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We help design usable, accessible technologies that further digital rights.

Services

We make complex technologies easy and intuitive to use - and develop outreach strategies to help the right people find them.

Usability

  • Research and discovery
  • User testing and tool audits
  • UX/UI design

Communications

  • Branding, messaging and tone-of-voice
  • Communications and outreach strategy
  • Visual and graphic design

Who we work with

We specialize in working with the digital rights community, with a focus on usable security and privacy enhancing technologies. Our team has particular experience in:

  • shutdown resilience for infrastructure and media
  • censorship circumvention technologies
  • messaging security
  • protocol design and development UX

Funders

We help you integrate usability and communications support into your offer for the projects you fund. Better design and outreach for your grantees means your work has a broader impact. We can also support you in process design as well as program monitoring and evaluation.

Organizations

We partner with you to provide expert usability and communications services and coaching, whether you’re developing a new feature, looking to improve usability, launching a campaign, or planning a rebrand. We can support your team long-term or provide an extra pair of hands at a critical moment.

Community projects

We support you in creating open source technologies that center the needs of the community. We understand that projects in the digital rights community often have limited capacity for outreach and can help you design realistic strategies that work for you. We may be able to offer pro bono support or match you with a funder.

Projects we’ve worked with

About us

Technology can only further digital rights if people know how to use it. That’s why we simplify complex technologies through usability and communications design. Our team works with digital rights defenders and high-risk communities in seven languages across four continents.

Team

Evie Winter

UX Lead

Evie founded Plaintext in 2021 and leads its UX work. A researcher and designer in usable security, Evie tackles design problems with tailored user research. She advised over 70 FOSS teams in the past 10 years and specializes in privacy-enhancing technologies. Where needed, she also works as a facilitator and liaises between developer and user communities. Previously she worked as a program director and UX consultant at several nonprofits across Europe and the United States.

Alana Taylor

Communications Lead

Alana has 10 years’ experience consulting nonprofit and grassroots organisations on how to harness tech and design for better communication. As a specialist in strategic communications and design project management, she ensures that Plaintext Design’s UX and design work is grounded in a holistic approach that centers people and communication. Several years of experience as a UX writer and translator grounds her strategic work in the fundamentals of UX and localization.

Maggie Smith

Designer

Maggie brings 10 years’ experience as a graphic designer and illustrator. She has worked for many global brands and was the lead designer at a global nonprofit, where she liaised with government, corporate and grassroots stakeholders. She leads Plaintext Design’s branding design work and is passionate about usability and accessibility in visual design.

Antonela Debiasi

Designer

Antonela is a product design lead focusing on usable security. She is interested in critical internet infrastructure, security, privacy, open-source communities, decentralization, and feminism as an intersectional practice. Before, she led the User Experience team at The Tor Project, focusing on providing a usable privacy-enhanced experience while browsing the internet in the global south.

Scott Jenson

Coach

Scott has been working in user interface design and strategic planning for over 30 years. He worked at Apple on System 7, Newton, and the Apple Human Interface guidelines. He was UX director of Symbian, VP of product design for Cognima, managed mobile UX for Google and was a creative director at frog design in San Francisco. Scott returned to Google in 2013 to lead the Physical Web project and research future Android UX concepts. In 2021, Scott left Google to explore more FOSS, coaching, and mentoring roles.

Susan Farrell

Coach

As the principal UX researcher at All Turtles since 2017, Susan collaborates with early-stage software product teams to build great user experiences. Prior to joining All Turtles, Susan spent 18 years at Nielsen Norman Group. She was their first user-experience specialist, and there she engaged with companies in many industries — multinationals, government, open source, and early startups — on website and mobile-device usability, interaction design, and information architecture.