Consent Guardians

Consent Guardians is an initiative dedicated to bringing consent into the forefront of the festival community through education and reinforcement.

I was the sole designer for this project during the research and design process.

Background

My very first UX project was a class project conducted while I was at General Assembly for which, I polled my friends for ideas. The winning idea was to create a hybrid EDM and BDSM event. Now of course I immediately received raised eyebrows when I brought it up in class, but let it signal that I’m not afraid of a challenge or of taking a road not many would risk traveling.

I’m not concerned with palatable, I care more about moving the needle forward.

Initial Hypothesis

I suspect that festival goers and BDSM enthusiasts want a shared space to safely indulge in their interests.

Research

As I set out to interview users, I wanted to consider the following:

  • What do festival, music, and bdsm lovers share in common?

  • What issues do they have with their experiences? Are there certain patterns with certain demographics?

  • Are there aspects that make them feel unsafe or stifled,

  • Do these interests overlap? If so, in what ways?

  • Is there a way to provide an outlet for users to enjoy these things while feeling safe and comfortable?

  • How might I create a space for festival lovers and BDSM lovers alike to indulge in their interests while feeling safe?

I personally interviewed six different people who were interested in music festivals and/or BDSM to get an idea of what pain points to focus on.

I was intrigued to find that people within the BDSM community did not seem to be concerned with safety nor did they see the need to merge the two worlds. It seems the BDSM folk are happy the way they are and enjoy the events as they already are. The festival folk, on the other hand, felt very hesitant and uncertain to involve BDSM at their EDM festivals because of the already high rate of sexual harassment that occurs at EDM festivals.

Whereas the BDSM community inherently understand consent and therefore don’t experience harassment, the festival community finds many more unpleasant experiences concerning a lack of consent.

Results from user interviews showed that unpleasant festival experiences are primarily the result of other attendees’ actions and behaviors. Users felt that events and event coordinators need to do more to cultivate a safe environment and reinforce consent.

I decided to do some additional research to dig deeper into what goes on at EDM festivals, and what the festival community has been reporting. Study results from OurMusicMyBody’s 2017 survey of festival attendees reported the following statistics:

1,286

92%

total reports of harassment at a music venue or festival.

of female fans experienced harassment.

60%

31%

of music fans who identify as transgender experienced physical homophobic and/or transphobic violence at a music event.

of male music fans identifying as LGBTQ+ experienced both physical and non-physical harassment.

“The recent crowds don’t seem to realize you don’t get to touch someone just because they’re dressed a certain way. Consent is sexy.”

I realized it was time to pivot…

Originally, it seemed that a safe, shared space would be beneficial for BDSM and festival lovers alike. But through research, I found that BDSM enthusiasts already feel safe in their community whereas users feel they can’t trust the festival community to inherently understand consent. Attendees have seen or experienced non-consensual activity.

The Problem Is…

Not everyone in the festival crowd understands that the way a person is dressed or how they dance is not an invitation for (usually unwanted) sexual conduct. So how might we normalize consent in the festival community, ensure education about consent, and reinforce it during events?

Competitive Analysis

Competitive analysis allowed me to see that though there are organizations out there that are dedicated to creating a safer space at festivals, I found there were no competitors that seemed to operate on a global scale. By creating an API that all festivals could tap into, my solution could have a global reach.

Feature Prioritization

Through feature prioritization, I decided that my MVP would be focused on the experience of educating users on the importance of consent.

The idea is to roll out consent guardians in 4 phases.

Phase 1: Education

  • An API to interrupt checkout process on festival websites that will:

  • Test users on their base knowledge of consent

  • Give users the ability to read a clause about consent and agree or disagree and forfeit their tickets.

Phase 2: Reinforcement

  • Create protocol to train event staff on handling harassment scenarios with empathy for the victim.

  • Have staff stationed visibly so fans can easily spot and flag them for help.

Phase 3: Extra Features

  • Launch an app for use before, during, and after festivals displaying a help button so users can call for help if they need to.

  • Roll out a feature so users can use their ticket numbers to register for the app.

  • Location sharing potential so staff can find users who need assistance.

  • Add functionality to the app for users to take a picture of someone’s wristband to report them on the app for staff to review.

Phase 4: Awareness

  • Create marketing campaigns that emphasize the importance of understanding and implementing consent.

  • Create merchandise to drive profits.

  • Grow social media presence.

I created a user flow to dictate what screens I needed and what experience the API would bring users.

For the initial usability testing of the low-fidelity paper protoype, users didn’t know what the significance was of the box beneath the paragraph on the last screen and users seem confused when clicking on the wrong answer for the pop quiz screen. It wasn’t intuitive that they could keep selecting a choice until they made the right selection.

When testing the mid-fidelity wireframes, I noticed that users initially kept clicking options in the pop quiz to move on to the next phase, producing too many clicks, and possibly didn’t retain the lesson meant to be taught.

With that in mind, I revised the pop quiz to just show what the correct option would be if the user selects the wrong answer instead of letting them try multiple times, thus teaching the user and reducing the amount of clicks.

I also included a screen to show the user they are being redirected to prevent confusion when the new landing screen appears. We want to keep the user informed.

Constraints

Summary

Technical

  • Programming the API

  • Creating an app that would be native on all OS’s

  • Location services & trackable wristbands.

    Functionality for pictures taken on app to be sent to event staff.

Business

  • Might be challenging to convince festival organizers to integrate API into their checkout process because some may not want to give users the opportunity to get a refund if they care more about driving profit than providing a safe experience.

  • Might be challenging to ensure training of event staff on protocol for handling harassment.

Monetary

  • How do we generate profit in the stages before creating merchandise?

  • Cost of creating the app and API might drive away potential stakeholders.

BDSM enthusiasts feel that they already have a safe space to explore their interests because they trust their community to already understand consent. Festival goers, however, do not feel the same about their community. Instead of trying to create a safe space for both to exist in tandem, the focus needs to be placed on making festivals a truly safe space first. Festival attendees should be able to trust their community, and the community needs to be more educated on consent.

Consent Guardians will provide educational information that will be spread through the festival community by getting event organizers to integrate our API in their checkout process, so users are forced to learn about consent before continuing their ticket purchase. Victim-focused training will be provided so that festival staff are better equipped to handle harassment with empathy. Future marketing and social media presence will help reinforce education of consent. Festivals will become a safe space for all by bring consent into the forefront of the community.

The next steps would be to partner with developers and arrange the design drop off and pitch the ideas to event organizers to convince them to work together and integrate the API into their checkout process. If business partners don’t like the idea of interrupting the checkout process (because capitalism at the end of the day is all about driving profit and not everyone benefits from progress for the sake of progress) how else can we integrate education about consent?