Expert Perspectives on UX Design Challenges for Solid-Enabled Personal Data Store Applications

The growing complexity of managing personal data online has increased the need for enhanced transparency, control, and usability in data handling. Solid, a web specification being developed by a W3C Working Group, aims to offer a potential solution by providing users with a personal online data store or data vault. This enables users to transparently manage and control access to their data across various platforms. As Solid radically changes the way users interact with their personal data, it introduces new UX challenges for designers. This study uncovers the specific design challenges through twelve expert interviews with practitioners who have hands-on experience in designing Solid-enabled applications. By analyzing results from open-ended questions and a forced-choice ranking exercise and linking them with the Human-Data Interaction framework, we aim to assist practitioners in overcoming these challenges. We conclude by proposing a research agenda focusing on three key areas: 1) enhancing explainability, 2) investigating the balance between data control and usability, and 3) developing standardized design patterns.