I came across cybersecurity researchers at Cornell Tech who were analyzing spyware companies to identify software and settings that are easily leveraged by abusers, or identifying ways that serial stalkers were actually accelerating the uptake of these practices through online forums. University College London and the Oxford Internet Institute are defining an Intimate Partner Threat model based on cybersecurity principles, which for so long focused just on national security, corporate espionage and consumer harms, and completely neglected what happens to people when they are inside their own homes. End-to-end encryption is pretty useless if a violent partner or family member can just coerce me into giving them my password. There’s a growing movement of feminist technologists who are pushing back against these underlying assumptions in computer science and cybersecurity.

In my research and work with tech companies, I can now lift up these voices and insights, and because of my PIT coursework, I can recognize the limitations of my clients’ design frameworks and help them to be more responsive to the real life impacts of their products. So often, they just want to know, “what’s the one big threat to worry about?” or “what are the one or two personas we’re designing for?” I push them to consider power dynamics, and also the multitude of perspectives and needs of people who have to cope with the disproportionate impacts of technology. 

For example, the newer location tracking devices for lost wallets or keys have been used for stalking. Understanding both the threat models of gender-based violence and design processes helps companies to consider really tricky design questions that weren’t on their radar, like how to help people find out if they are being tracked with one of the company’s devices, or what kind of governance the industry as a whole could adopt in order to protect users. With my clients we can surface all kinds of tradeoffs that they would not have recognized on their own: if the device makes a noise, would that end up putting the threatened person in more danger? What if the person is deaf, so a noise wouldn’t be helpful? There are so many users, there’s never just one persona and how you design tech can define life-or-death situations.

The first step to designing better tech is identifying the issues you weren’t seeing before, and establishing new principles and goals accordingly. Thanks to the hard work of faculty and administrators at Arizona State who laid the groundwork for my comprehensive PIT education, the work I do every day is addressing the foundational questions about tech that really drive me – and that I hope will drive change in the industry in the years to come.