Thank you for joining us for AXIS! Over the course of several weeks in August, we will come together to map privacy and security tools being used by at-risk organizations and identify concrete ways that we can support improvements to those tools. Through live sessions, podcasts, blog posts, and recorded content, participants will explore the process of feedback collection and build their own skills and knowledge. On average, we will ask participants to commit 4-6 hours per week reviewing content or joining live sessions. The full agenda can be found below. Please check back here each week throughout the event for updated content!
Week One: August 3-7
Live Sessions
Discovering AXIS Attendees (Tuesday, August 4)
- During this session, participants explored their own personal and professional journey, learned about other participants, and established group dynamics for the remainder of the event.
Mapping Organizational Security Challenges and Tools (Thursday, August 6)
- Participants mapped common security challenges that at-risk organizations face (such as shared passwords or collaborative documents) allowing us to identify regional and global trends. We also mapped common tools that are being used by at-risk users and organizations.
On Your Own
- Read: Introduction to Human-Centered Design and User-Experience and Understanding Development Ecosystems and the Role of Trainers and Auditors
- Listen to: Introduction to hosts and resources
Community-led Skill Shares
- Getting to know more about UX Design & Research from Community Members’ Experience For this session, we asked a few participants to share a little about their experience working in design and UX. In this recorded session, you will hear from: Sage, Design and UX Lead at Access Now; Helen, Digital Security Trainer based in Uganda; Memo, Director at Tafka Co-op; Allon, User Researcher at Least Authority; and Eriol, a UX designer based in Europe. The recording for this session can be found in the “Community-led Sessions” section below!
Week Two: August 10-14
Live Sessions
Building Trust and Engaging with At-risk Users (Tuesday, August 11)
- Beyond technical skills, engaging with end-users also requires a set of “soft” skills. During this session we learned more about building and maintaining trust with at-risk communities, facilitating feedback collection, and more!
Developing User Personas and Organizational Archetypes (Thursday, August 13)
- During this interactive session, participants worked together to develop user personas and organizational archetypes. These resources play an important role in the design process and allow developers to better understand community needs.
On Your Own
- Read: Selecting a Tool and Identifying Developers and Overview of Feedback Collection Activities
- Listen to: Introduction to Personas and ArchetypesFind the transcript for this recording at: https://usable.tools//pdfs/AXIS/AXIS_PersonasIntro.pdf
Community-led sessions (Wednesday, August 12)
Lukasz led a conversation around creating checklists for digital security and conducting due diligence for digital security tools.
A conversation on Web Accessibility Standards and the digital inclusion of people with disabilities led by Nancy Reyes, Accessibility Lab. A recording of this session can be found in the “Community Skill Shares” section below!
Week Three: August 17-21
Live Sessions
Developing Adversary Personas and Archetypes (Tuesday, August 18)
- During this session, participants worked together to develop adversary personas and archetypes. These resources will illuminate the various motivations, favored means of attack, and resources being used by malicious actors targeting at-risk individuals or organizations. Understanding adversary capabilities will allow us to anticipate attacks and proactively develop practices and responses.
Content Sprint: Activities for Feedback Collection at the Organizational Level (Thursday, August 20)
- This session will be formatted as a content sprint, where participants are invited to review, edit, and add to the existing library of feedback collection activities.
On Your Own
- Read: Synthesizing and Prioritizing Feedback and Communicating with Developers
- Listen to: Communicating the Importance of feedback Collection to Users
Community-led sessions (Wednesday, August 19)
- Anxiety Games: Cade Diehm, of New Design Congress, led a workshop that teaches a combination of non-technical cooperative threat modelling that can be used in any circumstance - online or off - for digital tools and how they can interact with communities. A recording of this session can be found in the “Community Skills Shares” section below!
Week Four: August 24-28
Live Sessions
Considerations for Virtual Feedback Collection (Tuesday, August 25)
- This session explored the process and impact of virtual feedback collection. Collaboratively, we will develop a list of considerations for collecting feedback virtually.
What’s next? How do we put this into practice? (Thursday, August 27)
- This closing session will outline immediate next steps (including the launch of a funding pool) and map actionable ways participants can implement lessons learned during AXIS in their every day work.
On Your Own
- Listen to: Reflections on AXISFind the transcript for this recording here!
Community-led sessions (Wednesday, August 26)
Conducting User Research Driven to ensure that the voices of her community are heard, Cecilia has taken upon herself to learn user research. During this session, she walks us through her experience and creating space to discuss challenges and cultural differences that exist when conducting research. The recording of this session can be found in the “Community-led Sessions” section below!
Identity: A Role Play Game Sage Cheng (who leads design and UX work at Access Now) and Mona Wang (a security researcher at Princeton CITP) will facilitate “Identity: A Role Play Game”. Identity management has become a surviving skill in today’s online world. This game is designed to help understand the scope of one’s online identity and map out strategies to protect against adversaries. The recording of this session can be found in the “Community-led Sessions” section below!
Community-led Sessions
- Getting to know more about UX Design & Research from Community Members’ Experience For this session, we asked a few participants to share a little about their experience working in design and UX. In this recorded session, you will hear from: Sage, Design and UX Lead at Access Now; Helen, Digital Security Trainer based in Uganda; Memo, Director at Tafka Co-op; Allon, User Researcher at Least Authority; and Eriol, a UX designer based in Europe.
- Nancy Reyes of Accessibility Lab hosted a conversation on Web Accessibility Standards and the digital inclusion of people with disabilities. Listen to the conversation here!
- Making Easy Decisions: The Digital Security Checklist You can make easy decisions about digital security. Listen as Łukasz walks us through a helpful checklist to make simple decisions about the tools we decide to use. View the checklist at https://lukaszkrol.net/due_diligence/.
- Anxiety Games: Cade Diehm, of New Design Congress, led a workshop that teaches a combination of non-technical cooperative threat modelling that can be used in any circumstance - online or off - for digital tools and how they can interact with communities.
Find the transcript for this recording here!
- Conducting User Research Driven to ensure that the voices of her community are heard, Cecilia has taken upon herself to learn user research. During this session, she walks us through her experience and creating space to discuss challenges and cultural differences that exist when conducting research.
Find the transcript for this recording at https://usable.tools//pdfs/AXIS/AXIS_Cecilia.pdf/
- Identity: A Role Play Game Sage Cheng (who leads design and UX work at Access Now) and Mona Wang (a security researcher at Princeton CITP) will facilitate “Identity: A Role Play Game”. Identity management has become a surviving skill in today’s online world. This game is designed to help understand the scope of one’s online identity and map out strategies to protect against adversaries.
Community Blogs
- 10 Tips for Collecting Quality User Feedback from Grassroots HRDs, Activists, and Security Tool Users, written by Gole Andrew.
- A Very Short Story About Digital Security For Young Women, written by Juliana Harsianti.
Featured Resources
