Product Agility

Isabel Novais Machado: Designing Privacy by Default: Why Cookie Banners Can't Be the Future - Productized 2025 TalkInTen

• Saloni Seth-Watkins, Gábor Suhajda, Isabel Novais Machado

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We’re honoured to partner again with the excellent Productized conference in Lisbon, Portugal — a brilliant gathering of product leaders, designers and builders that consistently sets the bar for thoughtful, practical conversations. A huge thank you to Productized for hosting us and to Bobcats Coding for making this Lisbon series possible.

In this short, sharp Talk in Ten we sit with Isabel Novais Machado (Design Director, UserCentrics) to unpack practical thinking around privacy by design and the future of consent management. Isabelle — who presented a standout session at Productized — takes us through how consent UX evolved, why people ignore cookie banners, and what a human-centred privacy experience might look like.

Key topics discussed

  • Why cookie banners are a band‑aid, not the long‑term solution
  • How consent management platforms (CMPs) are evolving beyond compliance tools
  • User behaviour insights: most people ignore consent prompts
  • Designing for value exchange — what users get in return for data
  • Co‑creation and open innovation as paths to better privacy UX


Guest Bio:

Isabelle Machado is Design Director at UserCentrics, where she focuses on privacy‑forward product experiences and consent management. A mentor, podcaster and community builder, Isabelle blends practical UX research with policy awareness to help teams create human‑centred privacy solutions.

Thank you to our sponsor Bobcats Coding for making the Lisbon Talk in Ten series possible — Bobcats is a Budapest-based digital product studio specialising in AI engineering and end‑to‑end product development. Their AI e

Host Bio

Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.

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Welcome to the Product Agility Podcast where we explore the ever changing world of product leadership and org design, helping you navigate complexity and build better outcomes for your people and your customers. This week we're coming to you live from Lisbon for the third year in a row at the Productize conference where I'm grabbing 10 minute conversations with product thinkers, leaders and innovators from around the world. These quick fire chats are all about what's shaping our industry right now, from AI and product strategy to the human side of building great products. Now a huge thank you goes out to Bobcatz Coding for making this Lisbon series possible. Bobcats is a Budapest and Lisbon based digital product studio specializing in AI engineering and end to end digital product development. They're also on a mission to educate the market, exploring a new topic every six months and this fall is no exception. Their latest AI economics guidebook is out now and you can download it for free@bobcatscoding.com now here's your talk in 10. Okay, and welcome to day three of productised conference here in beautiful Isboa where day three is all about the talks. This day was like the workshops and the first Asia member was the Leadership summit. And I've just been told by a wonderful producer, Shireen, that this is our 21st episode, so we're quite tired. Normally Ben Maynard hosts these but you know what, if he had had a chance to Isabelle interview our next guest, Isabelle, I would have fought him for it because would want to interview her because she's like one of my heroes and I'm sat next to Gabor, a new hero of mine and he's from our sponsors who are Bobcat's coding and he leads a product strategy there. So hello from you. Hi everyone. And yes, we are interviewing the wonderful Isabel mcauder and it's lovely, lovely to be in your presence. I met you two years ago at this very conference and I happen to be sat next to you. That's like serendipity. And I've been following your career ever since and I just think you do wonder things in the community here in Lisboa. Lots of mentoring, you have your own podcast. I mean an all round busy person and fabulous mum. But we're not going to talk about that now. We're going to actually talk about your talk which I actually managed to watch this morning, the only one. And it was fantastic. It was all about privacy by design. And you are the design director at User Centrics, one of the sponsors here. So could you tell us a little bit about your talk. So to start, thank you so much for the invitation and to be there today morning and I'm very happy to also share here what we were discussing. So I joined UserCentrics one year ago. I was not a privacy expert back then and I'm still not. I'm still learning and a lot to unveil, but I've discovered a lot of things, especially these patterns that users don't really focus so much and the power that data has in terms of all the web industry. So the way I prepared the talk, it was served in four acts and I started by travel into the past and then I went into the present and then we had a short glimpse into the future and how are we designing the next experience in terms of consent management? When we are speaking about consent management, it's as simple as I am a user, I have my own data, I'm surfing the Internet, but I'm not really that aware of the data that the companies and the websites and the apps that I'm using, how are they using my data and what type of data are they accessing to? And what I find as a pattern, especially when we start doing UX research for everything that we are doing is that most of the humans are not that really actively interacting with what's the several layers of data that we are giving and to the world. And I would say that the biggest challenge is to understand that when the web started, and I'm one of those that still lived in the 90s and heard the modern to go into the mirk or other old school apps and websites, it was a free world where no one was really tracking us, no one was really benefiting from our data, no one was selling our data to others. But at some point these people that works in web and digital applications, just like me, we discovered data and at first we just had like the printing marketing principles of just doing for the sake of having an impact. And the amazing part of the digital interfaces is that it has a lot of data. We can measure, we can track, we can adjust, we can micro segment and we can really deliver super customized content to the users. And this has a good part and a bad part. Just like everything that we live in this world and where we are right now is managing this. So going forward into the present, right now, which I although I work in a CMP company, like a content management platform that nowadays it's much more than that. So it's still started as a CMP and nowadays it's a toolkit for all marketeers. And web developers and people that are managing spaces online. And we are delivering a full suite of products that can help people manage the privacy of their customers. Because guess what? When you have a website, you don't really care about the GDPR and CCPA and LGPD and all those policies that you need to comply to. If not, you will be paying very high fines. And that's not nice for anyone. But no one wants to lose a lot of time doing that. So guess what? That's a space of opportunity for companies like us to really craft something that is simple, that automatically scans the website or the app and then it's automatically categorizing all the categories and trackers and cookies and all the services that are running on your website and then giving an option for the user to accept or deny or customize. But again, going into the user side, guess what? People are just blind or tired or don't care. They really want to see the website, not so much interact with a cookie banner. You do a lot of research with actual users. So do you see any difference in, in people's attitude in our generation and the generation that were basically born to social media and those platforms? Not really. So we ran like multiple studies and it was like with young people, older people, middle aged people, and we did it like moderated specifically because we wanted to see without influencing and then make questions as we go. And basically in terms of managing the content and the privacy, people just ignore that. I do see like a huge trend in terms of the us like people just think that that's how it is. I just need to give my data to be able to use it. It's how it is. They don't even question that they should be managing that unless it was someone that passed by a huge data breach. And those ones are reject all, but nothing should be accept all or reject all. Like it's not that like that in love, in life, in anything in our life, which should be black and white, right? I was wondering, maybe it's a too big question, but do you think companies like User Centrics or other companies can influence the policies based on their experience. With how we are involved? And we have partners that are also involved and in our case it's mostly Europe, that we are collaborating and being involved in the policies that are being created. We know that it's constantly changing and evolving and we are very closely following all those guidelines that we want to track. And this is also connecting to what we are doing. Like when it comes to collect the content and the Data choices for the user. We also know that the current cookie banner, it's not the ideal scenario. It's like a band aid on top of a website that someone needed to do when guess what, you need to be compliant. And guess what? I don't care. So okay, here are the experts that have the best solutions and that's us and basically we have that. But it was like something that it's very young still. It's less than like 10 years. So clearly if you zoom out through the web history when you are telling this story to your kids or grandkids or whatever, probably they won't have cookie banner, maybe they won't even have interfaces. Like it will be a different world but the way we are collecting content should be much more attached to the value exchange that happens with the user. Like what exactly am I getting in return? If I'm giving you this, this and this data, what exactly should I be giving? Like do I need to give it all? Can I not give anything? Because we get a lot of benefits like you want to pay. So maybe we need your data to be able to integrate with a platform that manages the payments we you to save your login if you want to. So you need to also have some cookies and trackers that allow that type of service. I want a specific brand of sneakers lover so I really want to see targeted ads for that brand because I want to be the first knowing when is something going on and for that you need to give some data but you don't need to give it all and you cannot or should not reject all. So how are we doing this and the way we are doing this it's also like crowdsourcing and open innovation like iterating with our users, doing some co creative sessions. And that's why I opened in the talk I shared my professional email opening the door to anyone who wants to join and contribute to its vision, its idea, its crazy ideas or realistic ideas or complaints or expectations. Like I'm really opening the door to all of that. I don't promise I will be able to answer in 24:48 I don't but I will be really going back and eventually including my UX researcher in cc. So I said it today morning and I say it again like to develop something that is so big and impacts the whole world is just like rising for kids at home. It takes a village and what we are doing is involving everyone that is currently using the Internet to co create and to help us iterate in a human centered way. The solution that we want to achieve which will not be a cookie banner. I hope so that it will not last forever. But I'm pretty sure that it's still not like an easy exercise to solve. It's not something that it's immediate because if you also make it granular and more contextual in terms of the seven moments we are interacting with the website, it's also more moments the user needs to interact with. And guess what? People don't want to be interrupted constantly. So we need to be more integrated and user friendly. Brilliant. Do you know what? I never thought I'd find a talk about GDPR interesting but I really did. You really nailed this one. Can I just say so? Thank you. That was absolutely brilliant. And as you heard, you have given your email address up. I think that's a very brave, wonderful move. I love it. So those will be that'll be in the show note. I'd just like to say thank you again for your time. That was really interesting. Thank you as well to my co host. Thank you. And I think we're all looking forward to the cookie banners to to disappear and we're all celebrate when it happens and hopefully you can, you can have that happen in the future. Maybe you'll win like a Nobel Peace Prize or something from, from your work. But anyway thank you again for your time. That's been another successful talk at 10, I think and stay tuned for another one. Thank you very much. Bye.

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Ben Maynard

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