ura.design/_posts/2019-02-11-underexposed-2019.md

---
layout: post
title: Underexposed 2019
author: Anxhelo Lushka
link: https://lushka.al/
date: 2019-02-11 12:00:00 +0200
categories:
images: 
- images/blog/underexposed-post.jpg
tags:
- Security
- Style Guides
- Open Source Design
- Event
excerpt:
  During early January members of the Ura team participated as mentors in the Underexposed event organized by [Simply Secure] […]
---

During early January (7-11) members of the Ura team participated as mentors in the [Underexposed](https://simplysecure.org/underexposed/) event organized by [Simply Secure](https://simplysecure.org/) in Berlin, Germany.

![Underexposed](/images/blog/underexposed.png)

[Underexposed Collective](https://simplysecure.org/underexposed/) is a loosely-knit group of designers, researchers, writers, advocates, and users who reject the current trajectory of mainstream technology development. They support people by providing funding, education, mentorship, design support, research, testing, and a community for collaboration.

This was the first event they decided to organize as a Residency. Fellows from around the world spent one week with the Simply Secure team focused on a project that they propose. Together, the cohort used the residency to workshop their specific design challenge. Over the week they had for user research, independent work, lectures, critical discussions, design critiques and office hours with leaders in the field. Fellows also had  an opportunity to share their work with the public.

Our own Elio and Anxhelo were invited as [mentors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mentorship). We spent the week with other mentors and fellows by helping them with their ideas/projects and giving presentations on some topics.

### Monday (7 January)

The first day started with an introduction by the hosts from Simply Secure over at the [WikiBär](https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/4842883021). [Georgia Bullen](https://twitter.com/georgiamoon), the new Simply Secure Executive Director, opened the event and talked about the purpose of it, the agenda and everything else. After, we began to introduce ourselves shortly and the reason why we were there. The fellows shared their projects and ideas with us so we could have a better grasp before we started to work on them.

### Tuesday (8 January)

Anxhelo's presentation was scheduled on Tuesday afternoon, but the plan changed and so he had to do it in the morning. His session was about [Prototyping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype). Participants began with pen and paper prototyping, as that is still the fastest and best way to build a prototype for pretty much anything related to UI and UX.

The fellows had really interesting projects and for most of them, the main issue was related to the encryption key restore process. As these projects are security-and-privacy related, they are decentralized and offer users the option to create an encryption key in order to access their data if something bad happens in the future. 

Unfortunately, this process is often bypassed by users as it's (according to them) an extra step that slows down their workflow. As a result, they often lose access to their accounts and data, which could be avoided if they would have had created that key in the beginning.

We helped the projects there by creating prototypes on paper, discussing UX problems and possible solutions for them, then digitally creating mockups using [Figma](https://www.figma.com), a proprietary design collaboration tool. 

### Wednesday (9 January)

Wednesday was one of the busiest days of the event. We got up early, ate breakfast and joined the others at the venue. We separated into two groups, one upstairs and one downstairs and worked on our personal projects or with others. 

[Cade](https://shiba.computer/), a designer from Germany, gave a very interesting talk on [Weaponized Design](https://shiba.computer/essay/on-weaponised-design/), a process that allows for harm of users within the defined bounds of a designed system. You can read his essay in the link above.

### Friday (11 January)

Elio's presentation was on Friday, about [Style Guides](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Style_guide) and the process of working in the open. He explained our latest projects, how we worked with [SecureDrop](https://ura.design/projects/securedrop), [I2P](https://ura.design/projects/i2p), [Reproducible Builds](https://ura.design/projects/reproducible-builds), [Thunderbird](https://ura.design/projects/thunderbird) etc. and presented a short demo of the [Identihub](https://identihub.co) software, open source software for hosting your brand and visual assets.

This was the final day of the event and the fellows worked during the day to prepare their presentations, on what they learned during the week and what they worked on. The presentations were held at the [Mozilla Offices](https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/4996803917#map=19/52.49947/13.44914) in Berlin. Many people had registered for the event and the fellows presented one by one their projects and conclusions. We were happy that our mockups were present in their slides and hope that the process continues to turn them into reality soon.

After the presentations, we got to discuss with each other and then head over for drinks somewhere close the venue.

We would like to thank the entire Simply Secure team; Georgia, Ame, Eileen and Molly for being there and organizing a fantastic event. We had a really awesome time and hope to see you all again soon.

All content is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. ([Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/)).