Delve into best practices for working with people on privacy-preserving technology
This year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES ‘17) showcased numerous internet of things (IoT) devices but was found wanting when it came to security concerns. In his UX of IoT report from CES, Scott Jenson assesses that “companies really, really, REALLY want to make home automation systems,” but how can we begin to consider the ethics when developers don’t even consider security risks? IoT systems pose two security challenges. First, they can be manipulated as surveillance infrastructure to target vulnerable people.
In this installment of our series on resources for field research, we discuss the participant's bill of rights. Additional resources include screeners and model releases for photography. Why Consent Matters Field research such as interviews and observations are an important part of Human-Centered Design. As important as learning about first-person, lived experiences is to the design process, the act of participating in an interview can feel awkward. There is an inherent power dynamic that puts researchers in a dominant position; for all that participants know, once they share a personal story, researchers are free to use it as they please.
This post is part of a series explaining our publicly available resources for user research. The previous installment covered how to write screeners to recruit participants. This week, we discuss how to get model releases to share photos from user studies. One approach among manyAt Simply Secure, we strive to balance study participants' privacy with building empathy in an audience of developers, policymakers, and designers by sharing study photos and stories.
When you're putting your heart and soul into designing, building, or improving a piece of software, tuning in to feedback from users can sometimes get you down. Imagine waking up one morning and finding your project is being mentioned on Twitter in a slew of messages like these: Thanks Snapchat. Your app officially sucks. — Michael (@michaellorelei) April 21, 2016 The Facebook app sucks — em (@emma0wczarzak) April 19, 2016 You know, the YouTube app really kind of sucks.
From quick-start guides to professional discussion, the Knowledge Base helps you hone user research skills.
User research is about surfacing behavioral insights to design products. Build your knowledge of user research, including methods for conducting user interviews and ethics
Here are resources that provide tips and guidance, especially for those working on technical projects with a privacy component
Simply Secure provides resources for professional user researchers who want to further grow their skills and knowledge of best practices, with an emphasis on information security topics
While bigger companies have entire departments that do product design and market research, it can be difficult for smaller, distributed teams on a budget to get user feedback. We compiled a session guide to test your app with small groups, ideal for quick feedback at conferences and meetups.
I was in Darmstadt for Privacy and Security Week last week to present Simply Secure's work on ethics in user research at HotPETS. You can check out the paper and slides on GitHub. Resources for ethical research In 2015, we did a field study that we named Straight Talk: New Yorkers on Mobile Messaging and Implications for Privacy. We have since used it as a case study to demonstrate how to work with study participants.
A screener is a questionnaire that helps researchers recruit the most appropriate participants for their user study research. Here is an example we used for our mobile messaging study in NYC. Blue Ridge Labs handled the recruiting. Most of this screener's questions are a standard part of how they work with potential participants. Our questions, in red, focus on messaging and attitudes towards privacy. Additional questions about VPN use, email, and getting online were for our Fellow Gus Andrews's research.
Last week Gus and I gave a talk at Shmoocon in DC. The focus was on helping technologists who don't have experience in human-centered design processes conduct basic research to improve their existing open-source tools. We covered four basic steps that we believe even small or volunteer teams can take: Agree on your target users Do an expert review of your UX to identify (& fix) low-hanging fruit Interview real users Build a model of your users and their needs Smooth the path for user feedback Iterate until you get it right Overall the talk was well received, with a few choice quotes making their way onto Twitter.
2015 was our first full year in operation, and we’ve come a long way! Looking back at the past twelve months, here are some resources that we’ve found to be particularly useful (or entertaining). Let us know your favorites on Twitter! Ame’s picks Thinking back on 2015, I’m really glad to be part of Simply Secure and for the opportunity to be an evangelist for design. I’m thankful for resources that make design easier.
People who think about computer security for a living sometimes cringe when they read about the subject in the popular press. Security is a complex and nuanced topic, and it’s easy to make assertions that don’t hold up to careful scrutiny. One basic-but-unintuitive principle is that security is not a binary property: in the absence of other context, it’s hard to definitively say that a particular system or piece of software is “secure” or “insecure”.
As a practitioner of Human-Centered Design, empathy is a core skill in the work I do. In No Flex Zone: Empathy Driven Development, Duretti Hirpa writes about how empathy can be a competitive advantage. “We build software for all kinds of people, and empathy helps us to connect to these disparate audiences. We have to choose empathy, but I’d argue, it’s undeniably the ‘one weird trick’ to future-proofing the software engineering.
Last week I went to the SOUPS conference in Ottawa. As a first-time attendee, it was a good opportunity to connect with some members of the academic usable-security community. One of the highlights was keynote speaker Valerie Steeves. Steeves, sharing findings from her Young Canadians in a Wired World research, reported results of an in-depth study of 5,436 Canadians in Grades 4-11. Based on a survey and in-person discussions, she shared sobering findings that kids’ expectations of online privacy are not being met.