Frame the tension
Each prompt pairs a useful service or safety benefit with a transfer of personal control.
Project documentation // Process + Research
A speculative design project exploring how ordinary privacy decisions redistribute power between governments, corporations, and individuals.
The Privacy Paradox turns abstract questions about surveillance and consent into a personal, playable system. Participants answer twenty questions about access to their financial, health, biometric, location, and communication data.
Each decision shifts influence toward one of three power centers. The final scenario reveals how those small permissions compound over time—creating benefits, risks, and unequal consequences that are difficult to see when each choice is made in isolation.
What kind of world do we create when convenience becomes the default price of participation?
Each prompt pairs a useful service or safety benefit with a transfer of personal control.
Answers are translated into a visible balance between public, private, and individual authority.
A local narrative combines those patterns into a speculative society and happiness score.
The complete process book documents the research, visual language, system mapping, and iterations behind the experience.
The project began as an experiment in AI-assisted worldbuilding. The first version relied on a remote request to turn answers into a dystopian narrative. That approach proved the concept, but it also introduced cost, delay, and an ironic dependency on another data system.
The current version generates its scenario locally. This makes the interaction faster, keeps participant information on the device, and strengthens the relationship between the project’s message and its technical behavior.
The most important design lesson was that the outcome cannot carry the entire argument. Clear questions, visible progress, and a legible map of power make the participant understand the system before the final story appears.
Future iterations could add more nuanced trade-offs, compare outcomes across participants, and expose how different scoring models encode their own political assumptions.
See how twenty ordinary permissions become one extraordinary future.
Run the simulation →