The discipline of UX is grounded in the art of ethnography: we watch users interact with objects and interfaces, and we analyze the footprints they leave in our analytics. The success of UX is defined by our understanding of user intentionality. This popular model of the willful user and the ever-observant designer only focuses on the visible peak of the iceberg, however.
Protecting and sharing data about people remains a challenging and underappreciated area of risk for government agencies and humanitarian organizations. A better understanding of the tiered reality of identity protection is therefore critical to establishing appropriate strategies suitable to the needs of vulnerable people.