Case studies – The Consentful Tech Project

**Sign-up flow:** The sign-up flow fully considers consent, refusal, as well as the reversal of consent.

We were honored to be invited by the Shorenstein Center at the Harvard Kennedy School to contribute a work-in-progress design prototype for their 2019 Privacy Forecast.

The Consentful Tech Project has been working with the Design Justice Network (DJN) to incorporate stronger consent practices into its website. DJN invites visitors to become signatories to its ten principles, which, taken together provide a vision of design practice that is just, equitable, accessible, and accountable.

**Call to Action:** In the call to action area, users will see a “remove me” button next to the conventional “sign up” button. This makes it clear to new signatories that they can remove themselves at any time, and is easy to find for those returning to the signatory page.

We wanted to create a prototype for cases where a) someone who has become a signatory wants to un-sign, and b) someone begins signing up, then decides not to become a signatory part way through the process.

**Consent Step:** We are drafting a clear language policy that asks for consent while also reminding users about what good consent looks like.

The prototype we’re working on involves:

Mapping out a user flow that fully considers consent, refusal, as well as the reversal of consent;
A set of two buttons, one for signing onto the principles and one for removing yourself either as a public signatory or entirely from the signatory list;
A clear language policy that asks for consent while also reminding users about what good consent looks like; and
The visual design and copywriting of a dialog box that indicates that we respect a user’s decision to refuse consent.

The prototype is still a work in progress, but we will share updates as they unfold. See all the privacy prototypes at https://privacy.shorensteincenter.org/.

Published by Consentful Tech Project in Case studies

The Commons Platform is "a new social media platform, based on values, built by everyone for everyone and owned by everyone. It is private and secure, open source and decentralised, and enables everyone to collaborate on community organising, resource-sharing or anything else that makes their lives better."

Recently, Commons Platform organizers presented a design workshop that asked the question "How can we create a thriving community where people can contribute and where all contributions are valued?"

Workshop participants were introduced to the concept of Consentful Tech, and discussed why consent should be built in to this platform by design and default, and embedded into its culture. There was also some preliminary discussion about how consent could be implemented from a technical standpoint.

Read more about the workshop and see the full notes on the Commons Platform website.

Published by Consentful Tech Project in Case studies, Impact

A prototype of reversible, no-pressure consent

Designing consent into a new social media platform