Five Technology Design Principles to Combat Domestic Abuse

Refuge, a charity that supports victims of domestic violence, has reported a 950% increase in website traffic with 66% more people calling the national domestic abuse helpline during this lockdown and reported that nearly three-quarters of the people seeking their help last year had faced abuse via technology.

Domestic abuse isn’t a new problem, but it has been exacerbated by current living conditions, with many victims trapped at home with their abusers. Whilst many are using connected devices to stay in touch with family and friends, a higher focus on technology is also resulting in the increased use of tech-facilitated domestic abuse.

In response to this and in partnership with survivors of abuse, support workers, the police, related charities and organisations, as well as academics and tech associations, IBM have worked on a set of design principles: “Five Technology Design Principles to Combat Domestic Abuse” , which proposes five key considerations to make technology resistant to coercive control.

Domestic abusers can use technology more than ever before to control their victims, often with victims unaware. Technology that was designed for protection is being used for malicious purposes with one example being the connected doorbell. The connected doorbell app that allows you to remotely see who is at the door was built with safety in mind. However, the motion capture feature can be used to entrap victims, with notifications being sent when an attempt is made to leave the home.

Another is the credit card app that provides purchase notifications, this was built to help combat fraud. However, its use can give enhanced control over victims with details of their spending being constantly monitored.

IBM’s principles aim to raise awareness to this societal issue, whilst providing actionable recommendations on how technologists can work to avoid contributing to domestic abuse. These recommendations respond to the increase in cases of tech-aided domestic abuse with specific design principles to tackle this problem “from the ground up” as technology is being designed and to ensure it can’t be leveraged by abusers to exert coercive control over victims.

Technology-facilitated abuse is a challenging issue, and there is no simple solution to eliminate it. However, by making subtle decisions—balancing intended with unintended consequences— it is possible to design technology to be resistant to it.

To aid technologists in making these decisions, IBM is proposing five key design principles to make products resistant to coercive control.

Five Technology Design Principles to Combat Domestic Abuse

1.Promoting diversity

Having a diverse design team broadens the understanding of user habits, enabling greater exploration of use cases, both the positive and the negative. Often when developing a new technology, designers have target users in mind. However, they might not be the only type of users that end up using the technology, with other users often leveraging tech in unexpected ways.

2. Guaranteeing privacy & choice

Users need to be able to actively make informed decisions about their privacy settings. Small red buttons, or phrases like ‘advanced settings’ can intimidate users, causing them to pick the default settings without necessarily understanding the consequences of that choice. Settings should be simple to understand and easy to configure, and their presentation should not try to influence the user. Include periodic notifications for the user to review configuration that results in data being shared and ensure a diverse user base is considered when establishing default privacy settings.

3. Combatting gaslighting

Gaslighting is when a person manipulates someone psychologically into doubting their memories and judgment.
If a user can remove all evidence of an action taking place, or if there never was any evidence, this could lead to someone starting to question their memory. Timely and pertinent notifications as well as auditing are essential for making it obvious who has done what and when.

Technology needs to be transparent about where changes have been made and when remote functionality is triggered, making it difficult to obscure or hide gaslighting attempts. Where appropriate, a local override for a remote activation should be provided, empowering users with the ability to choose to retain control of their environment. The user interface and design around such notifications and auditing should be treated with equal importance to that of the regular function of the product, and not assigned to some corner of the interface that is hard to find.

4. Strengthening security & data

It is important that products are secure, only collecting and sharing necessary data, thereby limiting the risk that they
could be used maliciously. For example, it is common that many home computer-based devices/services are managed by one user, even though they are used by many members of the family (e.g. virtual assistants, subscription channels, family calendar/data sharing plans, etc.). An intuitive and easy way for family members to subscribe and unsubscribe could be a more effective model, empowering users with joint control.

5. Making technology more intuitive

Victims of coercive control live in complex, ever-shifting worlds and may lack the energy or confidence to navigate new technologies. If all end user technology was intuitive to use and understand, this could help reduce the risk of abusers dominating with their greater technical confidence, either with threats or by installing applications the victim doesn’t understand. The combination of ease of use and an auditing feedback loop to every user can provide reassurance to a potential victim that they are not being controlled by the technology in question.

Making Technology Safer for all

While many see coercive control as an issue impacting women, it has wider ramifications in society as it can happen in any type of relationship – especially where there is a power imbalance.

Some examples would be between carers and the vulnerable, elderly, or disabled, within institutions and even in the workplace.

There could be 125 billion internet-connected devices by 2030. As these devices become more prevalent, abusers will have more tools to manipulate their victims. It is critical that we safeguard new technology with strong anti-abuse protections by default so that abusers cannot use these tools to harm victims.

Making technology resistant to coercive control ensures that others cannot exploit inventions, tarnish intentions, or dim the light of technological achievement. Most importantly, it is a key step towards making the tech world safer for all of us.