Institute of Art Design + Technology
Dún Laoghaire

Jaesin Yu 

 
MSc User Experience Design

Product designer who worked in a variety of companies with creative and innovative design thinking processes. Expertise in the psychological connection between the object and people's emotions/behaviour.

Project Description

Exploring how nudge theory can be used to influence sensitive privacy data disclosure behaviour for the benefit of hyper-personalised products and services in the Fintech industry.



Nudging Privacy Behaviour to Address the Privacy Paradox in Personalised Fintech UX

The privacy calculus theory developed around the turn of the millennium with the dot-com tech industry boom hypothesised that users rationally trade-off between privacy risks and benefits such as financial rewards (Smith et al., 2011). However, the term 'privacy paradox' also appeared, which refers to people's tendency to give away far more data than their stated concerns (Barth & de Jong, 2017). With the internet revolution and mobile device support in the 1990s, financial technology (Fintech) arose and extended rapidly by incorporating internet technology and electronic money during the mid-2000s (Lee & Shin, 2018). Advocates of fintech have used nudge theory to design hyper-personalised products/services for the benefit of users (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008). The study considers how an agency can use privacy nudges to design and build trust between users and products/services with due ethical consideration. The research testing (n = 41) was set between subjects with two prototype versions in an unmoderated and moderated setting. The experiment yielded both quantitative and qualitative results, indicating that the existence or absence of privacy nudges in Fintech products/services has an insignificant effect on users' beliefs. Attitudes regarding privacy disclosure behaviour and online trust are more tied to previous experience affecting one's behaviour. In addition, the value of a valid interface promotes satisfaction and trust. However, nudge design must be purposeful and suitable to reduce the number of informed decision-making hurdles.