Empower: Privacy for Young People

To encourage participation throughout the workshop, we made a conscious choice not to use a PowerPoint presentation. A presentation can invite passivity from the ‘audience’, especially in a virtual environment. To avoid that dynamic, we let the participants know we would start by sharing some information with them, but the workshop would be conversational.

It was also important to us to set the tone that the Microsoft employees present were not the ‘experts.’ Instead, we wanted to acknowledge that young people are experts in their own lives. We let the participants know we were looking to draw on their expertise to provide honest and sincere feedback. To encourage creativity and candour, we actively sought participation through open-ended questions and regular pauses for the participants to ask their own questions and share their thoughts and stories.

Following our group discussion, we transitioned to the ‘working’ portion of the workshop. We communicated that the work in the breakout sessions was an opportunity to have a direct impact on how we communicate about privacy to young people. We showed the Microsoft Privacy Statement and the draft of the Privacy for young people page on the screen. We explained that Privacy for young people contained some of the important information within the privacy statement in language written at a 7th-grade reading level.

For the breakout sessions, we provided sections of the page to small groups of three to four participants. Each group had access to a shared document with the language for review and a few discussion prompts. The participants read their section and discussed the questions. Most insightful were their own questions. For example, in reading about what data Microsoft might share with their school, they were curious: “What does their school know about them?” and “What exactly does ‘education purposes’ mean?” In response, we changed the language from “Your school can access the contents of communications and files” to more direct language: “Your school can access email, chat, files or other content.” To clarify “education or school purposes,” we added a clause: “such as products you can use for online learning.”

We asked the participants to take notes on their discussion within the shared document. We let them know we would share their notes (with no names attached) with the group of Microsoft employees working on drafting the document.

During the breakout sessions, we asked the adults not to participate. We wanted to encourage an environment where the participants could step up and take leadership. Taking the initiative to start the activity, following through on the discussion, assigning someone to take notes, and managing the time within the breakout session are all leadership skills.

Empowering young people is not just asking for what they know; it’s also demonstrating a respect for their competence. Stepping back created an inclusive space for the workshop participants to demonstrate their leadership and to step up.

At the end of the workshop, each participant shared one key learning or takeaway. All of them spoke to the importance of transparency and choice. In their words:

After the workshop, we shared the participants’ feedback with our internal team. We included the notes the participants captured from their discussions directly into our draft document, so all members of the team could see and reference the feedback. They suggested we provide simple definitions if words were confusing. For example, they asked what we meant by “parental consent,” so we added that consent in this context meant “permission.”

In some cases, they gave us positive feedback, which was encouraging to know we were on the right track. As an example, after reading the line “We don’t sell your personal data,” they wrote in their comments: “Since Microsoft doesn’t sell your data to other companies, it makes us feel a lot better about this.”

1 – Limited Representation
The 13 teens who participated in the Council for Digital Good were a small group of 13–17-year- olds from a single country. Their engagement was a great start, and we recognise that opportunities to work with young people from other countries and from more diverse digital backgrounds can potentially lead to different conversations around protecting personal information online and how to design privacy experiences that are meaningful in other use cases and jurisdictions.

2 – Virtual Learning
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2021 Council for Digital Good summit was virtual, whereas in previous years, the summit was held in person. The challenge of working in a virtual setting was that the youth experienced disruptive connection issues that impacted the quality and ease of participation. Additionally, not all participants turned on their camera or felt comfortable speaking in the large group. In an in-person environment, it is easier to include icebreakers and games to create community and a sense of connection within the group.

For Privacy for young people, the next step is to redesign the look and feel of the page. In a future opportunity to work with a group of young people, the invitation to co-design will be to imagine an age-appropriate design for the page. We’ll look for participants to engage creatively with prompts such as: “When you join a service or create a new account, what do you want to know about your privacy in that moment?” and “What imagery and UX design could help you access that information in a way that is quick, easy to understand, and useful as you make choices about your privacy settings?” We aim for future versions of the page to incorporate their contributions and design recommendations.

Microsoft has long demonstrated a commitment to inclusive design by engaging with our diverse users to develop innovative and empowering products and services. We recognise we are always on a journey to meet our customers’ needs, and greater participation from young people within our privacy experiences is one way we are actively engaging to do so. Listening to young people tell their stories gives us insight on what digital skills they have and what skills they are developing. We believe designing resources meant for young people WITH young people is an opportunity to create better engagement on the choice and controls available to our young customers and greater privacy transparency for a safer internet for all.