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Sustain Open Source Design Podcast

Episode 22: Carrie Winfrey of Okthanks on Clean Insights

Guest

Carrie Winfrey

Panelists

Georgia Bullen | Eriol Fox | Memo Esparza

Show Notes

Hello and welcome to Sustain Open Source Design! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source with design. Learn how we, as designers, interface with open source in a sustainable way, how we integrate into different communities, and how we as coders, work with other designers. Today, we are joined by a fantastic guest, Carrie Winfrey, who’s the Director of Okthanks, which is a digital rights collective working to advance human rights through the design of technology. On this episode, we’ll be talking with Carrie about data, analytics, and a project she’s working on. Also, we’ll learn more about design activities, blind spots in open source design, Clean Insights, and what it takes to make a better designer. Go ahead and download this episode now!

[00:01:10] Carrie shares her background and how she got into open source design.

[00:02:40] We hear some of the challenges Carrie has come up against as a designer.

[00:04:28] Carrie gives an example of how entry points into the projects are played out in a project in order to participate within the open source.

[00:06:57] Carrie explains about why she feels strongly about having a connection to people they are trying to help.

[00:08:01] Find out what design activities are.

[00:11:24] On the topic of data, we find out what kind of work Carrie is doing with data.

[00:15:47] Eriol brings up the “should we” factor of watching people and wonders how we have conversations with organizations or open source projects where there is this uncertainly of being watched. Carrie tells us about the Clean Insights methodology.

[00:18:47] Memo asks Carrie to explain about these blind spots and how we can start filling out those gaps.

[00:20:14] Carrie gives an example of what kind of power Clean Insights can give to designers or tool builders.

[00:23:42] Eriol shares a story of how they view metrics, and Carrie tells us what it takes to make us better designers.

Quotes

[00:07:06] “I feel very strongly about having a connection to people and having a connection to the people particularly that we say we’re trying to help.”

[00:07:34] “I constantly feel in a place of not really knowing what I’m doing, but maybe that’s healthy.”

[00:08:31] “I think everyone has different levels of comfort with creativity.”

[00:16:25] “Clean Insights is an analytic solution for digital product teams to safely gather insights about their users and it puts transparency and consent first.”

[00:21:42] “Don’t expect data to solve all [your] problems.”

[00:26:36] “What I want to encourage designers to do is to ask more questions.”

[00:27:34] “We’ve got to think about how it fits into people’s lives and we’ve got to know what that looks like in reality, and that’s what makes us better designers.”

Spotlight

  • [00:28:40] Memo’s spotlight is resonate.is, the community-owned music network.
  • [00:29:29] Eriol’s spotlight is Dracula Theme.
  • [00:30:06] Georgia’s spotlights are the USABLE Project, Spring conference season coming up and the USABLE team has a call for proposals for the UX Forum in April, and MozFest is coming up and there’s a proposal looking for examples of Consent.
  • [00:31:47] Carrie’s spotlights are the Noun Project and Matrix Foundation.

Links

Credits

Special Guest: Carrie Winfrey.

Episode source