I’m Ame (sounds like “Amy”). Last month I joined Simply Secure after spending the past eight years at IDEO, a global design and innovation consultancy. While there, I designed consumer technology for entertainment, education, banking, media, business software, mobile/wearables, and home automation. Uniting all my work is Human-Centered Design, a set of practices and research methods that starts with people, studies their needs and preferences, and creates things they want and enjoy.
Happy Spring! Like so much in the northern hemisphere, our blog and Twitter stream have been largely dormant for a while – but we’ve been behind the scenes getting ready for a season of tremendous growth. Since we announced Simply Secure in the fall, we’ve become formally established as a legal entity, interviewed and hired an exceptional staff, and fleshed out our plans for partnering with open-source organizations to make secure-communication tools more usable.
Announcing a new program for usable-security researchers We are pleased to announce one of our first initiatives – the Secure Usability Fellowship Program (SUFP) – in partnership with the Open Technology Fund. This new program aims to cultivate applied research and creative collaboration at different levels and across institutions on the topic of usable security, especially the usability of open-source secure-communication tools to promote human rights and open societies. SUFP’s approach to this work is straightforward; the program supports qualified individuals to work within accomplished host organizations on clearly-defined and high-impact usable-security projects.
Join our team and let’s make this happen. We have ambitious goals, and the first step to meeting them is growing our team. We’re officially hiring two new positions – an Operations Manager and a Research Director (or Associate Director). If you’re interested in helping us quickly make an impact on the usability of secure communication tools, please apply. If you know someone who fits this description, please spread the word.
We're here to make security easy and fun. Internet software links us to our friends, allows us to transact across oceans, and forms a digital space for culture and society. Because these technologies provide forums for sensitive discourse and expression, we are all concerned about their security and privacy – but don’t always know what to do about it. In fact, when security-enhancing functionality exists, it often seems to add an extra layer of complexity.