How Tech Teams Can Prepare for Internet Shutdowns
Internet shutdowns are increasingly more common and have become a central problem for global organizations such as Access Now, OONI, Open Technology Fund and Internet Society. Anywhere you go, the Internet is an essential part of our interconnected world and is the reason why governments have been using them as a way to gain control. As designers, developers, and innovators of technology we believe that it’s important to support people through these shutdowns. And specifically for usability practitioners, understanding the reality people face will help teams expand their point of view and create a technology more resilient to these acts of oppression.
Thanks to civil society actors, we have stories and internet measurement studies. These give us a context and a global panorama of the situation. Yet, there’s a layer of insight we need in order to design people-driven tools for these scenarios.
In this post, we’ll outline some methods to use to open up this discussion.
Understanding Behaviors and Goals
Shutdown-Centric Personas
The way someone experiences an outage is very dependent on where they live and who they are. Personas help us have conversations about types of people with specific constraints, behaviors and goals. They are crucial to design any technology as it allows a team to stay grounded in their intended audience. A sort of North star that guides discussions, strategy, and the efforts the team creates.
When generating shutdown-centric personas, it’s important to talk with people living in areas subject to internet shutdowns. Only they can provide an accurate account of what it’s like to live in those conditions. We’ve started a short interview guide of questions to ask when generating shutdown-centric personas: Internet Outage Interview Guide.
If you’re interested in more resources on this topic, reach out.
Mapping the Situation and Needs
Journey Map
Political unrest, protests and elections often trigger internet shutdowns. We need an understanding of these events over time, along with the goals people have. The progression of censorship events leading up to a shutdown often happening in the midst of activists, journalists and human rights defenders doing their work.
Journey maps are a good tool to use to unpack these events and bring clarity to what might be missing, what can we do, what needs to improve, etc. A journey map of a full protest period with an outage on top lays the landscape for exploring the human experience. In this framing, we can consider how someone is thinking and feeling as events unfold. What does the person need to do at different points throughout this journey? What are the risks they face? This method can help uncover a nuanced understanding of needs and use cases.
Proving Solutions and Finding Gaps
Simulations
Continual testing and feedback are key to ensuring quality, exposing usability gaps and revealing technical issues on various networks and devices. Simulations of shutdowns can happen in a siloed or group environment, depending on the tools in the trial. For example, if you're testing peer-to-peer technology, you need a group of people in the same room. If you're trialing an SMS solution, testing it in a siloed environment will be more realistic. Running simulation tests with people that are affected by shutdowns can aid learning for the product team and the community.
Embracing an Offline Mindset
Offline-First Audit
The methods mentioned up to this point all need invested research, but there’s an initial step technology teams can take on their own—auditing the tool through the offline experience. This will better position us to consider people facing internet interruptions. An initial offline audit can be very basic. To start, disconnect from wifi and data and go through the tool. As you do, ask questions like: What can the user do in this state? Are there actions offered that won’t work? How frustrated are you at the amount of broken or blank views? When you open the app, is it clear that the app is offline? Is it clear what you can do in an offline state?
Before you stop reading, if you represent a technology team, create a project to-do or git ticket titled, ‘Consider the offline experience’. This simple step takes seconds. But it carries the power to nudge your team toward ‘offline first’ thinking.
If you want help with an offline audit, reach out. We provide in-kind support to internet freedom tools through the Open Technology Fund SUA Lab (Secure Usability and Accessibility Lab).
Embrace Empathy
Latency Tolerant Review
Now, let’s imagine that someone is using a tool or app while the internet is being throttled. We know that throttling is a common tactic used leading up to internet shutdowns. As with the offline audit, you can do a similar exercise for throttled, low bandwidth situations. This type of exercise will help you build empathy and embrace the mindset of people going through these situations. As you go through this exercise, make a note of frustrating moments. These are the areas to begin to pay more attention to in the user experience.
That’s a Wrap!
We know internet shutdowns are on the rise. As societies become more reliant on the internet, disruptions to daily life extend from being able to work to getting information to the outside world. If we can put processes in place to better understand needs, we can move forward as we tackle the issue from the tech sphere. These methods will help you and your team prepare, analyze, and envision tech that will support activists and journalists in their work.