What is Apple’s 5.1.1 Requirement?

Mid 2020, Apple began to market itself as a privacy conscience company. Thus, the 5.1.1 requirement was born. Its purpose is to protect iPhone customer privacy.

Case Study

Consider this scenario. You work with a designer to create a front end for your social network.

• Screen 1) Weclome to the application.
• Screen 2) Register an account
• Screen 3) Create a profile.
• Screen 4) Core feature of the application.

The application is rejected.

What Happened?

The application is considered a social application. It is designed to be used by a community of people. By excluding people who are unwilling to provide personal data, Apple considers this to be a violation of their privacy policy. As outlined in Apple’s 5.1.1 requirement.

Apps may not require users to enter personal information to function, … Apps may request basic contact information (such as name and email address) so long as the request is optional for the user, features and services are not conditional on providing the information

How to Respond

So, what do you do? This may seem like a major overhaul at first. But in reality, this is a sales optimization.

Begin by creating a list of the features in your application. Organize them into two categories.

Which features are passive, and which ones are interactive?

The passive features are the ones that do not require any personal information. They are the ones that can be used by anyone, regardless of whether they have signed in or not. Such as: comments, likes, joining a group, perhaps even viewing a profile.

As the product owner, you can decide which features are passive and which ones are interactive.

The interactive features are the ones that require personal information. They are the ones that are only available to users who have signed in. Think of signed in as the payment for a set of premium features. Once a user has given their email/created a profile, they have compensated the company/community in some way.

Next Steps

Now that you have this list, the application can begin to add feature gates around features that require a login. After a short period of preparation, I recommend software developers fence the application while pair coding with the product owner. As questions arise, the product owner can make decisions about which features are passive and which ones are interactive.

Conclusion

Sticking to Apple’s 5.1.1 guidelines helps build communities that are both engaging and respectful of user privacy. It also makes sure everyone feels welcome. Whether they’re open to sharing personal info or not.