Technology

Online Privacy

Moving to Firefox! (Ahoy Internet Safety!)

Over the past few years, since the surge in social media and online advertising, the Internet has experienced a formidable transformation in the way users have become easy targets only for accessing knowledge/information electronically. The Internet has irrevocably lost its fundamental characteristics as a democratic medium of expression and individuality not just for its utilization by the consumers (the users) but also for companies who are engaged in analytics and data mining in how they are using that personal information unbeknownst to the users. Speaking for myself, I began to feel an urge to monitor my online activities and decide not just the frequency but the amount of personally identifiable information that we willingly share electronically so moving into that direction I have made Firefox a part of my digital lifestyle since the second half of 2019.

Facebook-Cambridge Analytica & Personal Data

According to me, the last straw in this tragic saga came during the early part of 2018 when the lid over the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal was blown and the blatant misuse of personal data of some 50 million Facebook users as part of Cambridge Analytica’s political consulting work became clearer, including its influence on voters during President Trump’s 2016 campaign. As part of the fallout, Facebook suspended the company for violation of its terms of service but the damage had already been done 1. Gathering data on Facebook wasn’t reaping any real benefit in that Cambridge Analytica wasn’t able to fully capture the personality of every single voter, so they worked with researchers to develop “a 120-question survey that seeks to probe personality,” said Alexander Nix, the suspended CEO of Cambridge Analytica. “And we’ve rolled this out to literally hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people across America.” 2 The company asked all sorts of questions about the individual’s behaviour and personality and scored people on traits like openness, extroversion and agreeableness, that gets mixed together with polls, voter records and most importantly, online activity, to create personality models to talk to voters in order to persuade voters to vote in a certain pattern, for a certain candidate. If it wasn’t for this scandal, in particular, I would have never learned the critical nature of ‘online activities’ and the susceptibility of our human tendencies to undermine the role of data mining and creating personality traits by behind the ‘cloak’ to induce a certain kind of behaviour. Again, if it wasn’t for the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal the discussion around privacy and privacy laws and regulations would have lost its urgent need. But this isn’t going to stop the companies in their tracks and adopt stronger privacy regulations, the onus is on the individuals to nurture their individuality and yet not get lost in this new-age Internet labyrinth.

Continue reading…

Firefox 69 Brings ‘Privacy’ To The Forefront

Firefox Logo

Firefox had lost its charm since I personally began using it in the last decade but I have started using it since last year and loving the experience. Especially since it was always known to embrace the values of ‘online privacy’. It’s not that the topic of online privacy wasn’t around but since the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal blew up on our face it’s now taken centre stage in our lives. Now all of a sudden there has been a renewed interest in online privacy, securing browsing, ad tracking, and harder as it seems for companies, they are convincing their customers that their data is kept safe and not lost to some maniacal coding or business practice. Well, I’m happy that Mozilla has taken the lead in online privacy protection for others to take suit — I’m expecting at least Apple to reinforce Safari.

Firefox took an exemplary leap this week on the protection of users’ privacy with their latest update (Firefox 69) effectively making ‘privacy’ the centrepiece of its development process with a slew of features including limiting the use of Flash has been introduced, an archaic piece of program which I sincerely thought was gone, dead or buried forever but I was so wrong.

  • 100% of users now get the Enhanced Tracking Protection, working behind the scenes it keeps a company from forming a profile of the user based on the tracking of their browsing behaviour across websites often without knowledge or consent.
  • An option for blocking crypto miners was introduced in previous versions of Firefox Nightly and Beta but it’s now included in the ‘Standard Mode‘ of the Content blocking preferences today. There’s also a feature which blocks Fingerprinting scripts who harvest a snapshot of your computer’s configuration when you visit a website. This feature is not currently enabled by default (Preferences > Privacy & Security > Content Blocking > Enable Strict mode).
  • The “Always Activate” option for Flash plugin content has been removed. Firefox will now always ask for user permission before activating Flash content on a website.

A much-awaited ‘Block Autoplay’ feature has been released giving users the right to block audio and video. But the most noteworthy feature has come for Mac users in terms of battery-saving. Firefox, I sincerely believe, has finally come to rule the browser wars.

YouTube Started As A Dating Site

When I read this for the first time I cringed. It sounded unnatural that YouTube, the world’s largest online video streaming company with over a billion users each month, was conceived as an online video dating site! So here’s some back story. In March 2016 at the SXSW festival, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen revealed the actual predicament surrounding the launch of their streaming service in 2005. He said…

“We always thought there was something with video there, but what would be the actual practical application? We thought dating would be the obvious choice.”

Source

From Video Dating To Video Sharing

YouTube - Mobile

YouTube was conceived in 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim in 2005 while working for PayPal. The entrepreneurs initially found a market in matchmaking through video, even taking out ads on Craigslist in Las Vegas and Los Angeles in which they offered to pay women $20 to upload videos of themselves to the site. No one took the offer seriously. It didn’t matter to the founders, because by then, users had begun uploading all sorts of videos from dogs to their vacations and they began pondering over a fundamental question “why not let users define what YouTube is all about?” so they completely revamped their website, making it more open and general. By 2006, YouTube was already the fastest growing website on the Internet hosting more than 65,000 videos. Then on October 9, 2006, Google dropped a bomb by announcing they were acquiring YouTube for US$1.65 billion in stock. It was the second-largest acquisition for the search giant at the time.

Co-Design And User Innovation

Although it might seem like a case of ‘serendipity’ in the first instance with YouTube going from a video dating site to a video sharing one, here’s why I believe it was really a case of oversight. The founders formerly developed a vision to devise a product or service using online video streaming tech as a platform for matchmaking, but in that their vision of connecting with the users was grossly miscalculated because users just weren’t looking at video as a dating tool. Their initial concept could have been refined if they’d involved users in the conceptual stages of design iteration. The involvement of users early on provides the creators with an advantage at mobilising resources towards a focussed area of user’s concerns prior to the launch, although their open-mindedness did save them the day. As opposed to co-design or the user-centred model, it seems like YouTube followed a Linear Innovation Model consisting of research and development of product or service, which is then marketed and sent out to the users.

Speaking of which, co-design or the user innovation process is the act of designing concepts with the users (co-design is often referred to as participatory design by the design community) involving the intermediate users or direct consumers.

In other words, it’s not enough to involve engineers, designers, managers and other project owners into the creative process rather they need to be active co-designers in channelising energies into building actionable plans and implementing prototypes. That’s the way forward to meet some of the biggest challenges we face as humankind.

The innovation process comes with ambiguity and it’s often derailed due to several reasons, notwithstanding management oversight (like in the case of YouTube), misconceived notions about product utilization by end-users and last but not the least, being blinded by or trying to resolve the problems and challenges from a single spectrum thought process. In that, YouTube was created on the basic idea of connecting people through video streaming at cheaper rates but then it ultimately led to overlooking the users’ latent needs, a basic ingredient at shaping customers’ experience.

It’s quite likely, in a participatory design method, and by involving all the stakeholders of the soon-to-be-launching service the founders could have discovered to their surprise that instead of recorded videos users preferred to date using other discreet tools wherein their identities aren’t compromised or misjudged in the first impression. It’s dating after all. Lastly, the participatory design process should not be mistaken for crowdsourcing in which groups of interested parties contribute to the creation of ideas in an open forum, such as the Internet, in achieving a cumulative result. Imagine how different our world would be if end-users were involved as co-designers in every project, end-to-end, not just as research subjects but as an important aspect with any product or service design business. That’d be the true essence of any user-centred design methodology.

Retail Space

Challenges With Using Self-Checkouts

Shoppers are increasingly becoming proficient in using technology and automation is entering retail spaces already. My own assessment of the self-checkout machines — the kiosks that help speed up billing at a reasonably lesser space, has been positive, and that it helps clear the shopper lanes quickly thereby streamlining the sales cycle. Although, when I visit this local store, I have observed, the customers aren’t judged well while using the self-checkouts. In fact, some of the cashiers quite blatantly confide that one should use the cash counters thereby sparking a moral debate around the installation and use of self-checkout kiosks. Many fear that these machines would eventually create job losses.

We have to understand the purpose of this rapid change which has psychologically affected store employees and fuelled the debate of ‘humans vs machines’ yet again. This particular big brand store is located within a busy mall and experiences medium to heavy traffic during most parts of the day. The natural response in this scenario would be to keep the traffic flowing is to increase the cash counters and employ more cashiers, although, despite having 6 counters sometimes the line just goes haywire and customers have to wait endlessly for their turn. Moreover, the space constraints inside the store prevent the management from adding more counters with a suitable area for movement.

There are various emotional challenges in dealing with the issue of using self-checkout kiosks. Often times I have waited for at least 10-15 minutes at the counter and the excruciating wait-times has bothered me to a large extent, in which case, I have either left without completing the purchase or reconsidered my decision and removed some items from the cart. In other scenarios, customers needed privacy to discreetly buy items without the fear of being judged. This means that external factors, such as wait times and individual privacy, could have a negative influence on a consumer’s purchase decision and hurt revenue streams in the long run. Large grocery stores, such as Food Basics and No Name, have a separate counter for 10 or fewer items which is served by a representative yet it does not solve the problems I stated above. Moreover, there are contextual factors that could be preventing them from rolling out the self-checkout machines.

Self-checkout machines are now a common feature across several Canadian big box stores and watched over by attendants, such as Walmart, Shoppers Drug Mart, IKEA, Loblaw, and Canadian Tire. These stores have an influx of customers at most times of the day and the role of the machines could be viewed as easing the pressure of manual billing on the cashiers and putting the onus of the purchase on the customers. Although it has been a challenge for some shoppers to transition to the self-checkout model for several reasons ranging from old age issues to technical glitches, even interaction issues arising out of an unclear or cluttered and disparate use of user-interface design languages — every brand has their own interpretation of shopping items and purchase rules that can confuse consumers while using the kiosk’s user-interface in the checkout process. Perhaps a uniformity in overall systems design could help resolve the crisis. However, it’s evident that grocery and retail stores are eager to roll out self-checkout kiosks to address the latent needs of the tech-savvy millennials also based on their spending behaviour. In a study, Accenture has predicted that by 2020 Millennials will account for nearly $1.4 trillion in spending power. And moreover, despite the ease of online shopping, a large number of millennials continue to prefer visiting bricks and mortar over websites.

It’s obvious that retail stores aren’t doing enough to address the insecurities of its store employees who continue to look negatively at the rising trend of self-serve kiosks. One solution is to leverage their respective loyalty programs to benefit customers by giving discounts and bonus points on select products, thereby encouraging greater customer influx in keeping the stores busy. In such a scenario, the role of cashiers or sales executives would continue to be critical in enhancing the customer experience and influencing buying decisions as much as self-serve kiosks. Their involvement at every step of the customer buying process would stimulate a positive environment. Although the inevitable shift is towards automation their subjective functions should not be abandoned for the sake of the machines.

Apple Products

Here’s Why Apple’s A ‘Design-First’ Company

It won’t come as a surprise for a generic world-class electronics company to squirm at the mere motion of discontinuing any present-day technology that is evidently in rampant use with its current user-base, including peripherals or hardware systems. Imagine the plight of several million loyal customers when they hear how their favourite features and functions have been impertinently withdrawn with immediate effect from the brand’s high-end product line. But of course, we aren’t talking about Apple.

Here’s what everybody, including most designers, gets it completely wrong about Apple whenever the discussion surrounding its deeply intricate ‘design philosophy’ happens. There will be an unequivocal and optimistic pronouncement that Apple’s success is due to its “user-first” mindset. It’s not and it never was. On the contrary, Apple’s innovation strategy is ingrained in making its products future-proof by pursuing a ‘design-first’ framework in a valiant effort to promote and invest in technologies, which in Steve Jobs’ prophetic words, are having an upwards swing. That pursuit of integrating innovative technology is partly the reason why some of their design decisions seem impractical and in complete contradiction to current technical norms. The unpopular decision behind the removal of the headphone jacks from the iPhone 7, for instance, was necessary to make the device thinner and add space for larger batteries in a world that is hankering for more juice. That single design change has virtually turned the tide towards wireless Bluetooth headset manufacturers and prompted iPhone buyers to shop for them (read, ‘AirPods’) and has sparked a wave of innovation in the industry.

[…]Apple is a company that doesn’t have the resources that everyone else has. We choose what tech horses to ride, we look for tech that has a future and is headed up. Different pieces of tech go in cycles… they have their springs, and summers and autumns, and…then they go to their graveyard of technology. And..so we try to pick things that are in their ‘springs’ and if you choose wisely you can save yourself enormous amount of work versus trying to do everything, and you can really put energy into making those new emerging technologies be great on your platform rather than just ‘ok’ because you’re spreading yourself too thin. […] So we have got rid of things..we were one of the first to get rid of the optical drives with the MacBook Air, and I think things are moving in that direction as well. And sometimes when we get rid of things like the floppy disk drive on the original iMac people call us crazy. But sometimes you just have to pick the things that look like they’re gonna be the right horses to ride going forward.

Steve Jobs – D8 conference, 2010.

So, where modern PC brands were feverishly banking on the ubiquitous USB Type-A on the basis of its adoption rate and the competition Apple boldly moved forward to replace them with USB type-Cs on their Mac devices. It’s a debate for another day that Apple’s ‘design-first’ decision on the 2015 MacBook also prompted an extravagant usage of physical adapters to attach almost any 3rd-party Type-A peripheral on almost every major device launch.

Continue reading…