Privacy Talks

About this project

A multi-platform campaign that confronts citizens with privacy dilemmas, to get people to voice their opinions in (public) debates with the municipality and amongst each other, to work towards a better (future) digital city together, on a long term scale.

Project Brief / Challenge

The Municipality of Amsterdam asked us to design an intervention that would create a common understanding of and clear communication about the monitoring systems under which people in Amsterdam live. The municipality wants to enable a transparant public debate — between them, citizens, and other stakeholders — about the use of cameras and sensors throughout the city, in relation to privacy and other values. By raising awareness and educating citizens, the municipality hopes to create a sustainable solution in which they work together with their citizens towards a digital city that everyone feels comfortable with.

Project Details

Client	The municipality of Amsterdam
Main Stakeholders	The municipality of Amsterdam, Tada, European Union (GDPR and related rules) & most importantly all citizens of Amsterdam; being as inclusive as possible was of great importance to our client and the succes of our product.
Position	Team Leader
Roles	Responsible for: Project Management, Client Meetings, Campaign Architecture/Ecosystem, Design & Prototype of: Game Installation. Contributed to: Context Research, Ideation, User Research, Concept Development, Prototyping.
Team	4 people (Team Leader, Lead Research, UI/UX Designer, Visual Designer)
Period	16 weeks, 2 days a week

Client
The municipality of Amsterdam

Main Stakeholders
The municipality of Amsterdam, Tada, European Union (GDPR and related rules) & most importantly all citizens of Amsterdam; being as inclusive as possible was of great importance to our client and the succes of our product.

Position
Team Leader

Roles
Responsible for: Project Management, Client Meetings, Campaign Architecture/Ecosystem, Design & Prototype of: Game Installation.
Contributed to: Context Research, Ideation, User Research, Concept Development, Prototyping.

Team
4 people (Team Leader, Lead Research, UI/UX Designer, Visual Designer)

Period
16 weeks, 2 days a week

Final Product | concept

Multi-platform Campaign

During our design process we realised that this challenge was complex. Simply offering one product to “solve” this turned out to be insufficient. Therefore we created a multi-platform campaign (an ecosystem of different products) around privacy dilemmas.
Each product addresses different needs and/or different people with a different approach, to be as inclusive as possible.
By confronting citizens with privacy dilemmas (in several components of the campaign), they are encouraged to think about privacy from a point of view that matters to them, to form an opinion and become socially engaged on the topic. From there on we hope to get as many people as possible to voice their opinions in debates with the municipality and amongst each other, on social media, but also in daily live, on a long term scale.

Game Installation (at Events)

A playful conversation starter to raise awareness and encourage citizens to voice their opinions and participate in the campaign

The (arcade) Game Installation is one of the two major products/prototypes our team developed. It is easily moveable from one event to another, where it is used as a way to catch people’s attention, make them curious to play, and follow with a conversation about privacy.

The public debates are followed and joined by the municipality, and the answers to the dilemmas in the game are also anynomously stored and analysed by the municipality, to work towards a future digital city together with its citizens.

Watch the video to get a sense of this product in use.

App

A tool for citizens to voice their opinions and empower them to take targeted action.

The App is the second of the two major products/prototypes our team developed. The main purpose is to enable people to take control over their (digital) privacy. By answering dilemmas, users build a personal profile that maps what values are most important to them in respect to privacy. Users are then offered tailored ways to take action. Which involve practical measures, like getting a notification when entering a surveillance camera zone.

The app also serves as a central hub that connects many components of the campaign. For example, users are able to scan camera stickers throughout the city to get more information about its purpose or start a discussion about it.

Activity/participation on social networks is also shown and promoted at several moments.

Watch the video to get a sense of this product in use.

The scheme above is an attempt to visualise the process as clear as possible.
In practice however, it was less linear and full of iterations.

Design Process

Project Management

I created a custom teamwork methodology, shaped to our needs, based on a Kanban board and stand-ups on monday (to create a backlog for our main goal that week) and friday (to reflect on our work and look ahead).	Teamwork Methodology
Creating a general planning for our 20 week project, has helped me to guard our desired design process in a flexible but safe way with overview. Sometimes a phase needed more time, in which case I would review our planning, consider priorities and find ways to make it happen or not. This has been a living document.	Project Planning

Teamwork Methodology
I created a custom teamwork methodology, shaped to our needs, based on a Kanban board and stand-ups on monday (to create a backlog for our main goal that week) and friday (to reflect on our work and look ahead).

Project Planning
Creating a general planning for our 20 week project, has helped me to guard our desired design process in a flexible but safe way with overview. Sometimes a phase needed more time, in which case I would review our planning, consider priorities and find ways to make it happen or not. This has been a living document.

Context Research

Desk Research	on: ‘Tada‘ values, GDPR and related articles, and the public opinion about (digital) privacy. To immerse ourselves in the topic and understand the context better.
Urban Exploration	Capturing the camera/sensor infrastructure, (technical) characteristics, and feeling of safety and privacy, to get a better sense of the current situation.
Service Blueprint	A scheme to visualise the interaction between data subject and data processor. This made us realise we should focus on informing citizens about the cameras/sensors they encounter and enable them to voice their opinions.
Stakeholder Mapping	Mapping all (direct & indirect) stakeholders and their values at play in the context of our project brief. This value-sensitive approach helped us to consider the most important stakeholders to focus on for our project.

Desk Research
on: ‘Tada‘ values, GDPR and related articles, and the public opinion about (digital) privacy. To immerse ourselves in the topic and understand the context better.

Urban Exploration
Capturing the camera/sensor infrastructure, (technical) characteristics, and feeling of safety and privacy, to get a better sense of the current situation.

Service Blueprint
A scheme to visualise the interaction between data subject and data processor. This made us realise we should focus on informing citizens about the cameras/sensors they encounter and enable them to voice their opinions.

Stakeholder Mapping
Mapping all (direct & indirect) stakeholders and their values at play in the context of our project brief. This value-sensitive approach helped us to consider the most important stakeholders to focus on for our project.

Context Map

We combined all our context research in a ‘Why, How, What, Who, When, Where’ format, to summarise everything in one page and draw conclusions from this.

First Ideas

We did some individual ideation, to externalise our first ideas. We then came together to inspire each other and discover (possible) patterns and directions.

(Value Sensitive) Design Sprint

Day 1: Understand & Define	Stakeholder-value mapping, defining goals, signals, and metrics, “How Might We” brainstorming, and envisioning a future press release with narratives.
Day 2: Sketch & Decide	Starting with fast dirty sketching to generate lots of ideas, reflecting on ideas with important stakeholder values in mind, developing ideas into concept sketches, and choosing one concept to prototype and test.
Day 3&4: Prototype	Using envisioning cards to keep our prototype value sensitive, externalising and defining our prototype, creating a storyboard to get everyone on the same page, and creating/building the prototype.

We did a design sprint in order to start making early on in the process and become more immersed with the context. We tweaked a common ‘Google Design Sprint’ into a ‘Value Sensitive Design Sprint’. Every day we thought about what values are at play.

Day 1: Understand & Define
Stakeholder-value mapping, defining goals, signals, and metrics, “How Might We” brainstorming, and envisioning a future press release with narratives.

Day 2: Sketch & Decide
Starting with fast dirty sketching to generate lots of ideas, reflecting on ideas with important stakeholder values in mind, developing ideas into concept sketches, and choosing one concept to prototype and test.

Day 3&4: Prototype
Using envisioning cards to keep our prototype value sensitive, externalising and defining our prototype, creating a storyboard to get everyone on the same page, and creating/building the prototype.

(Value Sensitive) Design Sprint

Prototype: Poster Installation

Our main goal with the prototype was to use it as a tool to talk to a diverse set of citizens and get insight in their values. We thought a poster installation would be excellent for this, including 3 posters:
1) A map with cameras and sensors in the area (we conducted interviews in), as a conversation starter to provoke questions and opinions;
2) A question route, to dive deeper into the opinions of people and challenging it with questions and dillemmas where one would think: “it depends”;
3) An infographic with facts and more information about privacy in the (future) digital city of Amsterdam, to spark people to continue the debate with others.

Day 5: Validate (User Research)

We thoroughly prepared our validation/user research day with an interview script and a data collection template. We interviewed people at Beursplein (Damrak) for an entire day. We managed to interview 23 individuals, including various tourists, shop owners, homeless, eldery and (young) adults — varying from zero to high awareness and knowledge on the topic.

Day 5: Validate (User Research)
We thoroughly prepared our validation/user research day with an interview script and a data collection template. We interviewed people at Beursplein (Damrak) for an entire day. We managed to interview 23 individuals, including various tourists, shop owners, homeless, eldery and (young) adults — varying from zero to high awareness and knowledge on the topic.

(Value Sensitive) Design Sprint

User Research Analysis

We did a session where we collectively went through all the data gathered from our user research (interviews & open discussions). We wrote down insights and conclusions on post-its and affinity-mapped them in categories, pro- and opposing opinions, and significance. After we had a clear overview and understanding of our user research data, we were able to draw concrete conclusions.

To feature some:
1) Most participants wanted to take (more) action to protect their privacy, after we raised their awereness/informed them.
2) Quite some participants wanted to have
more control over their personal data/privacy, and better means to do this.
3) Participant’s level of awareness is very different from each other.
4) Participant’s opinions are vastly different and conflicting.

Needs, Requirements & Goals

Next we concluded our previous process on a single page, featuring: Client Needs, User Needs, Design Requirements & Main Goals. This cleared and organised our minds and got us all on the same page, fresh to start more ideation & concepting.

Ideation & Concepting

Co-Creation Session	To utalise our client’s knowledge and experience on the topic and to inspire each other from different perspectives.
3 Concept Directions	We gathered all our ideas from various ideation sessions and found potential concept directions that best matched the needs & requirements. After this we developed and defined each concept to a clear, presentable stage.

Co-Creation Session
To utalise our client’s knowledge and experience on the topic and to inspire each other from different perspectives.

3 Concept Directions
We gathered all our ideas from various ideation sessions and found potential concept directions that best matched the needs & requirements. After this we developed and defined each concept to a clear, presentable stage.

Concepts

Concept 1: Personal Data Plan	An app that informs people about data collection & privacy, and empowering them to take control over this.
Concept 2: Interactive Animation in AR	An AR app that would be used at (public) events to create awareness by visualising the data stream of camera & sensor networks throughout the city, and debate about their thoughts on this.
Concept 3: Human Beacons	A provocative animation of live crowd monitoring data, projected on a big wall in a public space, to create awareness and spark a debate.

Concept 1: Personal Data Plan
An app that informs people about data collection & privacy, and empowering them to take control over this.

Concept 2: Interactive Animation in AR
An AR app that would be used at (public) events to create awareness by visualising the data stream of camera & sensor networks throughout the city, and debate about their thoughts on this.

Concept 3: Human Beacons
A provocative animation of live crowd monitoring data, projected on a big wall in a public space, to create awareness and spark a debate.

Concept Decision

In order to decide what concept would be best to develop, we took a couple steps:

Mapping & Evaluating	We created a clear summarised overview of the concepts’ characteristics, pros & cons, and which goals they met, to make it easy to evaluate and compare them.
Weighted Criteria	We scored each concept on the needs & requirements, following a weighted criteria method. This gave us insight on the strengths and weaknesses of each concept.
Client Meeting	We also presented our concepts to our client, to discuss what concept they preferred and why.

After all things considered, we decided to develop concept 1: “Personal Data Plan”, as it answered the most important needs.

In order to decide what concept would be best to develop, we took a couple steps:

Mapping & Evaluating
We created a clear summarised overview of the concepts’ characteristics, pros & cons, and which goals they met, to make it easy to evaluate and compare them.

Weighted Criteria
We scored each concept on the needs & requirements, following a weighted criteria method. This gave us insight on the strengths and weaknesses of each concept.

Client Meeting
We also presented our concepts to our client, to discuss what concept they preferred and why.

After all things considered, we decided to develop concept 1: “Personal Data Plan”, as it answered the most important needs.

Developing Chosen Concept:
Personal Data Plan (App)

Before we started creating actual screens for the Personal Data Plan application, we first improved and detailed our storyboard. After this, we mapped all desired and imagined features, using a combination of the MoSCoW method and a Priority Chart, to define the MVP.

Concept Improvement

However, we found some weak spots in the Personal Data Plan concept, so we decided to do a rapid prototyping session to improve and extend the concept to:
1) Create lower acquisition effort;
2) Add playfulness to the “boring” subject;
3) Offer ways to voice users’ opinions in a debate.

The end result was an enhanced App concept + a public (Game) Installation.

Improved Concept Architecture

But when our concept(s) really kicked off was when we tied everything together in this Concept Architecture.
Defining why each product is needed, how the products are connected & fill each others gaps, and what each product consists of, made us realise the best solution was an Ecosystem of multiple products/elements that work together – targeting a bigger, more inclusive group of end-users (citizens), more effectively.

The main products/components of this ecosystem are: an App & a Game Installation and have been developed further, during the rest of our design process down below.

Game Installation

As the concept for a public (game) installation was still very young and undefined, I decided to do a 4-week design process: from a rough concept idea to a concrete usable prototype.

Step 1: Inspiration	Besides from desk research, I also went out to immersive myself in playful public installations. An arcade hall was most inspiring.
Step 2: Concept Definition & Storyboarding	Figuring out what the game concept should be and creating storyboards of possible gameplay, until the game concept was defined.
Step 3: Sketching	Sketching various variations and options for the physical installation/interaction around the game concept, and choosing 3 concepts to prototype.
Step 4: Rapid Prototyping	Rapid prototyping 3 installation concepts (embedded with the same game concept).

As the concept for a public (game) installation was still very young and undefined, I decided to do a 4-week design process: from a rough concept idea to a concrete usable prototype.

Step 1: Inspiration
Besides from desk research, I also went out to immersive myself in playful public installations. An arcade hall was most inspiring.

Step 2: Concept Definition & Storyboarding
Figuring out what the game concept should be and creating storyboards of possible gameplay, until the game concept was defined.

Step 3: Sketching
Sketching various variations and options for the physical installation/interaction around the game concept, and choosing 3 concepts to prototype.

Step 4: Rapid Prototyping
Rapid prototyping 3 installation concepts (embedded with the same game concept).

Game Installation

User Testing

We executed 7 user tests to quickly get direct user feedback and get a good sense of what type of installation would work best for our project.

Rethinking Products as a Campaign

Along the process of developing the App and Game Installation, we discovered that because we had multiple products for different purposes, the “why?” of it all was getting quite complex. So, we needed to revolve everything around one core concept, one story. We felt like everything was there, but we just had to connect the dots. In turned out what we needed was something we actually already prototyped and user-tested: dilemmas around privacy (and related values).

Privacy dilemmas will be the core of Campaign, and embedded in most products/components.	Privacy Dilemmas
We also had to rethink the architecture of our products and make everything connect accordingly, while embedding privacy dilemmas.	Campaign Architecture

Privacy Dilemmas
Privacy dilemmas will be the core of Campaign, and embedded in most products/components.

Campaign Architecture
We also had to rethink the architecture of our products and make everything connect accordingly, while embedding privacy dilemmas.

Privacy Dilemmas

Generating Dilemmas	We generated dilemmas that are recognisable and exist today or are imaginable for the near future. The best dilemmas were based on a trade-offs between privacy and another value (of which most useful: Safety, Control, Anonimity, Money, Trust, and Fairness).Generating Dilemmas to use
A Personal Profile based on Dilemma Decisions	Based on the answers users would give to the dilemmas, we would create a Personal Profile of how they value Privacy in relation to other values. This formed an excellent basis for the “Personal Data Plan” concept of the App.

Generating Dilemmas
We generated dilemmas that are recognisable and exist today or are imaginable for the near future. The best dilemmas were based on a trade-offs between privacy and another value (of which most useful: Safety, Control, Anonimity, Money, Trust, and Fairness).Generating Dilemmas to use

A Personal Profile based on Dilemma Decisions
Based on the answers users would give to the dilemmas, we would create a Personal Profile of how they value Privacy in relation to other values. This formed an excellent basis for the “Personal Data Plan” concept of the App.

Game Installation

Prototyping the (privacy dilemmas) Game

Programming the game, using Unity (game engine), with several iterations. First establishing a smooth, basic gameflow and later adding features like (high)score, a leaderboard, and anonymous data saving.

Game Installation

Prototyping User Interaction

Programming the interaction between the physical input (buttons & slider) and digital output (game on screen), using Arduino (micro-controller) and Unity (game engine).

Game Installation

Building the Final Prototype

After a final concept sketch, I defined all necessary components & dimensions in a 3D model. This ensured a fast and smooth building process. From here we took the necessary steps to build the final prototype of the Game Installation.

App

Assistance with Final Prototype

While I was protoyping the Game Installation, two of my teammates focused on the App. When they were building the Final Prototype, I hopped on board to assist with the overall concept and functionality, as well as how it works together with the Game Installation and other products of the Campaign ecosystem. The App ties most products together as the ‘central hub’ of the Campaign. These images show key screens of the Final Prototype.

Final Prototypes

See details about the Final Prototypes at the top of this page.

The other products/elements of the Campaign have not been developed by us, but we did give a proposal for this to our client.

Game Installation Pilot at Events

WeMakeTheCity & Outburst

At the end of the project we were able to test the Game Installation in its real context-of-use. This enabled us to reflect on our work and prove its value to our client.

Amazingly, playing the game resulted in a lot of continued discussions/debates about privacy, both between us and the participants, as well as among participants later on that day. Which is exactly what we were aiming for.

Privacy Talks

About this project

Tags

Project Brief / Challenge

Project Details

Final Product | concept

Multi-platform Campaign

Game Installation (at Events)

A playful conversation starter to raise awareness and encourage citizens to voice their opinions and participate in the campaign

App

A tool for citizens to voice their opinions and empower them to take targeted action.

Design Process

Project Management

Context Research

Context Map

First Ideas

(Value Sensitive) Design Sprint

(Value Sensitive) Design Sprint

Prototype: Poster Installation

(Value Sensitive) Design Sprint

User Research Analysis

Needs, Requirements & Goals

Ideation & Concepting

Concepts

Concept Decision

Developing Chosen Concept: Personal Data Plan (App)

Concept Improvement

Improved Concept Architecture

Game Installation

Game Installation

User Testing

Rethinking Products as a Campaign

Privacy Dilemmas

Game Installation

Prototyping the (privacy dilemmas) Game

Game Installation

Prototyping User Interaction

Game Installation

Building the Final Prototype

App

Assistance with Final Prototype

Final Prototypes

Game Installation Pilot at Events

WeMakeTheCity & Outburst

Developing Chosen Concept:
Personal Data Plan (App)