Design for Privacy
Keeping Personal Information Private
Are your designs protecting—or exposing—your users? In Design for Privacy, you’ll uncover how shifting technologies threaten personal data and what that means for your work. This book offers practical guidelines and proven strategies to create experiences that respect and protect people’s privacy, while helping you foster a culture of “privacy by design” in your organization and practice.
Who Should Read This Book
All designers—UX, interface, or product—are waking up to the importance of privacy. But if you’re a strategist, a developer, a producer, or a product manager, online privacy is your job, too. Design for Privacy dissects and explains the ever-changing field of designing for privacy in depth.
Takeaways
In the fluid world of online privacy, this book explains how to address:
- Critical privacy issues, such as cyberstalking and bullying
- How to handle your role as a designer of privacy issues
- Why your business should care about your customers’ privacy
- What it means to handle data responsibly
- How to use careful language with regard to privacy
- Which privacy tools work
- How to create a privacy-by-design scenario in your business
- How AI is impacting online privacy
- How legal, ethical, and moral issues affect privacy
- How to comply with federal and international laws of privacy
- What your rights are where privacy is concerned
Are your designs protecting—or exposing—your users? In Design for Privacy, you’ll uncover how shifting technologies threaten personal data and what that means for your work. This book offers practical guidelines and proven strategies to create experiences that respect and protect people’s privacy, while helping you foster a culture of “privacy by design” in your organization and practice.
Who Should Read This Book
All designers—UX, interface, or product—are waking up to the importance of privacy. But if you’re a strategist, a developer, a producer, or a product manager, online privacy is your job, too. Design for Privacy dissects and explains the ever-changing field of designing for privacy in depth.
Takeaways
In the fluid world of online privacy, this book explains how to address:
- Critical privacy issues, such as cyberstalking and bullying
- How to handle your role as a designer of privacy issues
- Why your business should care about your customers’ privacy
- What it means to handle data responsibly
- How to use careful language with regard to privacy
- Which privacy tools work
- How to create a privacy-by-design scenario in your business
- How AI is impacting online privacy
- How legal, ethical, and moral issues affect privacy
- How to comply with federal and international laws of privacy
- What your rights are where privacy is concerned
Testimonials
Privacy lies at the heart of the user-technology relationship. Robert Stribley offers invaluable tactical advice and the broader context that designers need to make that relationship as safe as possible.
—Alexandra Schmidt
Author of Deliberate Intervention
The stakes for data misuse or accidental exposure are incredibly high. This book is a must-read for any design leader looking to build products that respect and protect users’ privacy.
—Bryan Hamilton
Global Head of Design, BNY
Finally—a book that treats privacy not as a compliance box, but as a core design principle. Stribley’s essential guide bridges the inexplicable gap between these disciplines.
—Pepe Borras
Cofounder, Internet Freedom Festival, Internet Freedom Expert, and Product Director
As a designer, you have more power over users’ privacy than you may realize. Robert shows you how to leverage that power for good with practical tips on how to get your organization to care, plenty of real examples, and clear guidance. This is the go-to privacy book written by a designer, for designers.
—Heidi Trost
Author of Human-Centered Security
Privacy isn’t about compliance: It’s about helping people to negotiate their boundaries. Designers have long needed expert advice on the arguments and tactics that make that principle a reality. At last, help has arrived.
—Cennydd Bowles
Technology Ethicist
The definitive privacy-by-design guide for these evolving days of AI’s design acceleration. Essential reading to prevent catastrophic privacy failures that obliterate customer trust and your product success.
—Chad Borlase
SVP, North American Experience Design Lead, Merkle—a dentsu company
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: A Deluge of Privacy Issues
Chapter 2: Defining Privacy
Chapter 3: Your Role as a Designer
Chapter 4: Why Should Business Care?
Chapter 5: Handle Data Responsibly
Chapter 6: Avoid Deceptive Patterns
Chapter 7: Use Language With Care
Chapter 8: Provide Tools for Enabling Privacy
Chapter 9: Cultivating a Culture for Privacy by Design
Chapter 10: Exercises: Navigating Two Privacy Scenarios
Chapter 11: The Evolving Impact of Privacy Policy
Chapter 12: AI and Privacy
Chapter 13: Working on Privacy: Privacy as a Product
Read the first chapter
This is a sample chapter from Robert Stribley‘s book Design for Privacy: Keeping Personal Information Private. 2025, Rosenfeld Media.
Chapter 1
A Deluge of Privacy Issues
It’s difficult to articulate our current circumstances without sounding like you’re lapsing into hyperbole: We are currently experiencing an explosion of emerging privacy issues, unparalleled in human history that we can hardly expect the average person with a day job and a family and a mortgage to process, let alone keep up with. These issues are myriad, and they have a cumulative, if often unnoticed, effect upon people everywhere. Before we get to the meat of this book, I want to offer a brief overview of some of these issues we’re experiencing collectively to help highlight the scope of the problem—even if it means noting some issues that you, as a designer, may be incapable of addressing. Then we’ll consider what you as a designer can potentially address.
FAQ
These common questions and their short answers are taken from Robert Stribley’s book Design for Privacy: Keeping Personal Information Private (2025). You can find longer answers to each in your copy of the book, either printed or digital version.
- Why should I care about privacy? I have nothing to hide.
Like freedom of speech, a right to privacy is often something we may not give much consideration—until we need to. As you’ll see, you never know what sudden changes to company policies or ownership or even regional or national politics and law will have upon your privacy. This book argues that in considering people’s specific needs for privacy, we will inevitably create better experiences for us all. And, more broadly, we’ll help to create a world where privacy is valued and treated as a right for us humans, not just a hurdle for companies and organizations to overcome. Chapters 1 and 3 cover the ground that emphasizes most concretely why we should be concerned about privacy both as individuals and designers.
