Balancing Digital Safety and Innovation

As companies race to introduce digital features and products, they often ignore potential risks. Even seemingly benign digital products pose unforeseen dangers that can enable horrific criminal conduct.

As consumers’ interactions with digital products and platforms increase, more companies are recognizing the need to focus on the safety of their digital products from the earliest stages of development. Product development that considers safety as a key feature is, in and of itself, not novel. In industries like automotive and aviation, safety is prioritized during product design. But designers of consumer-facing digital products have tended to focus on novelty and speed—“move fast and break things”—creating a product development culture in which customer well-being has not been a central concern. As digital products increasingly involve personal connections, payments, and our most private information, that view needs to change—as does the way these products are developed.

Savvy companies implement SBD using a three-step model: They align organizational priorities around safety, embed safety considerations into product development processes, and foster continuous user engagement and feedback.

1. Align around safety. Organization-wide support for a focus on safety is crucial. Smart companies talk about safety as a core priority and explicitly include it in their missions and values.  Another way an organization demonstrates safety as a core value is by embedding it into its organizational structure. This could mean elevating an executive in charge of safety to the C-suite level or taking other steps to increase the visibility and power of safety on the org chart.  Companies must also communicate their commitment to safety to customers and external stakeholders. They should point to specific tools and design choices that deliver on this commitment.  Companies should communicate not just their intentions and commitments but also their results.
2. Embed safety into product design. Just as market research provides foundational data for product developers, companies that utilize the safety-by-design model use risk assessment frameworks at the earliest stages of product conception to better understand vulnerabilities and identify opportunities to reduce or eliminate them. The design philosophy calls on product managers and engineers to address potential risks proactively instead of putting products in the market and waiting to see how users might exploit them.  Risk assessment should evolve over the life of a digital product.
3. Foster continuous engagement. Communicating about safety helps build trust with users and encourages them to engage on safety issues. A company can enhance engagement by asking users and those in the community to use its product in a way that is aligned with its vision.  A company can also drive engagement by communicating regular progress updates as well as the cumulation of its learnings and changes over time. Doing so reinforces the idea that the company itself is willing to learn, both from its mistakes and its community, which in turn encourages consumers to deliver feedback.

Companies that follow through on commitments, share what they learn, and consistently enforce rules demonstrate that their safety initiatives are an integral part of their operations. By example they encourage users to take risk seriously and modify their behavior accordingly. Further, because their users understand that the product development process is continuously evolving, they are less likely to seek a “perfect” product; they’re willing to engage with a company that demonstrates its commitment to learning and to updating its products in a user-centric way.