Online privacy, but friendly.

GOAL

Empower the average person to take more control over their online privacy in a fun, non-BS, not intimidating way.

ROLE

UX researcher, Interaction designer, Visual designer

SKILLS

Competitive Analysis, User Interviews, Empathy maps, Interactive Wireframing, Interaction Design, Visual Design, Animated Mock-Ups

93% of Americans are worried about their privacy online. Yet, most feel completely powerless to do much about it.

Solution

Koju is a mobile app that challenges you with one question and one action a day. In about 5 minutes a day, you build your awareness of what personal security means for you and your ability to protect yourself online.

Challenge yourself in one question a day

In one tap, find out how much you know about how private your data is online. Day after day, you build up your understanding of the digital space you evolve in.

Learn by doing

Become safer online with step-by-step tutorials you can complete in 2 to 10 minutes.

See what’s happening in the world

Hear about the privacy breaches happening to regular people, so you can better understand any risks around your online activity.

Measure your progress

See how far you’ve come on journey to protecting yourself online.

User Research

To understand the beliefs, experiences and feelings people had around their online privacy, I conducted 8 interviews with men and women between 24 and 54 years old, making sure to select people of all levels of familiarity with the internet.

Key pain-points

The data allowed me to identify five recurring pain-points.

#1

Lack of visibility

Many companies are being deceptive and confusing regarding the data they collect and where it goes. How many of us have given up on trying to find and decipher privacy policies?

Lack of control

People are not always aware of their privacy options online. They worry about risks they heard about and ones they might not know of yet. They can also uncomfortable with their data belonging to a company altogether.

#2

#3

Lack of preparedness

How do you prevent bad stuff from happening? How do you adapt to changing technology and regulation? How do you deal and course-correct when something happens?

Feeling of vulnerability

Online privacy attacks can com from companies, but also from individuals or groups (e.g. hackers) – and it can feel like you are a target for the entire world. People also felt that even when they took action, they had limited control as the options they had were limited in range, often confusing, and wouldn’t necessarily protect them for long as the technology evolves.

#4

#5

Tricky trade-off between value from data products vs. loss of control

The reason why we give access to our data in the first place is because we feel like we’re getting something worthy in return (e.g. access to wi-fi when in a foreign country, or getting something we ordered delivered). My interviewees found waging what they were giving away versus what they were receiving could be stressful and confusing.

Design Principles

To guide my design process, I translated the pain-points highlighted by the research data into design principle: straight-forward language, quick & easy task completion, goal and action oriented approach, and empowerment through fun.

Prototyping & User Testing

I generated and refined solutions by rapid-prototyping and user-testing each iteration. Through 7 rounds, I was able to identify solutions to the different pain-points and integrate them into a cohesive“one-stop-shop”app.

Refining key product features

With the testing data, I solidified and refined the different components of the key product features. I found that a chat interface works best for the daily task as it affords quick, engaging interactions. Having the quiz question in the chat “is what makes app special and more engaging”. Suggested answers also helped people interact with the content without having to type or wonder how they should format their answer to be understood by the app. Finally, the news page allowed people to relate to the topic and understand why they should care about protecting themselves.