When Terms of Service are Longer Than a Shakespeare’s Play: Easing The Understanding of Legal Documents Through a User Experience Design Method

Abstract

Whenever users use an internet service, they agree to its terms of service and privacy policy describing how their personal data will be managed. The complexity of managing this process is often overlooked, and users rarely read the whole document. Agreeing to terms of service and privacy policies is not a straightforward matter, and there is a need to highlight this in design education. A new approach is needed in design education that connects responsibility, user experience, products, and services together. This study uses a user-oriented design approach to explore how to address the issue of informing users about how their data is managed. The study uses a qualitative approach and includes in-depth interviews with people in different demographics and in different user groups. The findings reveal how coupling icons with easily understandable texts can improve user awareness of how their data is managed, leading to a more mindful approach to these services.