Designing with Privacy in Mind is not an abstract goal. I want to show what the recent shake-up in Apple’s human interface design leadership teaches about Privacy in Design. Alan Dye leaving for Meta and Stephen Lemay stepping into the role matters beyond names. It changes emphasis. It changes where trade-offs get made in the User Interface. It changes how Apple Design balances polish, engagement and personal data handling.
Leadership sets priorities. A head of Human Interface Design who prizes visual spectacle will push teams toward glossy surface changes. That can raise telemetry, tracking and A/B tests that collect more signals. A leader who prizes restraint will favour defaults that minimise data flow and use on-device processing where possible. The Liquid Glass debate at Apple shows this in plain view: interface changes affect how people interact, and interaction is the raw material for analytics and machine learning. If a UI nudges people into features that collect data, privacy choices are no longer abstract. They are part of the layout, copy and microcopy that guide behaviour.
Privacy in Design needs concrete, testable decisions, not mottos. Start with defaults. Make as many privacy-preserving behaviours the default. Set toggles so that the least data leaves the device until the person opts in. Use local models rather than cloud calls for tasks that do not strictly need server compute. Present permission prompts that state what will be sent, why, and how long it will be kept. Design the User Interface so a privacy-preserving choice is as easy and quick as the opposite. If a UI makes sharing faster than not sharing, expect higher data flows. I have tested flows where a single extra tap reduced data collection by more than half. That is the kind of concrete result designers should aim for.
Measure the cost of privacy decisions in engagement, not guesswork. Run experiments that compare the same feature with different defaults and wording. Track both engagement metrics and the volume of data sent. Use product analytics that respect privacy, for example aggregated or differentially private metrics, rather than raw event streams tied to identities. In teams where leadership understands both craft and measurement, trade-offs are explicit. They know the engagement delta for a privacy-safe option. That makes it possible to defend the option to executives who care about growth.
When a design leader changes, the team culture shifts. New leads set cadence, review standards and what counts as quality work. For Apple Design, the move from Dye to Lemay will influence how Human Interface Design treats signals like telemetry and personalised suggestions. Designers should insist on design reviews that include a privacy checklist: who sees this data, where it is stored, can it be avoided, can it be summarised, and is the value to the person clear. Treat privacy as a usability problem. If people cannot find the control or do not understand the consequence, the design has failed.
Practical steps you can apply today are simple. Make privacy the default. Push for local computation for routine features. Phrase permissions as short benefits to the person, not legalese. Measure the real impact of privacy settings on both engagement and data volume. Include privacy checks in design reviews and handovers. Expect leadership to change those incentives, and design your product to be resilient to that change.
Getting Privacy in Design right is not a one-off. It is a set of small, repeatable choices stitched into the User Interface and reinforced by leadership. Watch who leads the design team. Watch which behaviours they reward. That tells you more about future privacy trade-offs than any press release.
