Year-long capstone project for my Masters in Information Management degree sponsored by Microsoft. Created a website directed to the general public that identifies and addresses various digital safety risks within the Metaverse. We then provide our unique mitigation strategies for these digital safety concerns within the Metaverse using current compensating controls to similar risks in Web 2.0 as rationale behind our suggested mitigation strategies.
In my masters program our second year involves a year-long capstone project that is sponsored by an organization. Me and a team of 3 other individuals came together to find a project that we found was interesting and suited our groups skillsets. We ended up being accepted as the team to work on a Metaverse Compliance project sponsored by Microsoft. My team and I have begun working with individuals in the HoloLens department, as well as other various individuals at Microsoft — such as those on the legal team, to conduct research into the Metaverse and various digital safety risks that users might encounter in this new and upcoming digital environment.
Cyber bullying, online sexual harassment, catfishing, scamming, hackers... these are all well known concerns when navigating our current online environment which we refer to as Web 2.0. The implications of many of these dangers can be paramount; financial loss, loss of trust, and mental, physical & emotional harm are all detrimental repercussions of the dangers of the internet. With such risks still being prevalent, we wondered how these digital safety concerns would adapt and evolve as we shift to enter a new phase of the online space... the Metaverse. By identifying and addressing these possible concerns before the Metaverse launches into full swing, we are in a stronger position to reduce the effects that these risks could have on the general public, or even stop them from occurring all together if legisltive and providers take proper precautions when creating their new tech space inside the Metaverse. Being proactive and vigilant is always more beneficial than being reactive and reckless, especially knowing about all the harmful experiences that continue to occur in Web 2.0.
The beginning of this project took place during the large amount tech lay-offs that occurred in the end of 2022 to 2023. Our initial employee at Microsoft that was leading our project got laid off, luckily our project got taken over by another individual and we were able to continue our progress, however these troubling times took a toll on the morale of the individuals at Microsoft we were working with, and our project was not at the top of these employees concerns. However our team was resilient and continued to advocate for our project and work individually to ensure we were still making progress despite a lack of guidance at some points. My role in the team began with providing outlines for our project template, and research into the various digital safety risks that our audience could encounter in the Metaverse. My team relies on me to speak out in meetings with our TA and Sponsor to ask the appropriate questions to tie the bridge in figuring out what our sponsor wants from our deliverable, what our TA would like and what we believe will be an informative and useful deliverable for our audience. I advocated for our team to define our audience before we began working all together and we settle on our audience being the general public. Therefore the concerns that we identify should be related to what the general population might encounter when using the Metaverse, instead of perhaps what certain businesses should be aware of when migrating to the Metaverse. This created the foundation on which we were to research what the Metaverse is predicted to be used for in the future and discover digital safety risks for the general public as they navigate this new environment. We then had to figure out how we wanted to relay these concerns in our deliverable as well as how we would provide mitigation strategies for these concerns. After some brainstorming we worked together to discuss a general outline but I was tasked with putting that to paper to showcase to our TA and Sponsor.
As you can see the structure of our deliverable was initially as follows:
After speaking with our TA, he had concerns with the structure of our argument. He said that initially we are jumping too deep into identifying our 4 concerns/risk categories. He said that because the Metaverse is so new, we would struggle to support how we came up with these categories and needed a stronger foundation in the beginning of our deliverable. We worked back and forth with our TA and Sponsor to come to the conclusion that we should provide specific scenarios that the public might encounter when entering the metaverse, and identify the biggest risks in each of these scenarios. From there we can then generalize these concerns into a broader risk category and offer mitigation strategies. Given these discussions we came up with a different ourline that I was tasked with creating in Figma again. Here is a screenshot of Outline #2. Outline 1 and 2 can be found in the Figma link below.
As you can see, the structure has changed to incorporate these discussed scenarios to strengthen our deliverable format. Our team conducted in-depth desk research, as well as with individuals at Microsoft, to come up with scenarios that the general audience could encounter when using the Metaverse. Then, we identify concerns in our various sectors from these scenarios, and offer general mitigation strategies for these sectors. However, it became clear as we discussed these scenarios that attempting to fit concerns we found into these sectors we defined was convoluted and resulted in redundancies. We want to highlight the most important risks in each scenario, not attempt to find risks in these scenarios to fit our pre-defined risk categories. Further. we found that generalized mitigation strategies for these risk categories would not be useful for our audience and would be difficult to justify given the lack of information around the Metaverse in general. We had to go back to the drawing board and think more about how we can create a deliverable that would provide meaningful information for our audience that could be justified with our current resources. After a few more weeks of discussions, as well as further research into what we found were the most prominent risks in our scenarios, we were able to create a more flushed out intricate outline for our final deliverable. A screenshot of the Figma for our current outline is below, but due to the intricacies and scale, it is difificult to see exactly what each node says. I highly recommend if you're interested to click the link below to the Figma to zoom in and see exactly what our current format is and how it has improved since our first iterations.
The structure of our most recent outline creates a more solid and well-rounded argument and analysis into the Metaverse risks for our audience. IT is evident the scale and intricacies have increased since our previous versions, but this lends to a clearer flow for our final deliverable. The current structure is as follows:
It is evident how much our deliverable format has changed so far and this process of research and ideation was imperative to building a strong structure for our deliverable. This is our current outline and our most recent work we have conducted. I was tasked again with creating this outline and combing all of our research into this Fig-jam file which we presented to our TA and Sponsor at the end of winter quarter (March 2023) for approval before we went to spring break. Both the TA and Sponsor agreed this was the best outline we had yet and felt confident in the direction our project was going. Creating these outlines in Fig-jam provided clarity for all stakeholders of our project, and allowed us as a team to have various iterations to look back and improve upon. It provides structure that will be invaluable for us as we move our deliverable from these outlines into the final infographic format. My team was very happy I was able to put this together for us and it provided a great finishing point for our winter quarter progress.
Now that we had our outline and defined our scenarios, we started our deep dive into researching current risks and compensating controls to help us figure out how these risks might evolve as we enter this Metaverse setting. We then used these current compensating controls as a guide to help us create our own mitigation strategies for our identified Metaverse risks in each of the given scenarios. An outline of our methodology can be found on this page on our webpage.
After all of this research was collected and documented, we then came to the issue of figuring out how to present this, and the best possible format for our information to take place without loosing integrity. We initially decided on a Prezi to put all of our information on, but didn't like how it reduced our artifact to just a presentation, and also didn't offer the ability for our audience to engage in the content themselves and choose their own path to knowledge.
We wanted our artifact to be like a Wikipedia page, offering all the information an individual could want surrounding digital safety concerns within the Metaverse, but also offer something more creative and interactive as well.
We then shifted to considering creating a website, but none of the members of my team were well-versed in any website-creation platforms nor HTML to make it by scratch. I took it upon myself to advocate for Webflow, as my portfolio was created from that and I have some basic experience with it. The team agreed, but unfortunately this meant I was the sole creator of the entire website, and at this point we only had 2 weeks to get everything onto it... Webflow's free version creates a lot of barriers to what you're able to-do and not-do when creating a site, one of those being inviting others to work on the site with you, so I truly was the only contributor.
Designing, creating and implementing all of our research into a website alone was quite the daunting task! I gained a lot of insight into Webflow software and the technicalities behind website implementation. I used my skills gained from my UX specialization in this degree to help guide design decisions. Due to time constraints, lack of resources and unexpected pay walls, the UX designer in me wishes some changes could be made to the final product. However, I am extremely proud of what we have accomplished, and our final cite I hope will provide the general public with knowledge and guidance into navigating the Metaverse safely.
I definitely learned a lot about patience and perseverance in this project; as well as how to work collaboratively with a team of individuals from all different walks of life! In addition to digital safety and the possibilities of the Metaverse; I also have learned a lot about Webflow and am much more confident in my abilities to manage that platform. In addition, as a UX designer who mostly has designed interfaces in Figma, it was both frustrating and enlightening to see how the implementation of ideas can be shifted when you are put into actual HTML code or a Webflow-type software to create these ideas. My lack of experience in Webflow, as well as being subject to only having the free version available ( as well as lack of resources and time constraints) made it so I could not create the exact website the UX Designer in me would have hoped for. However given the circumstances, I am pleased with what the final product offers and I hope it serves the general public to take precaution when entering new digital spaces. Our sponsor was over-joyed by our final website and was extremely impressed by what we ended up creating. The Mixed reality team at Microsoft will look over our presentation for insight into compliance risks they should consider while managing their softwares.
I also learned a lot about outlining and creating flows. I used Figma to create the outline of how the information would flow through our project, and this created a clean template for the team to work off of. Our methodology section showcases our thought process and provides integrity to our research and various claims made. I really enjoyed this section and received great feedback from our TA and Sponsor about the flow.
Please feel free to reach out with any feedback, concerns or general comments about this project or our final website!