Eva PenzeyMoog
Design for Safety: Considering the Unhappy Path
In this episode of Brave UX, Eva PenzeyMoog shines a light on how digital products are being used to enable domestic violence, and what we can do to protect our most vulnerable users.
Highlights include:
- What is domestic violence and how does it show up?
- How is technology being weaponised by domestic abusers?
- Why can’t our users be solely responsible for their own safety?
- How can designers use archetypes to help safely shape their products?
- How can leaders help their teams to design for safety safely?
Who is Eva PenzeyMoog?
Eva is the founder of The Inclusive Safety Project and the author of Design for Safety, a brand new book that shows us how we can prevent our work from being weaponised for interpersonal harm, and protect and empower our most vulnerable users.
Alongside her consulting practice, Eva is a Principal Designer at 8th Light, a leading Chicago-based software design and development agency.
Previously, Eva was volunteer domestic violence educator and rape crisis counsellor, spending time with survivors of sexual assault in emergency rooms, making sure they felt supported and understood their options, while advocating for their positive treatment by medical and law enforcement professionals.
Transcript
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Hello, brave UXer. Just a quick heads up from me. This episode's conversation is about domestic violence, technology's role in enabling it and how we can prevent that from happening. If you are a survivor, the following content may be distressing and you might want to sit this one out.
- Hello and welcome to another episode of Brave UX. I'm Brendan Jarvis, Managing Founder of The Space InBetween, the home of New Zealand's only specialist evaluative UX research practice and world class UX lab, enabling brave teams across the globe to de-risk product design and equally brave leaders to shape and scale design culture. Here on Brave UX though, it's my job to help you to put the pieces of the product puzzle together, I do that by unpacking the stories, learnings, and expert advice of world class UX, design and product management professionals.
- My guest today is Eva PenzeyMoog. Eva is the founder of the Inclusive Safety Project and the author of Design for Safety, a brand new book that shows designers how they can prevent their work from being weaponized for interpersonal harm and in doing so, protect and empower the most vulnerable amongst us. Alongside her consulting practice, Eva is a Principal Designer at 8th Light, a leading Chicago base software design and development agency. There Eva designs, products and consults on safe design strategy.
- Before becoming a tech designer, Eva worked at City Year a not-for-profit that aims to improve education outcomes for disadvantaged groups by addressing systemic inequities. Eva also volunteered as a domestic violence educator and rape crisis counselor, where she would spend time with survivors of sexual assault and emergency rooms, making sure that they felt supported and understood their options while advocating for their positive treatment by medical and law enforcement professionals.
- Her first conference talk, designing against domestic violence, a purposeful and provocative look at the prevalence of domestic violence and technology's role in enabling that violence has moved and informed audiences across the world. Eva's second talk, justice, safety, compassion, contributing to the ethical tech paradigm is now available on 8th Light's YouTube channel. And now it's my pleasure to welcome Eva to have what will surely be a hugely brave conversation on Brave UX with me today. Eva, welcome to the show.
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- Thanks, Brendan. I'm so happy to be here.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- It's great to have you here and thanks for your patience with me during the intro while we had to rerecord several times, me saying eight flight, which I've now got down hopefully for the rest of the conversation. Yeah,
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- No worries.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Look, aside from hanging out with your dog Hamlet and your new kitten Reptar, I also understand that you're a big fan of zombies. What is the most exciting zombie related news that you've heard lately?
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- The most exciting zombie related news, it's not positive news, but there's like Covid in the deer population where I live. And according to something I read, there are some zombie-like symptoms in the deer. And apparently this, it's been associated with other diseases as well. So like I said, it's not positive. Exciting implies maybe something good. So I'm saying it using the more negative sense of the word, but it was, it's always interesting to see the word zombie in a legitimate news article.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yes, it is. It's usually the realm of sort of science fiction and movies. So a bit distressing for the deer. I really hope that it, the Covid disease doesn't spread across species. I know earlier on in the pandemic they were saying it might have spread to dogs and cats, but I haven't really caught up on any more animal news.
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- I think it can spread to them. No,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- No. We so
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- Sad. They don't deserve that.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- No, and it's another reason I mean, I don't know your views, but another reason from my way of looking at it, while people should get double vaccinated and try and prevent that from happening,
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- I'm with you. I'm with on that everyone who should get vaccinated.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- While we're on the topic of zombies, before we move on to other topics that we need to discuss today, favorite zombie movie?
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- Ooh, that's a good question. Probably World War Z with Brad Pitt. That one, it's, I rewatch it maybe every six months. And the book is also really, really wonderful. It's very, very different from the movie but that's probably also my favorite zombie novel as well.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I actually had to look at my favorite zombie movie as PA is part of this. I thought I can't really ask you that question without knowing what mine is. Yeah, what's
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- Serious now.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well, thank you for asking [laugh]. Bit of a leading question there or lead up to that, wasn't it? Mine's 28 days later and
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- Yeah,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, Bri a British, I think it's a British one. I'm not sure. It's probably a It is, yeah, a global crew. But the thing that just disturbed me the most about it wasn't the content, it was actually the fact that I realized it was released in 2002 and just how old I am now.
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- Oh yeah, that's such a good one. That also holds up, I re-watched that one recently that the zombies in that one are especially good. I feel they're really fast. Yeah.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Scary one. Yeah, really fast. Yeah, it's a very terrifying movie. Hopefully not quite as terrifying as the road to design, but there are many roads to design that people take and your road has certainly been one of the more interesting ones that I've come across. I noticed that you didn't study design, you actually studied English and linguistics and you also didn't start your working life, as I mentioned in your introduction and design either. How does one go from an operations role at City Year to designer at eighth Flight? That looks to me to be quite a leap.
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- Yeah, well, so you're right. I did not study design in a formal sense. I did a bootcamp called General Assembly, which I think is global and did that bootcamp, it's like 10 very intense weeks and then was luckily unlucky enough to get an apprenticeship role at eighth Flight, which is really great for very junior level people. And it kind of upskills those folks into a junior role and that I've been there ever since. So yeah, it's definitely the bootcamp and the apprenticeship are kind of how I made that leap.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Now I know boot camps are a hot topic and I don't necessarily want us to spend heaps of time on boot camps, but I am curious just for those people that might be listening, that are considering getting into the industry, you are obviously quite a success story who's come out of a boot camp. What was the bootcamp that you did?
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- It was called General Assembly, the user Experience design immersive. And it was a really great program and I do get asked about camps. A lot a of people are still very interested in transitioning careers and obviously I understand the appeal and my advice is always to try to find students who have recently graduated from the boot camps that you're looking into to talk to them because I think a lot of it has to do with the instructors and if you can figure out who they are and how the experience has been with the previous cohort, you're going to be able to figure out if it's worth it or not.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, that's really good advice. You mentioned that you are still at eighth flight and that's where you started and I had to look into the company and it certainly seems like they have a good heart as far as companies go, and they have a very good approach to their internships. They're all paid and clearly it's worked out pretty well for you. You've gone from intern to principal designer in just three short years boot camp's, one thing, right? That's obviously going to provide you with some skills, but that's not the whole picture. What is it about you that's enabled you to develop your career so quickly in the way that you have?
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- Well, I do wanna go back to the apprenticeship because it is, I think such an important factor. Mine was, I think four months long. I think they've standardized them now. Most people have a six month long apprenticeship who are coming out of a bootcamp or CS degree or whatever. The very junior people, it's a six month program. And it is such an important thing because there are so many people who have that talent and that desire to be a really good designer, software developer. And I'm sure you've seen this and everyone has seen that there's just such a lack of junior roles out there right now, but there's so much demand for the mid and senior level people. And it's kind of funny to see that problem people having putting in so much work to get those more senior people and ignoring this huge amount of juniors who are really, really eager and really excited to get into the industry and just trying so hard.
- Whereas at Alight, I mean we do hire a lot of seniors. That's definitely a thing that we're also doing, but we also, and it's a priority, but I suppose it's maybe feels less urgent or we don't need to be as worried about it because we're also really good at taking junior folks and upskilling them through the apprenticeship. So it's funny to see the emphasis on seniors and then people refusing to try to take on juniors and upskill them in that way when that's also a very feasible way to get your mid-level and your senior people is to train them through the company instead of competing so hard with everyone else for the small amount of talent that's out there. So anyway, that's a whole different conversation. But yeah, so the apprenticeship was definitely a huge part of it. I had a really great mentor who worked with me a lot and that just was such a huge amount of growth really quickly.
- Other than that to actually answer your question, well in terms of the my book and the conference talk, I just really care about the subject I guess. So I have put in a huge amount of hours outside of work hours and definitely gotten burnt out a few times and had to recover. So I'm learning how to do this work without burning out now, but I don't wanna lie and pretend like I was able to have a good balance during a lot of this time because a lot of it was just like a lot of time, but I really cared about it and now I'm learning how to make it a little more sustainable and manageable because you can't do that forever. But that was definitely part of it.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I think you're right. Just coming back to what you were saying about the internships and the developing of junior talent, it is sad to see that the industry seems to be placing more emphasis on hiring people that already have skills rather than taking the time to develop that talent. And it's happening globally. I was talking with Jane, Jane Austin who runs the experience practice in the UK recently. I was also talking with someone in New Zealand here, Ruth Brown, who is a senior UXer and the same patterns everywhere. I do see a future that doesn't look that rosy in terms of, well what does design look like in 10 years time if we continue down this track and don't develop that talent? And just to come back to the topic of burnout, I think that's a hugely important thing to touch on and to try and get some more balance.
- And looking back at your work life, I did notice that about six months before you started at eighth flight, you stopped working as a volunteer domestic violence counselor and rape crisis counselor educator and rape crisis counselor. And from the outside in, that seemed to me around that time, and this is just looking at a LinkedIn timeline, so correct me if I'm wrong, but it seemed like you were making some serious decisions around that time of your life and making some significant changes. I can't imagine what it's like being in an emergency room with someone who's just suffered sexual violence and being so close to pain and trauma. That was the nature of your work in that volunteer role, taking too much of a personal toll.
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- Yeah, well it definitely was really intense, especially certain situations were more intense than others and it was, I don't wanna call it difficult, it was a lot. It was hugely, I think it's really important work and it's hugely impactful. Around that time was when I was figuring out this career change and before I did the bootcamp that I've been talking about I did do half of a different bootcamp, a developer bootcamp before deciding that just wasn't doing, writing backend code wasn't quite the path I wanted to take. So that was also a time when I was figuring out making this huge career shift. I really loved my job at CI Air. It also, it gave me a lot of, I had the mental space to do this other work and then when I started doing this bootcamp, I was like, I didn't have the space anymore. So it was sort of a thing of if I don't have the capacity to do this the right way, then I shouldn't be doing it at all type of thing. So, so I stopped and then I haven't gone back to it and I think now I'm still very engaged in [laugh], sort of immersing myself in some really intense trauma that other people experience and trying to work on ways to improve it in a different sense. So I guess it's something I kind of go back to in different ways. Yeah.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- What sort of boundaries do you have to put in place for yourself to enable you to spend the amount of time and energy in this subject area that you do?
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- That's a great question. I do have a lot of boundaries around things. I don't watch a lot of TV shows or movies that have depictions of sexual assault or domestic violence unless someone tells me, okay, but this one is really well done. Big little lies. Dunno if you saw that. But they had that first season. It's a really, really great depiction of domestic violence where it was very realistic and sort. None of the tropes or minimizations that happen a lot. It was really well done. But for the most part, I'm watching Seinfeld right now. I don't look at a lot of things that are just really dark because I have a lot of that just in my regular day-to-day. And then I also limit people's, A lot of people have stories about this kind of stuff and when they learn about my work or we're just talking, they wanna share something that they read or that they heard about.
- And if it's not, I always, and do I interview people about their own experiences a lot, especially in terms of the tech facilitated domestic violence side, but sort of hearing very, very secondhand stories about, oh, I read this article or I, us often will kind of say, let's maybe not talk about that right now. Feel free to send me that article and then I can read it in my own time. But I just putting up those boundaries around, I spend so much of my life thinking about this stuff that if I'm having a beer with a friend, let's make this one of the very few times when I'm not thinking about this. And then it's same. My partner is on this journey he's taking med school prerequisites right now and he does a lot of shadowing of different physicians and he has worked, he's shadowing a doctor right now where he sees they're not always admitting to domestic violence.
- Sometimes the patients are, sometimes it's still very clear that there's something going on. And I told him he had to stop telling me about the different things that he's seen because it's just like, yeah, nothing I can do about it and it's not useful to learn about and it's not like I can connect with that person to give them any type of support. So you're, you're going to have to find someone else to, I think he needs to share it and get it off his chest in a way. But yeah, he has other people that he can do for that because I can't take on any more of these, just people doing the absolute worst things to each other than I already do. So those are some of the boundaries that I have up.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I can imagine that would be hugely important, particularly when this is, again, I'm putting words in your mouth, but this seems to be a vocation or at least it's something that you are very connected to both professionally and in the past through your volunteer work. And you've obviously written recently designed for safety, which will definitely come to soon. But I'm also aware that you are the founder of the Inclusive Safety Project. Tell me a little bit about that.
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- Yeah, the Inclusive Safety Project is sort of this just group that I started or organization to put all of this work that I'm doing around and to give a place for volunteers to come. I have some volunteers who are doing that talk in different countries in different sort of cultural contexts where it wouldn't be super appropriate for a white woman from America to be telling different groups how they should be considering domestic violence.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Eva, you've spoken about in the past, the power of telling stories to help people to understand what's happening with abuse of tech in a domestic violence context. What is your story? What's the moment that really opened your eyes to the depth of harm that's being facilitated through these products?
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- So there was a moment very clearly when I had finished the apprenticeship and was on one of my first clients that brought me back to the training I had done to become a rape crisis counselor. We learned a lot about domestic violence in that training. And there was one story that I remember the trainer telling us about. It was sort of, I think her goal in telling the story was to hit home how dedicated abusers are to their abuse and how the links that they'll go to. So the story was about a woman who had left her abuser and had gotten an apartment in a high rise apartment building and she felt very safe there because there was a front desk person, she had her list of registered guests as opposed to just a sort of walkup or house or whatever. There was this sort of layer between her and her abuser that she felt like that would help keep him out.
- And the abuser had to get around this. So he found out the building she was living in and then was trying to figure out which unit she was and trying to get access to her. And he dressed up as a sort of delivery food delivery person and he had some food boxes in a plastic bag. He said that his instructions from this person were to take the food right to her door but she hadn't left a unit number and the front desk person let him up and told him the unit number and he was able to get access to the survivor in that way. Unbelievable. So that, yeah, they're like abusers are just so, they're dedicated and they're very creative. Again, not saying that in a positive way, but when it comes to their abuse, they're very, can be very ingenious. So anyway, one of my clients was for a highrise apartment building.
- It was sort of an app to facilitate getting repairs or different things like that, checking out party rooms. And then there was the managing your list of registered guests. So then that, when I was designing that feature, that brought me back to the story from the rape crisis training and I was like, oh, is there an opportunity here for technology to play a more proactive role? What would it look like if this software recognized the realities of domestic violence and of stalking and of the dedication of abusers to finding their victims? What might it look like? So I came up with this concept of an anti-US. Cause I, I think what's missing in this scenario with the story that I had heard in the training was that there wasn't a way formally in the software, maybe a note somewhere, but there wasn't a formal way to say, this person is not on my guest list.
- And not only is he not on my guest list, if you see him, you need to let me know possibly you need to call the police if that's something that she wants. Yeah. So I came up with this concept of an anti guest for someone to be able to have a more, much more formal ability to communicate with the front desk people about the situation and for the technology to recognize these realities in a formal way and not a sort of workaround such as a note or something about the situation. So that was sort of the first aha moment that technology had this role to play.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And what was that conversation? How was it received when you came up with this anti-US feature?
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- It was very awkward and even I was working with, one of my closest friends was on the other designer working with me. And even just talking with him about it, it was very awkward and he was into it. He was like, yeah, that's important. But it was still just weird to bring it up. And that's something I talk about when people advice for people who are going to bring this up in their workplaces is to just to be prepared for how awkward it's going to be. And I'm not actually sure We presented it to the client and then we had only been hired to do the designs. So he was going to try to find some funding or something and then build it. And I'm not sure what came of it and if he took it seriously or not, but I was kind of like, well at least it's in there. They have the design, we have done our due diligence, but it was awkward is the overwhelming [laugh] feeling of bringing this stuff up for the first time
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And incredibly brave. And I want to come to something soon that you said, which was to do with technologists and the happy path and how we focus most of our efforts on that happy path. But before we do that I think we should get maybe a little bit uncomfortable for, well certainly myself and certainly for I can imagine some of the other people that are going to be listening to this episode and just set the scene for the rest of the conversation in terms of domestic violence and what that is, what looks like. It's such a serious topic that I feel that jumping straight into some of the practicalities of how we can design for it or to stop it from happening would be inappropriate. So just for people so that there are a sort of no gaps in context, what is domestic violence and what are some of the common ways that it shows up?
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- So domestic violence is the physical, sexual, psychological, emotional and financial abuse of someone in a domestic context. Usually we're talking about intimate partner violence. When we say the term domestic violence which between intimate partners, current intimate partners, also former intimate partners. And then domestic violence more broadly also includes anyone in your domestic space. So family members, roommates, anyone who is in the home with you.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And is this just an issue for women as domestic violence, something that just impacts women?
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- That's a great question. The answer is resoundingly no. In the US the statistic is that it's one in three women and one in four men who will experience severe physical domestic violence at some point in their lives. And I just wanna also emphasize that domestic violence is so much more than just physical and there doesn't have to be a physical component for it to count as domestic violence. I get that sort of question or thought a lot about, well does this really count? Especially with the technology side. And it's like, yeah, absolutely. It counts. It meets the definition. And any sort of advocate or expert in the space would say that it counts. Even if there's not something physical or something sexual or something that would be very evident to anyone on the outside, it still counts. And the other statistic I can share, so in the US, three women are murdered each day by a current or former intimate partner.
- The statistics for each Yes. Each day. Each day yes. The statistic for Australia is one woman is murdered every week. And that's also the statistic for Canada, which is still way too much. It's a lot less than three a day, which has a lot to do with access to guns and America's obsession with guns and the fact that abusers, there are very few places where someone who has been convicted of domestic violence, they can still have guns. And so it's a big issue. But yeah, there's such a huge cause of just death. And there's also so many other impacts in terms of just what it does to people in terms of financially, in terms of their careers. And then in terms of obviously their mental health and their general wellbeing. It's a huge, huge impact and a very, very common problem that it's very convenient to pretend doesn't exist in a lot of people don't talk about it for very good reasons cuz they are very shamed when they talk about it. So there's sort of all these different things that make it just extremely common but also very hidden.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, it's very much swept under the rug. I actually looked into New Zealand statistics with regards to murders by intimate partners. And it's one woman a month in New Zealand, which is a country of 5 million people that is murdered at the hands of their intimate partner, 12 women a year. And that's an average of 15. That's a 15% of the total average of annualized murders in this country of New Zealand. So that is a huge and shocking statistic. And something else in terms of statistics that I've heard you talk about, Eva, is the propensity for women who stay in abusive relationships to be murdered by their mm-hmm [affirmative] intimate partner or former intimate partner after they find the ways and the means to actually leave that person. What is that propensity, what does that look like? What factor are they more likely to suffer murder or death from after leaving their partner?
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- Yeah, so that's a great thing to bring up. I believe the statistic is 89, you're like 80, no, you're 80 times more likely to be murdered in the few weeks after leaving an abuser than at any other point. And that has everything to do with the fact that domestic violence is all about power and control. And when you have left the abuser, they are faced with losing all of that power and control that they had over that person. And murdering someone is sort of the ultimate way to regain power and control over that person. So yeah, we do see that it's far and away the most dangerous time, and this is something I talk about in the book in terms of technology facilitated stalking and location data issues, is because we do know of domestic violence homicides that are linked to technology and to an abuser finding out their victim's location through some type of technical means. So it literally is life and death a lot of times these things we're talking about.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And that factor of 80 that you've just spoken about is tied back, particularly in the US with three women a day losing their life in this way to the access to handguns and other forms of firearms.
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- I was just going to say that we can't really talk about domestic violence, especially domestic homicide, at least in the US without also talking about the gun crisis. And it is a crisis and it's absolutely the reason or a huge part of the reason why it's so much worse here and so much more dangerous for women in domestic violence contexts than it is in almost any other place in the world.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And there's actually one more statistic that is completely repugnant and it's probably going to shock everybody. I would imagine that's listening to this. What's the number one cause of death of pregnant women in the United States?
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- It is domestic homicide getting murdered by your current or former intimate partner.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Sorry.
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- Yeah, that's one that definitely gets me a lot and I think it's, ugh, it's so tough to talk about but it's really important cuz I think there's, there's lots of myths around domestic violence, but the one that no one would hurt their pregnant wife or girlfriend or that if there is domestic violence, that when it stops it is a myth. And it's really, really tragic because the statistics show us that domestic violence that is already present in a relationship actually increases during pregnancy for the most part. And that there in other cases, relationships where there is no domestic violence, it can start for the first time during pregnancy. And this sort of goes back to the thing I was talking about earlier with power and control in terms of domestic homicide in general, pregnancy represents a time when a lot of things are out of both people's control. The person's body is changing, there's a lot more attention being paid by healthcare professionals. If there's ever been a social worker involved or some other person involved due to the domestic violence, they're going to be a lot more anxious to be involved during pregnancy for obvious reasons. So there is this, again, sort of loss of power and control for the abuser that they reclaim through violence and through murder. And that is just like, ugh, it's such a tragic reality of this whole thing.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, I literally, I don't really have any words to share. Women in particular have had to endure domestic violence since what I assume is the beginning of time. Do you see a future when women will no longer have to worry about this at the hands of their intimate partner where we can actually close this dark and prolonged chapter of human history?
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- Wow, I've actually never been asked a question like this. I think it's possible. Possible. I don't think it's going to happen in our lifetimes for sure. Yeah, and I do wanna just call out that it's also certainly something that men face. It is, it looks very different for men and men are also sort of more likely to be abused by other men in their domestic spaces. So this is really, I think it's more of an issue for humanity. Obviously women face the most severe impacts of it overall, I feel, I don't know, I think, sorry, this is just a really good question. I do think it's possible and there are, every time that women get more autonomy over their bodies, over their careers, over their earnings, they become that much more empowered to be able to walk away from abusers who they might have been dependent on something though that does stress me out a lot.
- Well, so the climate emergency, it stresses me out for a lot of reasons, but particularly one of the reasons that it worries me is the domestic violence side and just the fact that we see so much more, we see such an increase in sexual and domestic violence in natural disaster areas. So after there's been mm-hmm some type of weather event, things get a lot worse. And part of the climate emergency is the increase in these severe weather events and that those are linked to a big increase in violence. So that's something that really worries me and I think gets a little bit overlooked in when we talk about the climate. I mean there are so many good reasons to care about it, being able to continue to live on this planet as a species. But that's a big one where it's sort of all the politicians who say that they really care about children or babies or whatever, it's kind of like, well if you actually cared about them, you would be more worried about the climate emergency because all the factors lend themselves to make a really dangerous environment for people who are already vulnerable, which is more likely to be women and children.
- So that does worry me. But I think is a lot of, every time we get more gains in our ability to be autonomous, we get a little closer to a world without domestic violence.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, there's actually another context where domestic violence has flared up recently and that's been in the context of lockdowns to try and prevent the spread of Covid 19, which by and large I am for but there has definitely been a hidden price paid by people in the home of being restricted in your ability to move about as you would've before the pandemic. And I also understand in the US that you've recently had some interesting legal decisions around a woman's right to her body in certain states. So hopefully this isn't symptomatic of a regression in social liberties and rights for women
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- Guy. Yeah, I hope not. I hope not.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah. We've been speaking about domestic violence in all the context you mentioned, the physical, the emotional, the sexual, the most extreme examples are obviously where people lose their lives and are also assaulted. And those can be obvious because those impacts are physically evident to people. But just because this is so widespread, I wanted to ask you about whether there are any clues that people can look for if they are considering a new relationship or are in a new relationship that their partners might be abusers or predisposed to that type of behavior.
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- Yeah, that's a great question and something that's really important I think to keep in mind is people don't start abusing on the first date because you know can just leave. What they do is they start off usually they're very charming, like unusually charming and then sort of build up affection and dependency with their partner over time and then increase their controlling and abusive behaviors little by little. And until it gets to the point where it's physically violent and then people often say things, I just don't know how this happened. It's often the last people you would expect. There's no sort of one profile of a survivor of domestic violence. It's lots of people who are very just smart, very independent people who you wouldn't think would fall prey to that. But it's because it happens over time and it happens very gradually. So to answer your question, some of the early warning signs, and there are a lot, and there's a whole list online if anyone listening wants to Google what those early warning signs are.
- I'm a whole bunch that I won't have time to cover. But a big one that I've noticed is the sort of withdrawing the person away from their communities of support. Because if you're very close with your family and you have very close friends and your friends at work all these people who might notice if you have a bruise on your arm or if you don't have access to your money and are suddenly not going out after work or whatever it is, that makes it a lot harder for the abuser to continue their abuse. And it's a form of not having control over that person if they have a strong community of support. So isolating people away from their communities is a really big one that often preludes a lot of other things. And is also, I think one of the ways that we can be aware of our loved ones if suddenly they aren't seeing us.
- Or sometimes I have a friend who is a survivor and we kind of realized this was happening together in a lot of ways, ways. And she said, we talked on the phone and she said, do you think that I call you too much because my boyfriend says that I call my friends too much and that I rely on them too much and that I should just be relying on him and that, do you think that's true? Do I annoy you? He had been saying that she was a burden to her friends basically. And when she said that I was like, oh, oh god, oh no.
- Yeah. And yeah, it's sure enough he had all these other controlling things that he was doing that she hadn't talked about because a lot of times it's embarrassing and well, there's lots of really good reasons why people don't share a lot of this stuff explicitly. But I think anything like that is a really, really big one in terms of just clueing you in that maybe there's something going on here and that I have a little script that I give to people, which is maybe this is nothing and it's probably fine, but this is just setting off some alarm bells in my mind cuz that's just a really common factor in domestic abuse and it seems a little controlling and it seems like maybe he doesn't want you to have support from people which is associated with domestic abuse. Is there anything else that he's done that you feel like has been controlling and just opening up the conversation in that way and not making assumptions, not telling someone, Hey, you're being abused, you never wanna do that. You want people to be able to identify it themselves. And
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I noticed that you used the term it seems like, which I think is an incredibly important part to pull out of the way that you frame that because that also gives the person the opportunity to say, no, that's not correct, that rather than making a strict statement.
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, they have to be able to identify it themselves if it is happening and which maybe it's not. I feel like it usually is in these cases, but again, the person has to define that for themselves.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And your work is of often centered around or has been centered around technology's role in enabling this abuse. So let's turn now focus two technology now and what that might look like when that shows up. You've said that, and I'm going to quote now, you now technologists will often use the term happy path to describe their focus on building a product for its intended uses and often deprioritize and defer work on edge cases to be addressed while after launch, if ever. How is the technology, the products that who are listening to this are working on how are they being weaponized to enable domestic violence like this to happen?
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- So they're being weaponized in a lot of different ways. In the book I have sort of these four main buckets of ways that technology is being weaponized for harm. So there's issues with shared accounts and just sort of accounts in general and sort of control issues within that. That's a really, really big one. There's location harms. So like I was saying earlier, the need for people to be able to keep their location private in certain contexts. There's surveillance which is so much more than just cameras or the sort of stalker wear secret surveillance software. There's lots of much more insidious ways that surveillance shows up. And then one of the newer more emerging spaces is internet of things or smart home devices and how those lend themselves to some of the other ones. So things like surveillance and then, but also forms of abuse such as harassment and tormenting through the devices, controlling someone's life in a lot of ways. And then gaslighting is a really big one where you convince someone that they're essentially losing their mind and that they can't trust their own experiences because of course the heat, of course I'm not changing the heat on you while you're home alone, that's happening or you're, you're actually doing that or you're setting up the device wrong. There's so many opportunities to mess with people's heads and abusers are exploiting those because like I said earlier, they're extremely creative and ingenious with this stuff. So they see these opportunities and they take them immediately.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You used an example in one of the talks that I listened to where a partner was away for the week or the weekend and was dialing into the doorbell and ringing the doorbell and his partner would go and answer the door and nobody would be there. And you mentioned turning up the temperature is another example of that type of behavior and the gaslighting that that's a term that comes up often, but just so that people most people will probably understand that, but just in case what is gaslighting?
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- Yeah, gaslighting is when you make someone question their own reality and make them feel like they cannot rely on their own experiences and memories that they're unreliable and that actually the only person that they can rely on to have proper view of reality is the abuser.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So this is all tied into this control and power and isolating people from other people and from their own sense of self.
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- Yeah, absolutely. Because if I don't trust myself and my own realities, if I feel like I'm sort of losing my mind and I need my partner to tell me what's actually happening, that's a huge amount of control that they have now over you.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Why is this an issue for designers to address? Can't we just place the responsibility for ensuring safety onto our users after all they are adults and presumably they have some agency over how they live their lives.
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- Yeah, that's a really great question and I'll answer by talking about cars and the fact that this, the exact same sort of argument was being had by cars in the fifties and sixties when there were very few safety requirements. There was no government agency that was sort of mandating that cars be safe and there were a ton of people dying preventable deaths in car crashes. There were no seat belts. Tire pressure was calibrated for comfort rather than safety. There were so many different problems and rather than the auto industry, rather than saying, yeah, we could design our cars to be safer, what they did was they put it off on the users and they said, you know, need to learn to be a better driver. And also maybe the people who make the roads could design the roads to be safer, but very much putting the emphasis on this is an issue of user education and they need to figure this out and learn how to not kill and hurt each other with the devices that we have sold to them.
- And I think it's the exact same with technologists right now where the leaders of our big tech companies are doing the exact same thing. They're saying, we just provide the tools and how you use them is on you and it's a matter of user education to sort of find out how these are going to harm you and then prevent that from happening. And it's such a lot of onus to put on people to learn all these different things. I learn and think about this type of stuff. Well not quite full-time, almost full-time, and I still don't know everything there is to know about how people can use tech to harm each other. So to put this on sort of everyday people is extremely disingenuous and I think people know that and it's very much a tactic. I mean we've seen powerful industries do this over and over again. Same with the tobacco industry. There's so many different examples where they've sort of put this responsibility on users to magically not be harmed with harmful products.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So it sounds like you don't think that we can expect big tech and other companies producing these products to proactively make the best design decisions for safety without incentives to do so or regulations.
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- Yes, I do think most of the big tech companies have already shown that they're not interested in designing safe products or in user safety and wellbeing. And we have a lot of data to support that fact that they have chosen not to self-regulate, chosen their profits over our safety. And it's not going to change until governments step in. Just like with the auto industry was even when sort of public opinion was starting to turn against the auto industry, there was still no change. The only thing that actually got them to change were government regulations. And so we've kind of seen this before and we already know that they're not self-regulating. So the only thing that's going to change is when governments force them to,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And that the nature of your work can make people feel uncomfortable. And you've been very vocal in calling out the worst products and companies behind those products in the past, which I imagine may have got the attention of some pretty powerful people. You are from my way of looking at it, actively exposing the cracks in our rose tinted glasses when it comes to technology and the products that we make. What kind of pushback, if any, have you had from industry so far?
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- So that's a really good question. So from people who have read my book and the people who follow me on Twitter and different things, I've had really, really positive reception for this work, which has been really great. I have more recently started to do some sort of internal talks and workshops with different companies, which has been really great. It's amazing when someone at a big company reads my book or hears about the work and says, I wanna bring this into everyone in my team, can you come and do a talker workshop with us? That's such a great thing. I have found, it's been interesting to see that once I'm in that space, there are people who did not opt into the whole conversation. Essentially the way that people who have bought my book or usually are interacting with me in some ways, they're at my conference talk or they're on my Twitter, they've bought in already and we have good discussions about different things and might debate a way forward, but they're ultimately, we're all on the same page.
- Whereas in these spaces, obviously the sort of people who brought me in are very much bought in, but I have had some people who push back on the entire concept of my work in general saying, it's not our job to be responsible for this type of thing. And it's just way too much to be thinking about how someone might misuse it. And it's been a little eye-opening and very clarifying in a way to remember after a few months of nonstop, this is great, we're going to make changes, this is so important. And then to be come back to the people who are like, I don't think so, I don't care, has been very clarifying because
- Brendan Jarvis:
- What is that when you face that criticism?
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- Yeah, it's frustrating. It's really frustrating, especially because most times I can't actually respond to an actual individual and have a discussion with them. It's something that comes in a feedback form that I see afterwards. So it's really frustrating, but it's also it going back to the conversation about regulation, it makes me, it rees me to the fact that we need, we need mandated change in this space and that we can make a lot of difference as individuals and as teams. But there are these people out there who are just going to say, no, not my problem, not my job. And those people exist and some people will only change their behavior when they're forced to. So it's been a good reminder that we do need these bigger systems level changes to ultimately achieve safe tech.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So thinking about the role of the person that is inviting you into the organization to do a workshop, to talk about the book, to try and establish design for safety with them, who is it in a large organization that should really be responsible for ensuring the products and services that are being made designed safely?
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- Sorry, your question is who? Who's responsible at the organization for designing safely? Yeah,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- If something goes wrong, if a product is used by an abuser to do something that arguably they shouldn't have been able to have done or easily facilitated through that product, who should face the music?
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- In my opinion, it should be the leader of that company because they're the one who ultimately is responsible for their product and for the impacts. And a lot of people, I get this question every single training I do, people ask, how can I convince the more powerful people that we need time and resources to do this work? Every single space I'm in? People ask that question because they're faced with stakeholders and managers and bosses who say, well, we don't have time for that, or it's not important enough, or it's an edge case or whatever excuse they're going to use. And I think ultimately the responsibility has to be on the company leaders because they're the ones who are setting the tone. They're the ones who are saying yes and approving budgets. So I think ultimately they're responsible.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- What does it say about company leadership if they're not open to having this conversation and investing in making their products safe?
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- Well, it says a lot of things. It says, I mean, couple thoughts I guess it says maybe they're not ready for this. It is, it's such a heavy topic and it's sort of different from a lot of other things that we try to convince people on. I think because it can be personal, people might have, there's so many different reasons why someone might not want to engage with it in the first place. So don't, I'm not just going to say like, oh well they're a bad person or something because they're lots of nuance here. But I do think that when it comes to a product that is influencing other people's lives, we do have a responsibility to get past whatever hangups we have about it and empower our teams to design for safety. And then my other thought is I think some people are just motivated by profit and don't care about their users.
- I mean, I don't think Mark Zuckerberg cares about the people who are using Facebook. Maybe he did at one point, or maybe he just had a really interesting idea that has now made him a bunch of money and he's just going to keep going and he has a bunch of power. I don't know, I don't mark Zuckerberg personally. To me it seems there's a whole lot of data that shows that he does not care about his users and very little data to back up an idea that he does care about his users. So that's sort of my thought on company leaders who refuse to engage with this type of work.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Your book gives some really great practical ways that people can start to adapt their existing design process or the way in which they're designing to be more mindful of the needs of their most vulnerable users. In the book, you talk about creating archetypes of the abuser and also of the abused. What is an archetype and how are you recommending that people use an archetype to shape the design of their products and services?
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- So an archetype is sort of visually at least similar to a persona, except it's not really based on real people that you've sort of come across and interviewed. I mean it could be but more realistically it's based off of other sorts of research that you've done. So articles that you found about, let's say it's you're in the iot OT space and you've read about iot, ot, device abuse, and now you wanna make sure that your iot OT device that you're working on isn't going to be also used for abuse. So you use the sort of research that you've done to create these archetypes, which are sort of just composites of people that you've read about as opposed to personas are composites of actual people, like actual users that you've interviewed. So different in that way. And then it basically just boils down to that person's sort of context and their goals.
- So my context is I'm separated from my husband and he still has access to all these devices. I'm not really sure how to get control back. And I think that he's doing things with them. I think he's blasting music in the middle of the night or what have, and then the sort of abuser archetype is the exact same with their context and goals. I'm separated and I'm still using the I O T devices to remind her that I am in control and that I can do these things to make her life difficult. And then those are sort of used to inform the further steps in the process for inclusive safety of brainstorming for novel abuse cases and then designing solutions to prevent or mitigate the harm that comes from the product being misused.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So these are really practical steps that people can take if they can't get through to senior leadership to get a mandate to build this in at a company level. There are definitely steps that people can take that to me, they don't sound like they're going to add a lot of extra time or extra energy or expense to the product design process. Yeah,
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- Definitely. It definitely does not have to be time consuming. I have estimates in the little sort of graphic that I have in the book that I think that are actually definitely on the more generous side. So to help you give an estimate to your stakeholder to say, this isn't some open-ended thing, we want 20 hours over the next four weeks. And that might be easier for someone to say yes. And they're also not difficult. None of the things are especially difficult. It's really just about taking the time and the space and doing some research and having the right foundation and mental model to do the activities.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And a lot of people listening won't have the luxury to be working on blue sky products. They won't be starting from scratch. What are some of the ways that they can evaluate existing products for safety?
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- So you can definitely go through the process with new features. It doesn't have to be a whole new product. And then retrofitting for safety is definitely a huge thing. And you can essentially sort of go through the process as if it was a brand new product or feature that you sort of conveniently already know exactly how it works because it actually already exists. And if you haven't been able to identify any actual harms, that doesn't mean that they're not happening. It just means that no one has talked about them or that maybe you don't have an avenue for people to let you know about them. So going through the process as if it was a new product is also something that people can do to identify issues with an existing product.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I wanted to come to tech in finance because banking and financial abuse in a domestic violence situation. I think you've said that 99% of all abusive relationships have an element of financial abuse. And I work with some financial institutions and I'm sure that there are people listening that work at financial institutions or are also working with people that work there in design. That's pretty much ubiquitous in terms of the abuse that can be facilitated through those products. What specifically for those designers that are working in finance, do they need to be mindful of what sort of scenarios or questions should they be asking themselves?
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- Yeah, so keeping in mind, like you said, it's 99% of cases. There's a element of financial abuse and control. So just learning that's a whole world. There are so many resources on that and different things that weren't included in the book and there's lots of information out there about what that looks like. Their whole organization's dedicated to this. So just starting to learn about this and then also TA talking to your customer service people or to actual bankers. When I was researching for the book, I talked to a few people who said that they'd absolutely had worked with couples or people who there was something going on and there was something that was putting up their alarm bells, but there's no formal process for them. Whereas if you look at there's the issue of elder financial abuse is also this common sad thing that there are laws in most countries about this and there's usually a process at a bank if you think suspect this is happening, you know, can elevate it to someone and then it gets investigated and there's an actual thorough process.
- So I think that there's a lot of good models out there that we can look at. And there's also just a lot of research out there. So I think almost to me feels like of all the different problems, this one feels like the lowest hanging fruit. It's just there isn't the political will at most big banks. It seems to make a change except Australia, which I talk about in the book. Actually, the big banks in Australia have really great programs of specific numbers for people going through this to call and get support with someone who's trained on it, which is incredible. And they've had really good, well, tragically, it's been very popular and the pilot programs have become permanent but that's such an amazing thing. So there are some very promising things out there in this aspect.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, it is great to hear that there are some steps being taken by some pretty powerful institutions like the banks in Australia. And there's no doubt that from the nature of the conversation that we've had, that this is some pretty intense subject matter for people to contend with. And it's probably not something that a lot of designers are accustomed to thinking about and doing on a daily basis. We are talking about, which really is the dark side of humanity here. What can teams do or the design leaders of teams do for teams that are tackling this to enable the teams to do so in a psychologically safe way? Is, is that such thing? Can you actually deal with the subject in a way that is psychologically safe?
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- I think I think it's really important that people aren't forced, that we have to remember the statistics that apply to our users also apply to our teams. So not forcing people to engage with this if they have personal experience with it, and also not forcing them to tell you that, Hey, I am a survivor. We don't wanna force people to do that in the workplace. So being very sensitive about that. And then also remembering, I was saying earlier that this doesn't have to be a time consuming thing. It can be something that you set aside in a perfect world where a stakeholder is really bought into this and it's not individuals advocating for 20 hours that they can go through the process that I have in the book. If it was something where it's like, okay, well one hour a week we spend thinking about this, and then we put in the process and we have when we need more time.
- If we're launching a new feature, we do that. But setting aside time and because when you set aside time, it's great because you have your time to think about it, but then that means that you also have permission to not think about it the rest of the time. And I think that that's really important because I think a lot of people have a low grade anxiety just constantly that how is this going to harm people or how is it not inclusive, or how is it, or how is it not accessible? And if you put time aside to tackle those things, then you get to sort of free your mind the rest of the time from thinking about it. So that would be a very ideal scenario for a stakeholder like team manager who wants to tackle this
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Stuff. In design, we often talk about how we want to make people's lives better. And after 50 interviews of Brave UX, I can't think of a better way to improve the quality of life and to preserve life directly impact on people's ability to continue to live and live safely than designing for safety. Why are you almost a lone voice in the wilderness on this topic?
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- That's a really good question, and I don't think I know the answer. I will say that I think having the unique experience that I have with having worked in nonprofit, having done the rape crisis counseling, having done domestic violence education, and then coming into tech put me in a unique space to do this work. And that was something when I was first doing this, that it was sort of like, am I the right person to do this? And then I sort of landed on, well, it seems like maybe there's not a lot of people with these experiences who can do this was sort of where I landed. So I think maybe that's part of it. And there are people focusing on the stalking side. There's some people doing great work, there's some people doing great work in academia, especially around I O T and other tech harm. But yeah, there's not very many people, and hopefully there's more as more people start to learn about this.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, I hope so. Are you still looking for people to do your conference talk around the world?
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- Yes, absolutely. If you're interested in conference speaking, you don't have to have experience no matter where you live, you can reach out. The inclusive safety project.com has a form that you can fill out, and you'll basically be handed a talk with a pretty deck that you can kind of customize to your own culture and context of your country and apply to conferences with.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I understand there are some caveats to who you feel comfortable giving this talk on your behalf.
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- Yeah. There's only one person I've ever said no to. Most people who sort of apply for this are the right people who are interested, but having some type of background in domestic violence or being very interested in learning about it, because there is a lot to learn. People get whole PhDs in this topic, but a lot of people kind of think they've heard about it, so they know kind of how it goes but people ask very difficult questions after talks. So just wanting people to be prepared for that and then feeling like they can have the right sort of sensitivity and give the topic the weight and the sensitivity that it deserves is very important. And most people, like I said, who reach out about this have all those things
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And the book designed for safety, it's available on a list apart. I believe it's available in ebook and also in printed copy version.
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- Yeah, a book apart. It
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Is definitely, yeah, a book apart. Sorry, not a list Apart. [laugh], a book apart really, really worth worthwhile getting a hundred percent and giving a good read, and then considering how you can implement that into your design practice. I can't think, as I said, of before, of a better way of actually making the world a better place through design. Eva, thinking about the people that will be listening today largely, we'll all be a good group of people. We've got good intentions, but we might like our happy paths just a little bit too much. If you had to choose one message from our conversation today, from your body of work design for safety, that you want people of the global design and technology community to take on board, what would that be?
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- It would be that this designing for safety and especially thinking about domestic violence and how it intersects with technology is not an edge case, and that it is so common among our users, and that because of that reality, we have a huge opportunity to help keep them safe and to increase their wellbeing in that way. But just I would wanna really hit home that this is not an edge case. It's extremely common.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah. And I think if you wanna know just how common it is, you can go back to the earlier segment where we were talking about some of those horrifying statistics at the beginning of the conversation. Eva, it's been an incredibly eye-opening and challenging conversation to have with you today. Your work is having such a hugely important and positive impact on the field of design. Thank you for being so brave and also so generous in your contribution to our global design community.
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- Yeah, thank you so much. Thanks. This has been a really great conversation,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Eva, you are most welcome. If people wanna find out more about you, about Design for Safety, about The Inclusive Safety Project, what's the best way for them to do that?
- Eva PenzeyMoog:
- They can go to TheInclusiveSafetyProject.com. I'm also on Twitter @EPenzeyMoog, and I have my website, EvaPenzeyMoog.com. But TheInclusiveSafetyProject.com is probably the easiest in terms of spelling. So that would be the place to start.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Perfect. Thanks, Eva. I'll be making sure that I link to all of your resources, your website, your LinkedIn profile, Twitter, everything in the show notes, and to everyone, it's been great having you here as well. As I said, everything that we've covered will be available in the show notes, including detailed chapters for our conversation today. If you've enjoyed the conversation and you want to hear more great conversations like this with world-class leaders in UX, design and product management, don't forget to leave a review on the podcast, subscribe. And also, if you feel that somebody else in your network would get some value from these types of conversations on Brave UX, then please pass Brave UX along to them. If you wanna reach out to me, you can also find my LinkedIn profile at the bottom of the show notes, or you can head over to thespaceinbetween.co.nz. That's thespaceinbetween.co.nz. And until next time, keep being brave.