"We Wanted to Do Better Than the Law": Exploring UI/UX Designers' Privacy Advocacy in Practice

A new study from arXiv, accepted at ACM CSCW 2026, by researchers Keyu Yao, Jinghui Cheng, and Jin L.C. Guo, dives deep into how UI/UX designers champion privacy in practice. Titled "We Wanted to Do Better Than the Law," the research is based on 12 semi-structured interviews with privacy-advocating designers. It reveals that designers often go beyond mere compliance, driven by personal values and contextual factors, to push for better privacy outcomes in products. However, they face significant challenges in team-based settings where decisions are negotiated with developers, product managers, and marketing teams, who may prioritize business goals or technical feasibility over user privacy.

The study highlights the collaborative nature of these challenges, showing how designers navigate tensions between business objectives, team dynamics, and technical development. They employ adaptive methods to advocate for privacy, such as framing privacy as a user experience benefit or using design artifacts to communicate risks. The authors suggest implications for supporting privacy-aware design through user-centered approaches, organizational changes, and designer-centric tools. They also call for bridging knowledge gaps via community building to empower designers in their privacy advocacy roles.