Internews has closed out our 2022 UXForum! The event brought together human rights defenders, digital security trainers, auditors, software developers, designers, and funders for a five-day program of over 30 community-led sessions exploring human-rights centered design in the open source privacy and security community. 

Highlights from Day 05 of the 2022 UXForum included:

• An open space session exploring the lessons that can be learned across the digital security and gaming communities. 
• A discussion exploring the dangers of AI and the challenges with regulation. 
• An interactive session to capture successful or useful responses in moments of crisis, such as protests or war, and to identify remaining gaps. 
• An introduction to fundraising principles which go beyond grant writing. 
• A collaborative exercise to match-make specific scenarios or operating environments to open source privacy and security tools. 
• An overview of the text direction problem on the web and efforts to make technologies accessible for non left-to-right languages. 
• An introduction of the Secure UX Curriculum and how security by design strengthens projects and protects communities. 
• A closing session with next steps, thank yous, and music! 

Key takeaways from the discussions included:

When fundraising, focus on strategic partnership, not transactions. Build relationships with the funder, find ways to center the work, and make sure your narrative captures the urgency or timeliness of your proposed scope. The actual drafting of a grant proposal is often the last step in a longer process. 

Technologies are often not accessible for non left-to-right languages. To address the text direction problem on the web, plan ahead and consider the language accessibility of your tool early on to ensure the necessary infrastructure is in place to be able to localize later. Create clear, user-friendly channels for gathering feedback and take advantage of localization processes as an opportunity to solicit feedback from those helping to localize the content. 

It is critical to center people at every phase of the design or development process. From research to ideation, from prototyping to launch, embedding human rights principles and participatory design strategies will help you build stronger, more responsive tools and resources. 

Thank you to everyone who participated in the 2022 UXForum this week! You can find summaries for each day of programming here on the blog.