Designing for Privacy in a Surveillance Age with Robert Stribley

Privacy concerns didn’t appear overnight—they’ve been building quietly alongside the technologies we rely on every day. Lou and Robert Stribley, author of Design for Privacy, explore how digital tracking, AI, and data sharing have reshaped the way personal information moves through the modern web.

Robert traces the growing privacy challenge from early internet tracking to today’s complex ecosystem of smartphones, online services, and AI systems. While many users understand that they’re trading data for convenience, few grasp how widely their information is distributed—or how easily supposedly anonymous data can be re-identified. As AI accelerates the ability to combine and analyze datasets, those risks are growing quickly.

Then the conversation turns to what designers can do about it. Robert outlines practical ways UX professionals can improve privacy outcomes, from collecting less data and avoiding deceptive patterns to improving language transparency and giving users meaningful control over their information. Despite the scale of the problem, Robert argues that designers have more agency and influence than they realize. Thoughtful design decisions can help protect users while also strengthening trust and long-term business success.