User Experience & Discovery Lab
Improving the user-experience design of internet freedom technologies.
The User Experience & Dicovery Lab provides free user-experience research and design support to internet freedom projects. We help projects better understand the needs of their user communities, and support them to make their tools usable and accessible to all.
Would your internet freedom project benefit from user experience research and design support, free-of-charge?
Our Lab partners offer the following services:
User Discovery Services:
These services assist internet freedom projects to engage in user experience (UX) research in order to deepen their understanding of the needs of their user communities, and to help inform the usable and context-appropriate design of the technologies they are building.
Our partners can also help technical teams establish sustained feedback loops with their users, and to incorporate user feedback into the design of free and open source internet freedom technologies.
Services include (but are not limited to):
Secure user research
Interviews
Focus groups
Journey mapping
Systems mapping
Audience & early adopter mappings
Exploratory research
User testing and feedback sessions
Supporting the design of sustainable user feedback flows
Usability and Design Services:
Lab partners are available to provide internet freedom technology projects with design and usability support, encompassing prototyping, wireframing, visual identity development, UX feedback sessions, as well as longer-term usability coaching services throughout a project’s design phase.
Services include (but are not limited to):
User experience (UX), developer experience (DX), and user interface (UI) ideation
UX, DX, UI prototyping and wireframing:
Low fidelity prototypes (ideation and sketching)
Mid-fidelity prototypes (wireframes)
High fidelity prototypes (mock-ups)
UX visual identity support
Typography design
Interface design
Responsive Design
UX feedback sessions, coaching and support services
Offline-first UX/UI design and development
Privacy-first design support
Accessibility Design Services:
Accessibility services are focused on offering accessibility design support to technology projects during the design phase, to ensure that people with disabilities are able to access and use all privacy- and security-enhancing tools and circumvention technologies without impediment.
Services include (but are not limited to):
UX accessibility feedback sessions
Accessible UX/UI design support
Accessible UX/UI development support
Accessibility coaching and support services
Digital (web and mobile) accessibility trainings
Neurodiversity-inclusive accessibility support
Post-Release Usability and Accessibility Services:
These services offer usability and accessibility auditing, quality assurance, and user testing efforts, and are designed to ensure that internet freedom projects can continue to identify opportunities to improve tools’ usability and accessibility even after they have been released.
Services include (but are not limited to):
Usability audits and heuristic reviews
Accessibility audits
Quality assurance & user testing
Our experienced service providers:
We are a digital accessibility agency based in Mexico, offering global support for internet freedom projects. Our expertise includes inclusive design and development, comprehensive accessibility audits, and specialized training. Deeply committed to supporting compliance with international standards, we enhance tools, websites, and mobile apps to improve accessibility. Our mission is to empower all communities through accessible technology.
Accessibility Lab can provide services in English and Spanish.
We are a security and research design agency focused on offering human rights centered design support for privacy focused, human rights and internet freedom projects on a global scale.
We have over a decade of experience in offering user research, design research, innovation, strategy, prototyping and accessibility guidance, with a particular focus on human rights defenders, journalists, activists, open source and community based projects, along with expertise in protecting marginalized groups experiencing different technology facilitated violence online including malware attacks and those facing online gender based violence.
Convocation Research & Design can provide services in English.
Decent Design is a multidisciplinary design research lab based in Southeast Asia. They work closely with individuals and teams from the open-source, Internet Freedom, and decentralized and distributed web ecosystems. Through a decolonial and intersectional approach, they co-design and build respectful technologies with and for historically marginalized communities.
Decent Design can provide services in English and Vietnamese.
Creative project design for social good champions through appropriate technology that strengthens human systems.
We are experts in discovery, user research, and UX/DX, and have more than a decade of experience working with activists and human rights defenders across the globe. We can help you refine good ideas into well-defined tools, improve existing tech through human-first research and design, and create sustainability pathways for you and your community.
Draftlab can provide services in English and Dutch.
Kumquat is a women-led design consultancy in Cape Town. We specialize in human-centered design, UX/UI, and accessibility strategy for purpose-driven organizations.
We design for a broad spectrum of user groups across Africa and the global south. Our portfolio includes collaborations with journalists in sensitive regions like Nigeria, Egypt, and Uganda; developing programs on economic empowerment and sexual health for conservative communities; and building mobile/web designs, considering factors like Android dominance, data constraints, offline-first functionality, regulatory variations, and localized content.
Kumquat can provide services in English, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Afrikaans.
Plaintext Design is a collective based in Europe with a focus on usability and communications. We bring years of experience working with global Internet Freedom projects, ranging from censorship circumvention and shutdown resilience to protocol design. Highly collaborative and always values-driven, we offer both short-term interventions and long-term support.
Plaintext Design can provide services in English, German, Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, Swahili, and French.
Superbloom (previously known as Simply Secure)'s mission is to leverage design as a transformative practice to shift power in the tech ecosystem. We build interventions in tech strategy, design, and development processes, challenging harmful paradigms and the concentration of power, and creating a more just world. We are a global team bringing intersectional thinking, diverse skills, and above all passion to problem-solving and design.
Superbloom Design can provide services in English.
With advanced skills as a manager and user experience designer, Robert Stribley is the founder of Technique. He works with organizations across diverse sectors to design thoughtful UX solutions. Previously, he worked with Publicis Sapient and with Razorfish most recently as an Experience Director.
He offers skills as a UX researcher and designer, but also has expertise in UX feedback and heuristic analysis, usability testing, leading design workshops, and also with UX writing. He also advocates for privacy by design.
The Engine Room can provide services in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic.
Ura Design provides user experience, accessibility and visual design services to internet freedom and open source communities since 2016. Our team is based in Albania, Germany, France and Spain. Over the past 7 years we have supported over 100 open source and privacy-preserving technology tools, including Mozilla Firefox, Tor Project, Ubuntu Linux, Thunderbird, SecureDrop, Briar as well as various internet censorship and security research projects at the University of Michigan, Georgia Tech and University of Darmstadt.
Ura Design can provide services in English, Albanian, and German.
To learn more about the User Experience & Discovery Lab or apply to receive services, head to the User Experience & Discovery Lab page.
Last updated