Part two in a series of three blogs. Here we outline part of our research process for the Usable Software Ecosystems Research project. USER is a Sloan Foundation supported research initiative that explores how open source scientific and research software teams understand, consider, and undertake usability and design opportunities in their projects.

Supported by the Sloan Foundation, we introduce USER, a research initiative that explores how open source scientific and research software teams understand, consider, and undertake usability and design opportunities in their projects. As part of our active work on this project, we are openly sharing our progress along the way in a series of blog posts.

How are hallway conversations and academic conferences recreated in the digital sphere? Convocation Research + Design and Simply Secure answer this question with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, in the new report...

In partnership with the New Design Congress, our team prepared a new research report examining consent in complex data systems.

For the past two years, we’ve been working with PREreview to promote equity in academic publishing by helping to build a new open source platform that supports a more inclusive, community-oriented form of peer review and publication.

We interviewed 47 people and conducted 3 surveys to complete a 5-year retrospective impact report for the Mozilla Foundation’s Fellowships and Awards programs. You can read the full report here. The evaluation presents an in-depth look into the impact, strengths, and challenges of the Mozilla Fellowships and Awards programming, including recommendations for supporting leadership development in funding digital rights and internet freedom. Three key ecosystem findings: 1) Funding is essential and impactful, 2) Measuring impact is hard, and 3) Community is at the core.

With support from Grant for the Web, our team examined existing challenges to the wide adoption of web monetization protocols in an effort to determine how these obstacles can best be overcome.

Over the next 2 weeks, Simply Secure will be hosting five sessions at the first virtual Mozilla Festival. If you’ll be there, we’d love to see you, learn about your work, and collaborate. Come join us!

How a human-centered design process brought clarity to an open-source data portal for financial journalists

What are the key challenges preventing wide adoption of decentralized technologies and how can we solve them? Find out in our new research report.

A roundup of some of the interesting research presented at SOUPS 2019.

In June 2018, Luminate commissioned Simply Secure to conduct human-centered design (HCD) research focused on uncovering grantees’ experiences of the funding process. The report highlights insights, feedback — including anonymized quotes and comments, and recommendations synthesized from 20 interviews + 53 survey responses.

San Franciscans surprised us with positive feelings about data collection by retail apps, which they considered beneficial to their communities.