Terms of Service

1. The service

Data Backed Design (“the service”, “we”, “us”) answers user interface and design process questions. Each answer gives one direction, the reasoning behind it, evidence cited from a curated corpus of published design system documentation and design research, and the tradeoffs. Answers are generated by a large language model restricted to the evidence we retrieve for your question.

2. Accounts

You need an account to ask questions. You must be at least 18 years old and give accurate information. You are responsible for everything done through your account, and for keeping access to your email and sign-in provider secure. Tell us at lastpicked@proton.me if you believe your account has been used without your permission.

One person per account. Sharing credentials, or creating extra accounts to get more free questions, is a breach of these terms.

3. Plans, billing, and cancellation

• Free accounts get 3 questions. No card is required. The free plan is one per person: an email alias, such as one with a “+tag”, counts as the same person, and deleting your account and signing up again within 12 months does not reset the free questions.
• Paid plans are $15 per month or $120 per year, plus tax where it applies. Both include 300 questions per monthly window, including annual plans.
• Subscriptions renew automatically until you cancel. You can cancel at any time from the billing portal inside the app. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for, and you keep full access until then.
• Payments are processed by Stripe. We never receive or store your card number. Your use of Stripe’s checkout is also subject to Stripe’s terms.
• Fees already paid are non-refundable except where the law requires a refund. If you think you were charged in error, write to lastpicked@proton.me.
• We may change prices. A change never affects a period you have already paid for, and we will give notice by email before it applies to your renewal.

4. Acceptable use

Do not:

• Work around quotas, rate limits, or sign-in, including by scripting the service or creating multiple accounts.
• Scrape, bulk-export, or systematically copy the corpus, the citations, or the answers in order to build a competing dataset, index, or model.
• Resell or redistribute access to the service, or present its answers as a product of your own without your own review.
• Submit content that is unlawful, that infringes someone else’s rights, or that contains other people’s personal or confidential information you have no right to share.
• Attempt to break, probe, or overload the service, or to extract our system prompts, keys, or other users’ data.

We use automated rate limits and abuse protection. Hitting a limit is not a penalty, but sustained abuse can end your account.

5. Your content and our content

You keep ownership of the questions you write. You grant us the licence we need to run the service: to store your questions and conversations, send them to our model provider to generate an answer, and use them internally to find gaps in the corpus and improve the product. We do not sell your content, and we do not use it to train AI models.

We claim no ownership of the answers you receive, and you may use them freely, including commercially. Answers are generated, so similar questions can produce similar answers for other users, and we cannot promise any answer is unique to you.

The corpus, the site, and its code are ours. The quoted material in the corpus belongs to the organizations that published it and is cited to them, with a link to the source. Naming a company or design system is attribution, not affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement. Trademarks belong to their owners.

6. Answers are advice, not a guarantee

This is the part worth reading twice. Answers are produced by an AI model and can be wrong, incomplete, or out of date. Sources change after we record them. Evidence is drawn from a limited corpus, and a topic we have not covered will be answered with a note saying so rather than with outside knowledge.

Nothing here is legal, accessibility compliance, medical, financial, or other professional advice. Check the cited sources before you rely on an answer, and use your own judgement for your own product. You are responsible for decisions you make with it.

7. Availability and changes

We may change, suspend, or discontinue any part of the service. We aim to keep it running but do not promise uninterrupted or error-free operation. If we discontinue a paid plan, we will refund the unused portion of what you have already paid.

8. Termination

You can stop using the service at any time and delete your account from the account menu, or ask us to delete it. Deleting an account cancels its subscription immediately, without a refund for the unused period. We may suspend or end your access if you breach these terms, if we are required to by law, or if your use puts the service or other users at risk. When an account ends, its conversations are deleted.

9. Disclaimer of warranties

The service is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and any warranty about the accuracy or reliability of answers. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain disclaimers, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

10. Limitation of liability

To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, data, or goodwill, arising from your use of the service. Our total liability for any claim is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim, or one hundred US dollars.

11. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold us harmless from claims and costs arising out of your use of the service, your content, or your breach of these terms.

12. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict of laws rules. Any dispute will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Orange County, California, and both sides consent to that jurisdiction. Nothing here stops either of us from using small claims court.

13. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The effective date at the top always shows the current version, and material changes will be announced by email or in the app before they take effect. Continuing to use the service after a change means you accept it.

14. Contact

Questions about these terms: lastpicked@proton.me. See also our Privacy Policy.