Creating information technologies intended for broad use that allow everyone to participate safely online—which we refer to as inclusive digital safety —requires understanding and addressing the digital-safety needs of a diverse range of users who face elevated risk of technology-facilitated attacks or disproportionate harm from such attacks—i.e., at-risk users . This article draws from more than 9 years of our work at Google to understand and support the digital safety of at-risk users—including survivors of intimate partner abuse, people involved with political campaigns, content creators, youth, and more—in technology intended for broad use. Among our learnings is that designing for inclusive digital safety across widely varied user needs and dynamic contexts is a wicked problem with no “correct” solution. Given this, we describe frameworks and design principles we have developed to help make at-risk research findings practically applicable to technologies intended for broad use and lessons we have learned about communicating them to practitioners.

Research involving at-risk users—that is, users who are more likely to experience a digital attack or to be disproportionately affected when harm from such an attack occurs—can pose significant safety challenges to both users and researchers. Nevertheless, pursuing research in computer security & privacy (S&P) is crucial to understanding how to meet the digital-safety needs of at-risk users and to design safer technology for all. To standardize and bolster safer research involving such users, we offer an analysis of 196 academic works to elicit 14 research risks and 36 safety practices used by a growing community of researchers. We pair this inconsistent set of reported safety practices with oral histories from 12 domain experts to contribute scaffolded and consolidated pragmatic guidance that researchers can use to plan, execute, and share safer digital-safety research involving at-risk users. We conclude by suggesting areas for future research regarding the reporting, study, and funding of at-risk user research.

Addressing digital security and privacy issues can be particularly difficult for users who face challenging circumstances. We performed semi-structured interviews with residents and staff at 4 transitional homeless shelters in the U.S. San Francisco Bay Area (n=15 residents, 3 staff) to explore their digital security and privacy challenges. Based on these interviews, we outline four tough times themes --- challenges experienced by our financially insecure participants that impacted their digital security and privacy --- which included: (1) limited financial resources, (2) limited access to reliable devices and Internet, (3) untrusted relationships, and (4) ongoing stress. We provide examples of how each theme impacts digital security and privacy practices and needs. We then use these themes to provide a framework outlining opportunities for technology creators to better support users facing security and privacy challenges related to financial insecurity.

We present a qualitative study of the digital privacy and security motivations, practices, and challenges of survivors of intimate partner abuse (IPA). This paper provides a framework for organizing survivors' technology practices and challenges into three phases: physical control, escape, and life apart. This three-phase framework combines technology practices with three phases of abuse to provide an empirically sound method for technology creators to consider how survivors of IPA can leverage new and existing technologies. Overall, our results suggest that the usability of and control over privacy and security functions should be or continue to be high priorities for technology creators seeking ways to better support survivors of IPA.

We introduce a design method for evolving a co-design space to support stakeholders untrained in design. Specifically, the purpose of the method is to expand and shape a co-design space so that stakeholders, acting as designers, focus not only on the form and function of a tool being envisioned but also on the social context of its use and values that lie with individuals, groups, and societies. The method introduces value sensitive stakeholder prompts and designer prompts into a co-design process, creating a particular kind of reflection-on-action cycle. The prompts provide a means for bringing empirical data on values and theoretical perspective into the co-design process. We present the method in terms of a general model, the Value Sensitive Action-Reflection Model; place the model within discourse on co-design spaces; and illustrate the model with a discussion of its application in a lo-fi prototyping activity around safety for homeless young people. We conclude with reflections on the model and method.

This paper reports on the use of social network sites (MySpace and Facebook) by homeless young people, an extraordinary user population, made so in part by its vulnerability. Twenty-three participants of diverse ethnicities, 11 women and 12 men (mean age, 21.7 years), were interviewed in same-sex discussion groups of four participants each. The interviews consisted of questions about the uses, benefits, and harms of social network sites and how people present themselves online. Qualitative analysis of the discussion group transcripts shows how young people explore their identities, cultivate and exploit social ties, experience interpersonal tensions, manage incompatible audiences, and respond to shifting affiliations and transitions. From this analysis, implications for social intervention and technical design are presented, focused on maintaining ties with pro-social family and friends and with maintaining separation between communication spheres of incompatible audiences. This work contributes to the growing literature on vital, deeply human experiences that have become associated with social network sites.

This paper reports on an investigation of how homeless young people hold themselves in relation to personal digital artifacts. Twelve participants, aged 19-29, took part in semi-structured interviews. Participants answered questions about the acquisition and disposition of personal artifacts, digital and non-digital, including mobile phones, music players, and wallets. The analysis of the interview transcripts reveals that young people often part with their digital artifacts in order to meet immediate needs, including the need to create and reciprocate goodwill. This contingent holding of personal artifacts illuminates both the ordinary and extraordinary circumstances of homelessness. The paper concludes with a discussion of constraints and implications for the design of information systems for improving the welfare of homeless young people.

By their pervasiveness and by being worn on our bodies, mobile phones seem to have become intrinsic to safety. To examine this proposition, 43 participants, from four stakeholder groups (homeless young people, service providers, police officers, and community members), were asked to consider how homeless young people could use mobile phones to keep safe. Participants were asked to express their knowledge for place-based safety and to envision how mobile phones might be used to improve safety. Detailed analysis of the resulting data, which included value sketches, written value scenarios, and semi-structured discussion, led to specific design opportunities, related to values (e.g., supporting trust and desire to help others), function (e.g., documenting harms for future purposes), and form (e.g., leveraging social expectations for how mobile phones can be used to influence behavior). Together, these findings bound a design space for how mobile phones can be used to manage unsafe situations.

This paper explores how homeless young people, aged 13-25, make use of information systems in daily life. Observed in a community technology center, four different examples of uses are described: i) Using digital tools to find employment, ii) Telling stories with representations of the built world, iii) Portraying life on the street with video, and iv) Constructing online identities. From these examples and a discussion of this community, a framework of ecological considerations is proposed. This framework distinguishes between elements of 'life' on the street (Self-Reliance, Vulnerability, and Basic Needs) and 'work' in the community technology center (Conformity, Youth-Adult Relationships, and Goals). Any information system for homeless young people must engage the tensions and opportunities that arise from these two different perspectives of homelessness.

Abstract In this paper we examine how information—particularly, its organization and presentation—and “space” (i.e., a physical location) can be combined to create a particular “place” (i.e., a location adapted to a particular purpose) for engaging and stabilizing homeless young people, aged 13–25. Over 10 months, we used a participatory‐design research approach to investigate how an alliance of nine service agencies used information resources to support homeless young people. We collected 250 information resources and analyzed how these materials were organized and presented at four service agencies. In general, the agencies used ad hoc organizational schemes and presentations that were not in keeping with the key values of the alliance, which include human welfare, respect, trust, autonomy, and sustainability. To improve information delivery and the projection of common values, we followed a two‐step design process. First, based on a card‐sorting activity, we developed a new organizational scheme. Second, we developed four interrelated prototypes for presenting information resources: Rolling Case, InfoBike, Slat Wall, and Infold. To convey the use of these prototypes, three short video scenarios were created to demonstrate how the prototypes would be used by stakeholders, including homeless young people, staff, and volunteers. Feedback from stakeholders suggested that these prototypes, when sufficiently refined, could be useful and operationally viable. By investigating the concept of “place,” reconstituted through organizational schemes and novel presentations of information resources, this work creates possibilities that may allow grassroots service agencies to give more efficient access to information while expressing their values.