November 28 2024 GM

Make Privacy Sexy Again: Why do We Need to Choose Between Privacy and Usability?

Glitter Meetups What are Glitter Meetups Notes from Past Glitter Meetups Virtual Events Calendar Join the TCU Mattermost

• Date: Thursday, November 28
• Time: 9am EST / 2pm UTC
• Who: Laurisha Rampersad and Kayee Au
• Facilitator: Mardiya
• Where: On TCU Mattermost "IF Square" Channel.
  • Don't have an account to the TCU Mattermost? you can request one following the directions here.

Join us on 28 November, to hear from Laurisha Rampersad and Kayee Au, CEO and Co-founder and Design Director and Founder of Kumquat who will be talking about:

1. Why people choose UX over privacy
2. Tackling poor circumvention tool design
3. Connecting the dots using strategic design to overcome silos

Laurisha Rampersad: As the CEO and co-founder of Kumquat, Laurisha Rampersad leads a women-led venture design consultancy in Cape Town that specializes in elevating impact-driven startups and African design talent. Her extensive background at Stitch, Lucky Beard, and Superbalist has equipped her with a deep understanding of strategic digital experiences, which is central to Kumquat's mission of revolutionizing Africa’s startup ecosystem. Laurisha champions the importance of mental health, sustainable living, and a holistic approach to work-life balance.

Kayee Au: Kayee Au is the founder and design director of Kumquat, where she leverages her vast experience from IDEO.org, Chipper Cash, and other leading companies to support startups and empower local design talent across Africa. With nearly a decade of experience across diverse markets such as Kenya, Tanzania, and Egypt, she focuses on creating user-centered products that cater to unique local needs. Kayee's work spans several disciplines including film, e-commerce, and fintech, enriching her strategic approach to consultancy and design.

What is Glitter Meetup?

Glitter Meetup is the weekly town hall of the digital rights and Internet Freedom community at the IF Square on the TCU Mattermost, at 9am EDT / 1pm UTC. It is a text-based chat where digital rights defenders can share regional and project updates, expertise, ask questions, and connect with others from all over the world! Do you need an invite? Learn how to get one here.

Notes

Can you give us a brief background on what Kumquat does?

• We are a human-centered, women-led product design consultancy based in Cape Town.
• The team is comprised of Kayee and Laurisha, and we use design strategies and UX/UI design to help impact-driven organizations build localized tools and enhance existing technologies.
• Our focus includes creating solutions that promote internet freedom, counter state-sponsored repression, and advance digital rights.
• We specialize specifically in designing for the global south, although our clients often come from anywhere. We exclusively hire talent on the continent.

What are some of the tools you have been supporting with the UX/UI? If there are any?

• At the moment, we're busy on projects with DefendDefenders, World Ethical Data Forum, CIPESA, and Ushahidi. Our focus at the moment is conducting a lot of preliminary user research to understand the different types of behaviors and use cases across all of these organiations
• So we aren't looking at figma wireframes at the moment, but first digging deeply into understand the human side of the problem and needs, to form the User Experience strategy.

what UX needs you have found within digital rights orgs while doing this work? And what is considered as behaviours?

• Two critical areas are trust and simplicity - especially when designing for low digital literacy and bandwidth contexts. Digital rights tools, especially circumvention tools, need to be accessible to non-technical users without compromising security. Many tools in this space struggle because they’re overly complex (or designed for western resources), alienating users who may already be under immense stress.
• Great question about behaviours! In the context of design, "behaviors" refer to how users interact with a product or system and how the product responds to these interactions. So think:
  • clicking
  • scrolling
  • navigation to one page or another
• Last note on behaviors: effective UX design is evident when users interact with your product smoothly. Like if a user clicks a button, scrolls through content, or navigates the UI, and it consistently leads them precisely where they anticipate, you're on the right track.

How does your work support organizations struggling with usability and security/ privacy with UX/UI support? Can you take us through the process, especially when for the most part the capacity is limited? What does this look like in practice?

• So, when we're working with organizations, especially those that might be tight on resources, we focus a lot on making UX/UI as clear and effective as possible, while also keeping a tight grip on security and privacy. So our process looks like:

1. Identify Key Needs: Understand the mission of the organization, the problem they are trying to solve, and what the organization struggles with in terms of usability and security.

2. Prioritize: Focus on the most critical issues that affect both user experience and privacy.

3. Design and Test: Create intuitive, simple designs and prototype them to test with real users, gathering feedback.

4. Ensure Security: Develop the full solution with strong emphasis on security and privacy, like encryption and secure access. We often work with other internet freedom partners for this

5. Iterate and Adapt: Post-launch, continuously review user feedback and adapt the design to keep up with evolving needs and security challenges.

• It's not actually a difficult process to follow, it's quite straightforward. What's hard is learning to ask the right questions to uncover hidden insights (we think of them like gems)

Do you work with them to test out the designs with a select group of people?

• We do! It often depends on the context (are we designing for people who are comfortable in a digital environment, or physical?). Sometimes there are geographic and budget constraints as well. But there are many ways to do it:
  • Video calls and digital screenshares for testing
  • We craft a guide and train our clients to conduct testing (best for sensitive situations where trust is crucial, and in contexts where we are not the appropriate people to ask questions)
  • In field testing (our favourite)

What are the gems? whats a question that would characterise a gem in one of your processes or work with the orgs you mentioned?

• Gems aren't questions as much as they are insights, they're basically the "aha!" moment once you've dug deep enough into an issue to have an understanding (not an idea) dawn on you.

Do you also work on a education approach with the organization? That is how to educate the target users?

• We generally leave the education to our clients, as they know the context and strategies best. We specialize in helping them reach and support their target users

How do you shift the priorities of the clients to focus on the users outside of their comfort zone??

• Oof! That's so hard. This is where user research and interviews are so so important. One of the golden rules is that you are (almost) never the user that you are designing for. It's also helpful to have a persona because once you tell a story and create your "main character," it's easier for you - and other stakeholders to put themselves in this person's shoes.
• This is easier in the initial discovery stage, and much harder to keep in mind once we get to the wireframing and actual designs of the digital product. Clients and designers alike can often confuse aesthetic tastes and personal preference for strategic design decisions.

What opportunities exist to move from an empathy walk to actually working with the people one is targetting? Eg. in the digital rights space, most conversation around justice center on designing with rather than for. Like what would a truly participatory design practice look like in reality? With logistical and time considerations?

• We started bringing this a lot more into our work when I was at IDEO.org - we were designing not for internet freedom tools, but for sexual reproductive health and economic empowerment initiatives. It was important for us to be able to start going deeper into communities, and eventually inviting girls to start to join and even lead some of our design initiatives.

• The thing is that co-designing takes time and can require years to structure well. You don't want to invite communities into a space immediately where they feel out of place and are tasked with responsibilities they feel ill-equipped to handle. I feel like co-designing well all depends on whether or not you manage well.

You worked with IDEO.org ! Didn't they popularize Human Centered Design?

• They did! IDEO.org taught me so much of what I practice today - so I will always be thankful for that experience

Can you tell us what you genuine think of UX and UI in the internet freedom space? And how it may / may not affect inclusivity

• Perception is key. Unfortunately so many internet freedom tools look and feel clunky to use and navigate. A tool that looks outdated or unpolished, even if it’s technically robust, won’t instill trust. Users make snap judgments about safety based on the design—clean visuals and clear branding can go a long way in mitigating those fears.
• So people often see internet freedom tools and think that it's hackerware at best, and spyware at worst. We just had a client who is working with us on a UX/UI refresh - and because their brand felt foreign and clunky, many users actually thought that they were phishing software.
• I mean there are so many things that we can say about inclusivity here, but poor UX/UI essentially creates an unintentionally barrier to entry because people have a hard time navigating it and thus will choose convenience over security. Doesn't matter if they're tech savvy or my grandmother (lol) - they'll find something else to do
• The usability of a tool can literally determine whether people use it or not. For individuals in high-risk contexts—activists, journalists, or marginalized groups—a poorly designed tool can be too much of a liability, even if it’s technically secure. Trust plays a huge role here. Users ask themselves: Is this tool safe? Does it protect my data? Can I figure it out quickly? If the answer to any of these is “no,” they’re likely to abandon it.
• And there’s also a sustainability factor. If a tool isn’t updated regularly or doesn’t provide adequate user support, people lose faith in its reliability. It’s a reminder that UX isn’t just about the initial launch—it’s an ongoing commitment. Lots of people forget that design these days is not a once-off project. It's an iterative product and you need to budget and plan with that in mind, especially seeing how quickly AI and surveillance and censorship technology is evolving.
• And many people are unable to tell which is trustworthy. That's actually a major tactic of a lot of repressive states - to keep people guessing on what solutions are effective or not, because confusion and vagueness makes everyone paranoid and unsure, and ultimately despairing

In some of our conversations you mentioned how siloes often affect how work is advanced in this space? How does your work at kumquat, or strategic design work help overcome these issues it if it does at all?

• For every client that we work with, we try and design all sorts of maps to visually lay out the context. This could look like mapping out all major players and stakeholders in a certain space, all the resources available (and mapped to geographies), or mapping out user flows in a product (how do they go from finding out about your product, to becoming a returning user?)
• It takes some work to do it, but we've all evolved to be very visual now (thanks to social media), so it's super helpful for everyone to have a collective mental and visual map of where we are
• And in our work this is literally as easy as asking a few questions: 1. What is the problem you're solving? 2. How do you do it? 3. What challenges and opportunities are you facing?
• And literally starting to map out everything on a figma or miro board of stickies. Kayee likes calling it her cloud of chaos that she can sit in because from there you can start to cluster together patterns and themes.

How does that address silos in the space? does it mean bringing different actors together to do the work where needed etc?

• before addressing silos, it's really creating visibility and a shared understanding of all the resources available to a client - and who they can reach out to. Having a visual source of truth gives other people to weigh in with other pieces of information that others may not necessarily know about.
• For example:
  • funds, grants
  • free VPNs
  • existing tools for journalism and data verification
  • crowdsourcing tools
  • designers and developers that build solutions specifically for internet freedom (like us!)

• There is so much information that is siloed so before we start a project we'll reach out to clients - and often other partners as well just so that we can begin to map out a richer map of resources that our clients can access.
• we're still learning so much about the space as we're new to it, but so much of our work involves collaboration. We love building shared understanding and trust. When everyone sees how their contributions fit into the mission, the siloes start to dissolve. And when the focus shifts back to the end-users, collaboration becomes a lot more natural.

And how can people in the community reach you?

[email protected]

[email protected]

www.thekumquat.co