? Which suppliers are we working with? And how do they use my customers’ data? Because you may have your own affairs in order, but what about your suppliers?

Honesty and transparency are the keys to building lasting relationships

Ultimately, it’s very simple: relationships built on honesty and transparency last much longer. This also applies to customer relationships. So if you’re taking a long-term view of your organisation, openness isn’t just the right thing to do; it’s also the smartest move from a business perspective.

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