Safe Tech Audit: Applying IA Heuristics for Digital Product Safety Testing
Are you creating products that respect the needs and autonomy of your users? Are you concerned about how GDPR, CPRA and the proposed ADPPA data privacy regulations might affect your digital product? Would you like to learn how to evaluate your digital products for safe technology behavior?
It’s possible to measure ethical behavior of technology, and Information Architecture heuristics provide a useful testing framework.
Building on the Safe Tech Audit presented at IAC22, this full day workshop will discuss the role of usability and application of Abby Covert’s Information Architecture Heuristics in technology development standards from the 2011 National Strategy for Trusted Identity in Cyberspace to the Internet Safety Labs’ ISL Safe Technology Audit. You will learn to use the framework to perform a product integrity test of a web technology of your choice.
In Part One, you will learn:
- What are technology specifications and how are findability, understandability, accessibility and usability factors in developing them?
- How do the various data privacy laws affect the use and control of personal data?
- How can Information Architecture inform the design of safe and respectful apps and websites?
In Part Two, you will:
- Perform Safe Technology audits to measure product safety of a website and compare different kinds of technologies (news sites, social media, university websites, retail stores, etc.)
- Select a website or app of your own to test and develop a plan to address any negative results (you won’t be required to share the results if you don’t wish to)
- As a group, we will create an artifact to present on IAC23 Poster Night
