…and if the 75 min read warning on LinkedIn scares you (it’s mostly charts anyway) jump to the intro and discussion to see what you really should be concerned about as digital makers. This is important information that every product designer and engineer should know.
Some interesting findings about product safety attitudes:
* When it comes to product safety, there’s a double standard among consumers for connected vs. unconnected products.
People expect product makers to be responsible for the safety of things like home goods, cars, cleaning products and the like. But they don’t have the same expectation when it comes to websites, Smart TVS and mobile apps.
* Many consumers appear unaware of the causal connection between personal and societal harms such as physical, emotional, reputational, and financial damage and the systemic loss of privacy tied to connected products and services.
Product consumers are subjecting themselves to more harms than they think when they trust digital product makers to take proper care of their personal information.
* Even though survey respondents didn’t score mobile apps as the “least safe” option—websites, smart automobiles and smart homes got that dubious honor—consumers expressed more concern about the safety of apps than the safety of other internet-connected products.
If you find that last point interesting, you will find Internet Safety Lab’s AppMicroscope educating. App Microscope displays Safety Labels for mobile applications. Currently, App Microscope contains over 1700 apps studied in the ISL 2022 K-12 EdTech safety benchmark.
In May, I was invited to speak at UX Lisbon, on Preventing Digital Harm in Online Spaces. At the main event, I presented the Internet Safety Lab’s framework for evaluating the relationship that digital technologies have with consumers and what we can do as designers to mitigate the digital harms and dark patterns that could potentially violate that relationship. You can download my presentation below.
On the first day of the event, I ran a half-day, pre-conference workshop titled “Designing Effective Search Strategies” in which I introduced a new framework using observation as a powerful tool to understand site search behavior. To explore this, we broke into seven groups and worked on creating empathy maps, search personas (including group personas) and mapping the user journey toward information discovery. As a takeaway, all participants received a toolkit for crafting these artifacts and a step-by-step process to enhance product search. We got to eat yummy Portuguese snacks, too!
“Noreen … made the interesting point that if we build an accessible design we’ll also be solving many search problems.”
What a wonderful event, interesting and welcoming people and an absolutely unforgettable time!
I am available to teach your team mitigating digital harm as a solo facilitator or how to understand user search behavior, solo or with my colleagues at the Information Architecture Gateway. Let me know if we can help.
In a session yesterday of the NSFCyberAmbassadors leadership training program, my breakout group were tasked with discussing a case study of a potential ethics violation in research data privacy. The Code of Conduct that we were to use to determine if a violation occurred was the Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM).
The case study involved a research scientist who had made software to analyze three sets of participant data, including DNA records, medical records and social media posts. There was a problem with the program and the scientist wanted to be able to do a crowdsourced code review. They asked their ERB team to review whether they could release the codebase to the public to crowdsource the problem. The ERB approved the request as long as no participant data was also released or could be reidentified. The case expressed a statement that there was a risk of reidentifying data but didn’t say specifically how. Just that the request was approved.
My first impression was that the research scientist was hiding behind item 2.6 in the ACM Code of Conduct, which says to only do work within your area of competence. The way we read it, the researcher relied on the Ethics Review Board (ERB) to make the ethical determination. Since the ERB approved the study, was the researcher in the clear?
Conversation ensued about how a data analytics program that didn’t include test data could be tested, or whether it could be tested with dummy data and a sample of open social media posts/hashtags, etc. but that was actually aside from our real interest, which was the idea that technology developers, including those with less funding, but also those with fewer guardrails, may not be competent to or interested in make ethical decisions.
Someone brought up AI. People working in AI today or really any large, complex model affecting global populations, are often making decisions way outside of their area of competence. They may do well, in one or two disciplines, but understanding and unraveling the externalities of what the thing will do once it’s in the world is of lesser interest since they aren’t ethicists.
In fact, not all companies have ERBs and many big names, youknowwho, have quietly and unceremoniously disbanded their ethics teams. In a world of move fast and break things, it’s not their area of competence.
How do people locate and discover information online? Well, they type keywords into a search engine and then select items from the search results, right? This is the current mental model of how search/retrieval works for most users. But it’s not the only way people search, nor is it necessarily the most effective for the information seeker.
In this workshop, you will learn about ”Sense-making,” a search behavior that information architects, user experience (UX) and usability pros should not ignore. You will learn how individuals (and groups) plan and carry out search activities. How a searcher’s goals affect their sense-making tasks. And how accessible design and information architectures improve search performance. At the end, you you will understand how to optimize the user experience of your products and search engine results pages, so people get the information they need with less frustration.
Topics covered:
Approaches to sense-making & information seeking behavior
Searcher goals that affect sense-making tasks
How accessible design and information architecture improve search performance
Where & how to implement search-related sense-making in user personas/profiles & customer journeys
How to optimize individual search listings for findability & sense-making
Search strategies for apps, video, voice and ChatGPT
Exercises:
Individual and group search exercise
Analyze a selected web page for accessible design and search optimization
Incorporate search behavior characteristics into personas and JTBD
App, video and voice search optimization
Discussion of new and emerging forms of search experiences
Attendees will learn:
How to identify search behaviors and incorporate them in personas and JTBD tasks
How to architect & optimize different types of search experiences
How accessible design can improve search experiences for everyone
How search strategy differs for websites, apps, voice, video and emerging experiences
Are you creating products that respect the needs and autonomy of your users? Are you concerned about how GDPR, CPRA and the proposed ADPPA data privacy regulations might affect your digital product? Would you like to learn how to evaluate your digital products for safe technology behavior?
It’s possible to measure ethical behavior of technology, and Information Architecture heuristics provide a useful testing framework. Building on the Safe Tech Audit presented at IAC22, this full day workshop will discuss the role of usability and application of Abby Covert’s Information Architecture Heuristics in technology development standards from the 2011 National Strategy for Trusted Identity in Cyberspace to the Internet Safety Labs’ ISL Safe Technology Audit. You will learn to use the framework to perform a product integrity test of a web technology of your choice.
In Part One, you will learn:
What are technology specifications and how are findability, understandability, accessibility and usability factors in developing them?
How do the various data privacy laws affect the use and control of personal data?
How can Information Architecture inform the design of safe and respectful apps and websites?
In Part Two, you will
Perform Safe Technology audits to measure product safety of a website and compare different kinds of technologies (news sites, social media, university websites, retail stores, etc.)
Select a website or app of your own to test and develop a plan to address any negative results (you won’t be required to share the results if you don’t wish to)
As a group, we will create an artifact to present on IAC23 Poster Night.
“Tools for Accessibility” by Noreen Whysel. AI generated art produced at NightCafe Studio
I was on a call the other day where we were discussing identity services for underserved populations. Someone brought up Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) as a framework for ensuring accessible services for all.
DEI, as applied to product and service design, is a three-pronged philosophy that asks if you are assuring that diverse perspectives and lived experiences are being considered in the design of the service; whether access to the design or service is fair to all categories of people; and whether those—whose diverse experiences are considered—feel safe, welcome and included in the service and its outcome.
We discussed DEI in our group, but one person became uncomfortable, insisting that it doesn’t matter who is using the services as long as everyone can use it. He was concerned that focusing on DEI might mean that the unique needs of people, like the parent of a disabled person, would be excluded from consideration in the design of a product or service.
I thought this was an odd framing. He isn’t wrong to worry that caregivers may not have the best-designed experiences, which is why Universal Design, or design that everyone can use without impediment, is so important as a framework.
But rejecting conversations about DEI outright seems short sighted.
As a framework, I like DEI because it offers a reminder that there are people who get forgotten in the design process. It asks questions like “Who are we including?” and “Who are we leaving out?” So, my colleague’s concern about addressing the needs of the parent of a disabled person is exactly the type of inclusion issue that a DEI framework can help to identify.
It is also an area that I have been focusing on at IA Gateway with Shari Thurow and Bev Corwin. We are working on a model for a group persona that addresses the search needs of caregivers and people with a medical concern, whether a family member, acquaintance or someone in guardianship care.
I’m pleased to announce that the Charter for the Resilient Identifiers for Underserved Populations work group (RIUP WG) was approved by the Kantara Initiative Leadership Council earlier this week. This work group combines the legacy work groups (WGs) from the Identity Ecosystem Steering Group, which was formed in 2011 to provide a trust registry under the White House’s National Strategy for Trusted Identity in Cyberspace and absorbed by Kantara in 2018. I was a member of the UX Committee and wrote the User Experience Guidelines and Metrics document for the ID Ecosystem Framework Registry.
1) WG NAME (and any acronym or abbreviation of the name):Resilient Identifiers for Underserved Populations Work Group (RIUP WG)
(2) PURPOSE: The purpose of the Work Group is to support vulnerable and underserved populations in America. At a high level, these populations include those with physical and cognitive disabilities, or who are homeless, impoverished, senior citizens, immigrants, incarcerated, institutionalized and otherwise underserved minority groups that need digital credentials to access online resources; particularly, online healthcare and financial resources. Without an easily reusable identifier, it is nearly impossible for these individuals to gain secure access to the resources and services that may be available to them.
We will work, in collaboration with other private sector and public agencies towards establishing identifiers and access management (IAM) solutions that respect privacy, promote efficiency, limit redundancy, reduce barriers to use/adoption, increase interoperability, improve security, enhance safety and trust, eliminate identification errors, support resiliency, and achieve greater empowerment across the entire spectrum of online transactions. The RIUP WG will identify, coordinate, innovate and harmonize with ongoing and emerging identity initiatives, standards, and technologies, and communicate our findings to all relevant stakeholders, both in the US and, selectively, with other countries, under the leadership of the Kantara Initiative.
(3) A SCOPE – Guidelines for Cultivating a User-Centric Trust and Promoting Adoption within Underserved Communities
About “Underserved Populations”
Why does the RIUP WG use “underserved” rather than “vulnerable” when discussing the needs of healthcare populations? The US Health and Human Services tends to use “vulnerable” or “vulnerable and/or underserved” when discussing needs of people who require healthcare services but do not reflect the typical healthcare technology user.
In human subject testing, the category generally includes the elderly, poor, pregnant women, children, and infants, and recently, incarcerated people have been included in this description. But for the purposes of access to healthcare services, it also includes rural populations, those with permanent and temporary disabilities, indigenous peoples and others who may object to being described as vulnerable, yet need services that may be difficult to find, therefore rendering them “underserved.”
I had a conversation with Dana Chisnell, a founding member of the US Digital Service now serving as Deputy Design Director at US DHS, who convinced me to use “underserved” as a descriptor for identifiers. While there will still be “vulnerable populations” requiring special services, “underserved” puts the onus of care on the service provider rather than the traits of an individual which may or may not reflect their needs, abilities or level of personal agency. This work follows my research interest at the Internet Safety Lab where we are changing the conversation around digital harms, where the outcome of a service or lack of service can be harmful.
What’s Next?
RIUP WG will begin by creating guidelines for cultivating a user-centric trust registry and promoting adoption within Underserved Communities. We will publish a Use Case for Trusted Identifiers for underserved populations. And with a universal design strategy we will emphasize, highlight and prioritize user scenarios/stories from vulnerable and underserved populations to improve services for all users. We will test the use case and user stories across different verticals and persons of varying backgrounds and cultures. And we will create a dictionary that is harmonized with industry terminology.
There are a lot of initiatives that we will be watching. NIST is drafting 800-63-4 Digital Identity Guidelines, so we will work on comments on how to incorporate the needs of underserved people. The HSS Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) referenced trust registries in its work on Social Determinants of Health for Medicaid and we are participating in its information forums. We also plan to update the MAAS draft to incorporate recommendations from these efforts.
Three women in a liminal space. Digital art generated by Night Cafe.
I have been working from home for a couple decades, so a number of things were new for me during the COVID pandemic, and the hardest was probably having everyone else at home with me. My husband and my eldest who was in college and studying remotely, and occasionally my youngest who was in off-campus housing at college in New Orleans, but ended up back at home due to COVID and storm evacuations.
During this time, I needed to change my routine. Sharing my office with my husband was difficult because he took frequent calls that broke my concentration and he’s a noisy typer. I moved my “office” to my son’s room and had to negotiate when I could and couldn’t socialize or use the kitchen, since everyone’s lunch schedules were all a bit different.
The other thing that was different was that my normally “out of the house” activities were also back in house. I teach at a local college that was online for several semesters. (I’ve been teaching on campus for the past semester, with some online weeks, but a lot of students are still in hybrid classes). The evening meetups and other professional networking that I used to go out for a night or two a week were still happening from home, which can be awkward when the family expects to eat and relax together normally at that time.
Posting the schedule on the door or through a shared calendar has been helpful for coordinating my family activities. My husband or one of my kids cook dinner and feed the cat on the nights when I have an evening meetup or when I am teaching online, just as they would have done when I wasn’t here. Taking calls outside when the weather cooperates was also helpful, though not ideal. The alternative to evening meetups was to find similar activities during the day, and I found quite a lot that fit my schedule, but it meant negotiating midday things again.
My students at CUNY City Tech, who are mostly college junior and seniors, are also only now getting to classes on campus. They have been under a lot of stress about finding internships and post-college jobs and generally negotiating their own living spaces with family. Having to attend school from home was one of the added stresses that pandemic lockdown caused for students. And negotiating hybrid schedules can be exhausting.
A few semesters ago at the beginning of the pandemic, I had a student I’ll call Fatima who was attending my class from home. Her brother was also at attending school from home and space was tight. Fatima complained to me that her mom was always on her to clean up and complaining about why she wasn’t doing her part. It was causing her a lot of stress worrying about sick relatives, schoolwork, and extra home chores on top of it all, when she would normally be taking classes on campus and have had the “excuse” of not being at home.
I think what was going on at her house and in the homes of many of my students at the time was similar to what was happening with household supply shortages at the beginning of pandemic lockdown, where things you would normally use at work or school were now being purchased and used at home. Only for Fatima, instead of a shortage of toilet paper and bleach, there was a shortage of liminal space, the time and physical passages between her school and home life, that allowed her to adjust to and negotiate the activities that happen in those spaces.
Fatima was at home. Her brother was at home. Her mom and dad were also at home. The stress of being the busy student, helpful daughter, and goofy friend crammed in one space was exhausting. When her mom was complaining about the mess, Fatima was operating in busy student mode, not helpful daughter mode, which caused conflict.
What seemed to click for Fatima and a lot of my students was the idea of the lost “Third Places” or those special places and conditions outside of home or school or work that define different aspects of our being, but that are now collapsed into a less private and more awkward home/Zoom life. Interestingly, Fatima’s mother was losing her third place, as well. She used to have space at home that was her own to be who she was when she was not surrounded by all the extra activity, people and messes that everyone, her children, her husband, living in the same space all the time created.
And with hybrid classes and workspaces continuing to conflate our work, home, social, spiritual, and mental lives, conflict and negotiation will likely continue as we sort out these disparate spaces. It is important to recognize these conflicts, and to be a lot more forgiving of ourselves and others as we negotiate this new way of living. Because we aren’t back to “normal” yet, if we ever will be.
Those of you interested in artists’ collaborative spaces may find the Dada.art platform unique. I found it while pondering the connection between NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) and Dadaism, an early 20th century, anti-capitalist art movement “expressing nonsense, irrationality, and anti-bourgeois protest in their works.” (I wondered to myself, half seriously, whether anyone had made NFTs from POGs, the 1990s collector’s item. Turns out someone has).
Of course the NFT platform is called DADA.art and they recently sold a collection of collaborative works as an NFT to Metapurse for 500 ETH (Etherium crypto coin). All proceeds were donated back to the community to provide a basic income (in ETH) to artists on the platform. Fascinating.
THE OCCASIONAL MENTOR is a semi-regular column based on questions I’ve answered on line in forums, and other career advice I’ve given over the prior month. Feel free to add your experience or challenge me in the comments, if you have had a different experience.
Asking a Question on Zoom
A great way to engage with a conference presentation is to ask a question. But how do you get a question answered on a Zoom webinar?
A strategy I like for getting noticed was introduced to me by Rachel Patterson at a recent Technology Transfer Days mentoring session on applying for a Small Business Innovation Research grant (SBIR). For SBIRs, Rachel says that if you want to get noticed by the selection team, you should always submit a question ahead of time, ask again in during the live q&a call, then follow up after the call to thank the speaker and ask a related question or continue the conversation. You can use this strategy for videoconferences on any topic.
Before the Event
Often organizers will forward the list of questions from a prospective audience to the speakers ahead of the session so they can address the topic in their talk. If the event you plan to attend offers a way to submit questions ahead of time, do that and make sure to include your name, contact information and a few words about your company or project/program, so they understand your needs. Otherwise think about what you want to learn from the speaker and make a list of questions you might want to ask during the talk.
Personalize Your Presence
When the event is virtual, such as a Zoom call or similar, edit your name so it has your full name. It may or may not be visible to the whole audience but the hosts and speakers (usually co-hosts on Zoom) will see it. You can also add your company name, location or a brief phrase emoji, but keep in mind only a small part of it will be visible on the gallery view.
If the hosts are using the Zoom Q&A feature to collect questions, post your question and let your custom name speak for itself. The session host may be the only people who can see the question, but usually anyone can, so treat it as if public. (Be careful about posting personal information in a “public“ forum).
Submit Your Question
Ideally, the talk hosts will invite people to ask the question or summarize the context of a previously submitted question at some point during the call. Zoom has a feature called “Questions and Answers” that hosts can activate to take questions as they come up during the call. They may alternatively ask attendees to post questions to the chat feed. Be sure to submit questions in the way the host requires or your question could be lost in a long scrolling chat feed.
If you submitted a question prior to the talk, you should also post your question to chat or Questions and Answers, just in case your question is addressed during the talk without inviting you to have the floor or without giving you credit. If they do give you credit, you may get an additional chance to ask that question or a related one during the Q&A session.
When They Call on You
If you are lucky enough to get called on to speak your question online, introduce yourself, add 5-10 words about your organization or work and then ask your question. Make sure your question aligns with something the speaker said in his presentation. I learned this technique at in person entrepreneur events from Andrea Madho, founder of Lab141, an online, small-batch garment platform, who was in my cohort at the Startup Leadership Program. You are not only giving the speaker background on who you are and what your context is, but giving a chance for audience members to know you and perhaps reach out to connect.
You may also be able to post a chat message to just the presenters, if the host allows that setting. There will be settings that allow audience members to see and interact in the chat with all presenters, just the host, presenters plus audience or you may be able to chat directly with any individual person (but I try to avoid that if I don’t know the person, since it can be distracting and possibly creepy).
Read the Room
Notice the reaction to others who are asking questions about their own companies or who seem to be overtly selling. Are salesy comments and chat posts tolerated and built on or ignored? Are the speaker and organizers friendly to questions that are narrowly concerned with a specific company’s problems or are they brushing them off? What topics are getting brushed off?
After the Talk is Over
In an in person, F2F setting you usually have the possibility to ask a question after the session if the speaker sticks around or if there is a social hour. Online venues don’t usually stay open for long afterward so the opportunity to chat informally is limited if it isn’t explicitly given time. If they do extend the session, use the time to add to the conversation, show your interest and ask more questions.
If you try the above and still don’t feel like you were heard or acknowledged you can contact the event organizer to find out the best way to get in touch with a speaker after the event. Often, the speaker will provide contact details. Capture those details and follow up. And don’t feel weird about it. They expect it. That’s why they put their contact details on the first and last slide.
When you do follow up, whether it’s direct contact, LinkedIn request, or intro from the organizer or another party, be sure to mention something specific about the talk. If you got to ask a question, remind them of it. I don’t have a good rule for how long to wait. I usually give a day or two for the inbox to clear, but you can join (or start) a twitter conversation immediately.
These strategies are helpful for getting you noticed and also helps others on the call follow your lead and engage with you, making an otherwise cold and impersonal event feel more social.
