Integrating Legal Safeguards to Sustain Users’ Trust

Dr. Ann Cavoukian, Executive Director, Privacy and Big Data Institute, Ryerson University, outlines the advantages of embedding privacy in technologies, at a February 28, IABC event in Kitchener, Ontario.

Relevant Legislation & Best Practices

As my senior project is to develop a niche social media network for Canadian caregivers, it must address three key areas of Canadian/Ontario legislation:

• Privacy: Personal Information Protection and Electronics Document Act (PIPEDA) and Canada’s Anti Spam Legislation (CASL)
• Copyright: Canadian Copyright Act
• Accessibility: Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA)

In addition, I need to provide ‘Community Guidelines’  to ensure users act appropriately. Along with behaviour guidelines, I must embed references to privacy and copyright law in these guidelines. In addition, I must make it clear that this social network isn’t liable for undesirable outcomes, due to community members’ advice.

The third area, accessibility and AODA, outlines escalating legislated requirements that must be incorporated into all web properties to accommodate people with visual, audio, motor and cognitive disabilities by 2021. This presentation by Ad Web Com provides a clear explanation of this legislation and will be a good reference for developing this niche network. Similarly, CASL will control my solution’s need to take a ‘permissions-based’ approach to recruit members but will not impact online documentation.

I also need to adhere to copyright law, ensuring I am legally allowed to post specific content and providing credit, as required.

Given the sensitivity of personal healthcare information, which caregivers or my community members may share about their loved ones, PIPEDA is my highest legislative priority.

Safeguarding Trust Versus Legislation

Steps to address these areas falls under mandated legislation or legal recommendations/best practices. However, Dr. Ann Cavoukian, Executive Director, Privacy and Big Data Institute and Ontario’s former privacy officer, is advancing a global Privacy by Design standard to embed privacy as a default in all technology. For my niche network, this means ensuring that De-identification Protocols are incorporated in the code from the onset.

Furthermore, Dr. Cavoukian positions privacy as a competitive advantage, not debilitating compliance. In many ways, I think all these legal requirements/recommendations or ‘safeguards’ can be considered a competitive advantage because they all help to win and sustain the community’s trust.  I want to keep this in mind, when I address prospective members and describe this niche social network.

Legal Documentation Models 

As examples, I reviewed privacy and community guidelines for:

• LinkedIn: User Agreement, Privacy Policy, Copyright Policy
• Tyze: Terms of Use
• Carezone: Security, Privacy Policy
• The Caregiving Space: Terms of Use, Legal Stuff

One of the key tenants of transparency is making things clearer. LinkedIn, Tyze and Carezone have tried to do this in their policies/guidelines.

For example, Carezone, uses a second person voice, a reassuring tone, user-centric headings (e.g. how we protect your data) and plain language to specifically explain how it uses technology (e.g. encryption), physical safety measures (e.g. private network residing in a data centre monitored 24/7), policies and procedures to keep data private. This includes providing specific examples, such as: “We transmit your email address to UserVoice so we can interact with you through email, but we give them no further information about you.” In contrast, the Caregiving Space uses exhaustive legal terminology to explain its privacy and other guidelines, writes some sections using almost illegible all capitals, and offers vague assurances, such as: “… use industry best practices approaches about security measures to prevent the loss, misuse and alteration of the information.”  Where possible, I think it’s most effective to adopt Carezone’s voice, editorial style and more specific approach.

Both Tyze and LinkedIn go further to enhance the user experience when conveying policies and community guidelines. Tyze provides the required legal documentation, as well as a short synopsis in a conversational voice. And LinkedIn, provides friendly user-centric explanations, much like Dr. Cavoukian’s ‘privacy as an advantage’ position, and offers short (1.45 minutes or less) videos to explain user agreements and privacy. I think it will be particularly beneficial to use videos, as LinkedIn does, to explain policies and community guidelines to the caregivers network members to help ensure clarity.

Reviewing these guidelines, particularly those from Carezone and LinkedIn, gives me a framework of key topics for my network’s privacy and copyright sections. I’d like to apply Carezone’s same second person voice and plain language tone for the Community Guidelines.

For example, the Privacy and Security Guidelines should include:

• How we collect your information
• How we use your information
• How we protect your data
• Information sharing and disclosure
• Third-party services
• If there’s a problem
• Reporting a problem

There are likely more topics to address in my legal documentation but this is a ‘safe’ start.

‘Healthy’ Social Media and UX Influencers to Follow

Influencers to follow: (left to right) Luke Wroblewski, Dr. Kevin Pho and Beth Kanter.

One of the best ways to hone progressive skills is to learn from leaders and build on their best practices. Interactive media is no exception and reading relevant blogs is an effective way to do this. As my senior project is a niche, social media healthcare solution, I want to hear insights from:

1. Interactive UX design gurus
2. Healthcare leaders mastering social media
3. Social media experts in healthcare/not-for-profit sector

1. Interactive UX Design Gurus –

If it existed, my ″ideal″ influencer would focus on UX design for consumer-focused social media networks that improve overall health.  Short of that, I think these UX experts/blogs will offer great tips as my project evolves:

• Luke Wroblewski, Product Director, Google – Before I even look at Luke’s blog, his biography underscores extensive credibility that makes him follow-worthy.  He held lead design roles at Yahoo and eBay; founded and sold two start-ups (to Twitter and Google); co-founded the Interaction Design Association; wrote books on usability and mobile first; and has 113 k followers on Twitter @lukew (including me). What’s more Luke’s regular blog Ideation + Design (which I now follow) features practical articles with visual examples, such as a recent one that clearly explains ‘why’ we should display passwords on login screens, as well as ‘how-to’ UX videos.  He also regularly attends industry conferences and share his notes and learnings with his readers. I think his articles will help inform some of the design decisions I’ll face in developing my senior project and its prototype.
• Several UX Experts and the UX Booth blog – This robust blog covers various aspects of interactive design for beginner to intermediate designers, neatly organized into various accessible categories, such as: analytics; content strategy; design strategy; interactive design; and resources — to name a few. It is linked to Twitter handle @UXBooth.  I think subscribing to and reading this weekly blog will help me stay on the right course and enable me to incorporate best practices from various aspects of effective interactive design.

2. Healthcare Leaders Mastering Social Media – As one of the latter disciplines to adopt social media (due in no small part to privacy issues), experts in this area are true pioneers, overcoming numerous opposition to achieve success. In this category, I’m going to follow Kevin Pho MD, who practices primary care at the Nashua Medical Group in New Hampshire. An active blogger, Kevin explores where medicine, health care and social media intersect. CNN named @KevinMD as one of its five recommended health care Twitter feeds. He also has profiles on Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn.  (I’m following/liking him on all his social profiles at this point, except LinkedIn, as doesn’t know me — yet.)  All these accolades make him a solid bet for my attention. More importantly, Dr. Pho is the founder and editor of KevinMD.com, a blog endorsed by the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and the New York Times.  Although many of this blog’s articles touch on technology/digital, I like the way its social media articles are grouped in one area making them easy to find and check for best practices dealing with this sometimes sensitive topic.

3. Social media experts in healthcare/not-for-profit

Since I need to think ahead on ‘how’ I will bring my senior project solution to market, especially through social media and community-focused strategies.  The best resource for doing this, who I have followed for some time, is Beth Kanter. Beth has written many books, is on the UN’s list of most influential bloggers and both Fast Company and Business Week have endorsed her as a social media expert.

She regularly posts on Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media, one of the longest running blogs for nonprofits. It’s filled with practical examples that I can likely apply to my project.  I follow Beth’s Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+ and You Tube feeds.

I’m hoping that watching and heeding the advice of these experts will keep me on a track to success with my senior project.