Background

As part of this year’s “UX for Good” initiative, we collaborated with digital@M on a self-help platform addressing digital violence. The goal of the study was to use usability tests to determine how the platform can support counselors - such as those working in women’s shelters, victim support services, or community outreach - in their daily counseling work. Specifically, the study sought to clarify how counselors use the platform in their day-to-day work, what usability hurdles they encounter, and what content-related and structural requirements they have for such a tool.

A Topic That Requires Particular Care

Digital violence is a highly sensitive topic. The platform itself is deliberately not publicly accessible in order to protect those affected, and this very logic of protection also had to be reflected in our research process. Instead of speaking directly with those affected, we focused on interviews with counselors who are trained to handle these issues and are accustomed to working in safe spaces.

For us as a research team, this meant we had to adapt our usual methods to the sensitivity of the topic. Specifically, this included the following:

Recordings and transcripts contained no identifiable case histories or details about individual clients of the counseling centers; all information was strictly anonymized, and the discussions took place exclusively at the level of counseling practice. Where counselors nevertheless provided examples of typical case scenarios, we deliberately limited our analysis to recurring patterns rather than elaborating on individual examples.
Access to the raw data was strictly limited to the project team.
Even in external communications, such as in this article, we deliberately do not share any details that would allow conclusions to be drawn about individual clients or counseling centers.

We followed these principles not only for compliance reasons, but because they align with the platform’s core philosophy: protection from visibility where visibility can be dangerous.

Approach

We recruited counselors from organizations trained to address digital violence and conducted remote qualitative interviews, each lasting about 45 minutes. We summarized the findings in a report.

Outcome

A central theme that ran through the discussions: The digital world is evolving rapidly. What is considered a typical pattern of digital violence today may be transformed tomorrow by new platforms, apps, or tactics. For counselors, this means a continuous learning process to stay on top of developments. For the platform, this means continuously keeping guides - such as those on removing stalking software or countering image-based violence - up to date, while also ensuring that counselors always have quick and easy access to this information. Through our UX for Good project, we discovered that while the platform already provides a wealth of information, it requires some structural improvements so that counselors don’t have to wade through long texts and can quickly find the information that is truly relevant to a counseling session.

We were also particularly impressed by the role of the counselors themselves in this project: Many volunteer their time to support people in dire situations, and in the process acquire considerable technical know-how to keep pace with the digital dimensions of violence. This combination of personal commitment and high technical competence was one of the most striking observations of the project for us.

Strong Collaboration

We are pleased that this project enabled us to use our UX expertise to contribute to a better understanding of the challenges involved in addressing digital violence. Through usability tests, we were able to identify where the platform actually supports counselors in their daily work and where usability, structure, or discoverability still need improvement. In doing so, we have helped ensure that counseling centers can assist those affected even more effectively in the future.

More about UX for Good:

UX For A Better World

Digital@M:

With us, Munich is in good hands when it comes to digital matters

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Method