Ethical Document Storage System
Architected a microservice to offer multiple apps document storage where the User decides how their data can be used.Features
Problem
Our company was building a document sharing application for healthcare and education providers to gather research from marginalized communities. I repeatedly heard from stakeholders that users in the community were apprehensive about sharing data. They didn’t want it shared with a 3rd party without their consent, worse-still, shared with government authorities due to poor experiences with law enforcement officials.
Impact
The providers were not getting “buy in” from their users hence application use was minimal or certain features that required users to share personal information was being ignored.
Solution
I suggested we build an application that went beyond document sharing to include data transparency as the core of the data model to ultimately let the user know exactly how their data is being used. It could have further features to empower the user such as setting expiration dates and deciding permissions on the documents they share.
I made sure to emphasize that the data model and overall application architecture honor the permission levels set by the user and not have the front end decide what can be shown.
Application Flow
- Admin user (e.g. HR department) requests to see an employees document through the web app.
- Admin input what they plan on doing with the data.
- Enduser notified on their mobile app about the request.
- Document is automatically added to Admin user’s desired folder (saving time on manually dragging/dropping)
- Enduser notified via push notifications for any document activity they want to monitored (e.g. sharing, opening).
- Background activities commence based on enduser preferences (e.g. document deletion)