Maanya Agarwal

"Traditionally, regulations are considered late in product development as compliance requirements. Our research instead investigates how legal knowledge can be treated as design material that informs decision-making throughout the design process. This project explores how legal and regulatory knowledge can be integrated into the UX design process through a concept we call regulation-informed design (RID).

We are designing practical ways of integrating legal knowledge into everyday UX design practices; currently in the form of RID Worksheets. Our work identifies several practical opportunities, such as surveying relevant laws, studying legal violations, mapping regulatory requirements across user journeys, and using policy documents as tools for ideation and evaluation. These approaches demonstrate how legal insights can guide design framing, support argumentation for compliant solutions, and help teams anticipate risks earlier in development.

By reframing regulation as a generative and evaluative resource rather than a limitation, this project aims to expand UX design competencies and encourage more responsible, legally aware technology design."