KPMG X Uber
Redesigning Uber's government transparency report to make complex data disclosures clear, navigable, and trustworthy for regulators, advocates, and media.
Year
2020-2021
Scope
UX Strategy, Interaction Design, Data Visualization, Consulting
Compay
Uber
"DO NOT share" vs "We NEED TO KNOW"
As government agencies increased their requests for user data, Uber faced a growing challenge: how to report on data disclosures in a way that was transparent, trustworthy, and usable for very different audiences. KPMG partnered with Uber's data request team to rethink the purpose and design of their government transparency report — bringing an outside-in perspective, a strategic framework, and a design vision that could be pitched to Uber's executives for funding.
Phase 1
When it comes to personal data, users tend to respond with negative sentiment regardless of context. At the same time, expectations around disclosure and acceptance vary significantly across cultural backgrounds and user types.
Recognizing this, the KPMG task force partnered with Uber's data analysts to categorize different types of data requests and map users' emotional states throughout the data disclosure journey.
Through stakeholder interviews and workshops, the team uncovered key tensions between competing user personas, each with distinct needs, concerns, and levels of trust. By synthesizing these pain points, we identified opportunities to reduce friction and designed a solution that balanced transparency with the emotional and functional needs of all stakeholders.
The initial design focus was on updating the existing transparency report so different audiences could navigate requests more easily. We provided Uber's data team with responsive design concepts and clear recommendations to land on an improved current state.
Phase 2
In Phase 2, the team proposed a personalized data portal tailored to each persona's primary goal — whether riders and drivers, law enforcement, or media stakeholders. The portal introduced tiered levels of data disclosure designed to align with user expectations and improve sentiment toward Uber's data policies.
Based on stakeholder feedback, the concept was refined further by integrating user research insights to validate disclosure levels and ensure trust, clarity, and usability across all user groups. We introduced an introductory layer as a universal entry point to gate users by their mission, helping Uber understand who was visiting and why.
The team conducted stakeholder interviews and prioritized three primary personas:
Regulator / Policymaker: They use Uber data to understand operations and need to see data presented in categories that map back to regulatory data-sharing requirements.
Transparency Advocate: They lobby policymakers to push back on government overreach and protect user privacy. They need specific narratives that support advocacy and the ability to download transparency data in multiple formats.
Media: They use transparency reports as reliable sources about government access to data. They need to understand the scope of disclosures quickly and clearly.
The introduction layer serves as the universal entry point to the report. It funnels users by mission, so the content they see is relevant to what they came to do.
With the strategic vision in place, we built out a comprehensive design feature set for the transparency report, grounded in two established frameworks: the Harvard Transparency Reporting Toolkit and the National Institute of Standards & Technology guidelines.
Once funneled by mission, the content layer delivers stakeholder-specific overview modules. It also provides focused engagement areas for principles, adjustable data request views, recent community updates, FAQs, and a feedback channel.
Overview
The overview section builds understanding of Uber's methodologies — the factors and processes behind how data is supplied in response to requests. Users can explore frameworks and processes to understand not just what data is shared, but how and why.
Request for Data
This is where the transparency design comes to life. Users can quickly scope information to a specific country where Uber operates with a single click. Each request category — airport, law enforcement, public health, regulatory — offers different levels of information specific to that domain. Additional filtering is available by business unit, time range, and state.
Emerging data request categories sit within each zone, spotlighting new ways data is being requested and helping users understand the evolving landscape.
Recent Updates
This section serves as Uber's transparency hub for related news and updates. It features stories where Uber can activate specific calls to action for the broader community, empowering advocates to lobby lawmakers on targeted issues. It also addresses common misconceptions about Uber's data policies and showcases real examples of the company's efforts to protect user data.
Collaboration & Impact
Working as an external partner within Uber's established design organization presented unique challenges. Our team quickly adopted Uber's design system and ways of working while contributing a fresh strategic perspective on how to articulate a long-term vision for complex data products.
This meant aligning with Uber's business objectives, navigating existing government regulations around data handling, and ensuring our design concepts translated into something their teams could build and maintain.
Through close cross-functional collaboration, we partnered with three distinct sectors within Uber and established a continuing relationship planned over the following two years. We also successfully onboarded our data analyst to work directly with Uber's teams, ensuring that design concepts were grounded in real metadata structures and implementation constraints.
