Superbloom

Image alt text: A stylised illustration of 4 people holding devices, speaking with each other with other technology and internet/web imagery surrounding them like routers, microphones and browser frames. There are sticky notes and paper clips in the background and silhouette hands holding smart phones, tape recorders and floppy disks. The people have various Taiwanese cultural symbols on them such as flag hats, vegetable bags and charm necklaces. Find out more about this image by reading the documentation by the artist, Vico Yang on Github here. This image is under the license Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal.

開源設計工作坊-捍衛台灣網路中斷無名英雄-計程車司機、衛星和科技

Superbloom is delighted to launch its report, resources, documentation and open source artworks focussing on the Design for Internet Shutdowns OSS Technology workshops at COSCUP 2023. This report has insights into how designers practice in OSS, how Taiwanese and South East Asian citizens view critical internet shutdowns and censorship circumvention topics and a framework for running similar workshops for OSS anywhere in the world.

Introduction

Superbloom is invested in how design, and design processes are improved, sustained and made more accessible worldwide in internet freedom open source software. This is not only achieved through direct interventions and a design procurement process for OSS projects that are fortunate enough to fund the hiring of designers or design agencies, but achieved through investment in design communities, OSS communities and internet freedom communities. We practise design as a method of bringing together these three stakeholder groups. In order to improve internet freedom OSS as a whole.

This report stresses the importance of bringing together:

  • Designers that know how the internet freedom OSS space works.
  • Designers with citizen and cultural context who want to contribute to improve internet freedom.
  • Internet freedom OSS tool maintainers and developers being included in user centred design processes.

By bringing these stakeholders together and iterating on usable and useful resources is critical in better understanding how internet freedom OSS gains improved and sustainable access to designers and user centred design methods. 

You can read more about what we did at the COSCUP 2023 workshop in our blog, and at the COSCUP 2024 workshop in this blog. Most but not all sections have both English and Mandarin language available.

The importance of design for internet freedom OSS and the Taiwanese perspective

In the first section of the report (viewable as individual text files on GitHub here or at the beginning of both the pdf files and the text files on the GitHub repository) we explore three framing topics:

  • Why design and designers are important for internet freedom OSS 
  • Why COSCUP is an important event for internet freedom OSS
  • Taiwan’s relationship to internet freedom and OSS

In these introductory chapters we explore the statements of activists, journalists and internet freedom tool users when they speak to the user experiences of these tools, with comments such as:

“Well I use these tools for my journalism reporting but, honestly I still use big tech’s communication tools too, even though I know it’s risky, they are easier to use and my family won’t switch to secure tools.”

As designers, when we hear these statements from users, alarm bells ring about how the usability of these tools fails to meet the needs of those using them. Though these are the comments and statements that we are able to culturally and contextually understand. There are many more circumstances and situations that only designers with specific localised citizen based knowledge can address. The importance of COSCUP as a catalyst event for OSS in Taiwan, and better understanding the relationship that Taiwanese citizens have towards internet freedom topics such as internet shutdowns, censorship, misinformation, disinformation and internet scams are paramount.

The workshop framework

Superbloom has tested many workshop frameworks, activities and resources over the years for different and diverse audiences. This 2023 iteration of the workshop is intended to focus on design methods and skills and applying them to the internet freedom OSS tool space. As such, the workshop is structured into five sections: 

  • Introduction, safety, goals and team formation
  • Tool landscape and understanding goals of internet freedom OSS
  • User research Insights and practice scenarios
  • Design activities: Personas, User Journeys, User Scenarios and Ideation
  • Documentation and feedback opportunities

This framework empowers designers to take the lead and centers users through those activities and opportunities for investigation. This process can allow for non-designers, developers and tool maintainers to learn and practice design in a supportive and encouraging environment and gives them the opportunity to focus on users and explore scenarios and journeys without being held back by technical requirements and possibilities.

This workshop specifically allowed for designers to explore the motivations and journeys of activists and users of internet freedom OSS and add their Taiwanese and South East Asian citizen perspectives. By stepping back from what any existing internet freedom OSS currently ‘want’ to develop, the user journeys and technology ideas were able to ground themselves in the Taiwanese lived experience.

Read the workshop framework here.

Insights into Taiwanese designers’ solutions for internet freedom challenges

After the workshop was completed, Superbloom staff and our partners undertook user interviews with the workshop participants to better understand each team’s user journey and which led them to create their chosen solutions. 

The teams all picked their own persona and their own user journeys/scenarios and found a moment in those journeys where a technological intervention could be made in order to create a better outcome for the user in an internet shutdown or other human rights circumstance. All teams came up with a Taiwanese scenario and solution grounded in the existing infrastructures and realities of Taiwan and its citizens.

By interviewing the workshop participants we were able to ask questions about these solutions that we were not able to achieve in the one day workshop. We were able to dig deeper into the choices made by teams and how that was connected to specific internet freedom issues in Taiwan. We were also able to better understand how designers, most of whom had never interacted with OSS technology or internet freedom technology as configurers, and only as potential users, felt about engaging with design improvements to these OSS technologies and how they need to feel more empowered to be able to contribute outside of supported workshop spaces.

The solutions the teams - all named after group members’ favourite foods - came up with ranged from the analogue to the interconnected:

  • Ideas around how taxi drivers in Taiwan can help to move critical verified information around a city in times of misinformation as well as people who are seeking safety in crisis. 
  • Utilising 7-11 convenience stores as hubs for connectivity and verified information via QR codes. 
  • Understanding how information puts journalists and publishing researchers at risk when they want to ensure citizens have the most accurate information in times of national crisis and how they might utilize systems of limited connection and satellites to communicate as they attempt to leave the country.

Read the solutions here.

Recommendations: design workshops for internet freedom OSS

In this section Superbloom summarises a series of improvements to workshops of this nature. These recommendations were all informed by the participant interviews post workshop about what they aspired to see happen in subsequent workshops. Recommendations are written to be actionable steps for those looking to run their own workshops along similar themes or structures. 

The example below outlines the structure of recommendations:

Recommendation #3 - including activists in workshops

The presence of people with experience of human rights abuses and internet censorship/shutdowns is important to designers, technologists and OSS developers alike. When workshop participants get stuck on a particular point, question or circumstance they can look to the person with experiences to offer perspective and their own account. As an informational resource people with lived experience can quickly feel exploited and vulnerable when offering information and therefore we recommend the safest ways to involve these people possible be it remotely, funded in-person attendance and anonymous representation or representative information. We encourage offering access and further value to the activists or communities in the form of involvement in the OSS.

Read the recommendations here.

Positionalities, documentation and artwork

Finally, those involved in the workshops offered positionality statements using a pseudonym. These give an insight into the hopes, aspirations, experiences and also some of the bias introduced when running a workshop. It’s important to remember that as people invested in the improvement of internet freedom, technology, design and OSS, as well as our own identity backgrounds (race, country of residence, gender etc) we bring our own selves into this work. 

Read the positionality statements here.

The documentation process is described and referenced here in brief.

As part of this work we worked with a Taiwanese graphic artist and illustrator who was part of the workshop herself. She was able to bring to life the workshop team solutions, visually representing these ideas and grounding them in Taiwanese culture. You can read more about the motivations behind each piece of artwork here.

What next?

Superbloom continues to invest time and resources into bettering design for internet freedom OSS and cultivating and shepherding the design communities interested in OSS contributions. We’ll continue to run workshops that aim to iterate based on our informed recommendations where funding and support is available but we hope that these public resources empower designers to run workshops on contributing to OSS globally and we encourage you to add your insights, frameworks and resources.

If you would like to discuss a design for internet freedom OSS workshop at your conferences or ask questions on the framework, we’d love to talk to you. Likewise, if you’d like to make a contribution, fork the repository or translate this framework into another language we welcome your contributions. Get in touch!: [email protected].

Credits

Blog post contributors: Eriol Fox, Abhishek Sharma.

With thanks to:

Open Technology Fund Learning Lab for funding critical documentation and design related to internet freedom globally. 

COSCUP for hosting and supporting design in OSS and the attendees and volunteers for the workshop that dedicated their time to making these workshops successful over 2023 and 2024.

IxDA Taiwan for supporting the local design community in the COSCUP 2023 workshop.

Tofu Wang for translations of the documentation for 2024 COSCUP workshop.

Julia Liu for project management across OSS workshops and this work and Mandarin translations.

Vico Yang for the graphics and illustrations of this work.