Ethics in the network: Learn design that protects users

Every online community is working out how to design the best experience for their own members, but there’s no one right answer. It’s hard enough to get a single app or website designed well. But what happens when your traditional product design skills are applied to complex problems, such as addressing online harassment, bullying, and abuse?

The lead designer on Twitter’s Safety and Abuse team, Jon Bell, will hold a workshop where participants will learn how to create a space for secure communication using examples of various scenarios of network abuse attacks. Working on the cases together with Jon, participants will develop concepts for their own social network, which should eventually become an exemplary platform that is protected from unwanted content.

Participants will:

• Solve 3 — 5 common abuse scenarios within social platforms

• Learn approaches and tools to protect users’ security that are relevant to different platforms and for different communities

• Learn how to blend objective and subjective data when designing complex products

• Understand how to spot difficult UX tradeoffs and how to pick the best one

• Consider how those solutions can be applied for different platforms and for different types of online communities, from thematic groups to professional teams and clients

• Draft a prototype for a new social network that specializes in high quality communication with thoughtful design

• Present their group’s findings to the workshop and discuss the results

Jon Bell is a Staff Product Designer at Twitter, where he worked on the Safety & Abuse team. John is convinced that to effectively protect the user from the negative consequences of interaction, a complexity in systems is necessary; therefore, he considers the design of any function, even those as standard as ‘block’ and ‘mute’, in view of different levels of complexity.

Invited to participate are:

• UX / UI designers

• Start-up managers, product managers, and technical team leaders developing new services, online networks, and communities

• Heads of SMM directions and departments

The workshop will be held in English with the support of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow;  spoken English is mandatory. Applications are accepted until August 18th. The Institute producer will contact each candidate after the close of the application period. For questions, contact kutina@strelkainstitute.com.