Benjamin Royer

OpenArchive is a non-profit dedicated to providing tools geared towards the preservation of digital media in a secured way. Their mission statement stresses the importance of creating "reliable, open source, decentralized archives to protect history and its first responders."

To that end, they have developed Save, a mobile archiving app designed to help people manage, organise, tag, save and upload materials recorded on their phones and tablets. Using services like the Internet Archive and Nextcloud, and actively working on integrating decentralised web projects such as Storacha and Raven, Save allows users to rapidely and securely build repositories of digital artefacts.

THREAT MODELLING

My first task was overseeing the ongoing redesign of the app, producing a list of accessibility recommendations, and co-hosting a series of threat modelling workshops.

Working hand in hand with OpenArchive stakeholders and the design team, I effectuated a series of interventions meant to strenghten the user experience of Save, while keeping the impact minimal for the already advanced design work.

The output of this first engagement was a comprehensive report on the app's competitive landscape, accessibility, usability and user threat levels. Public information restricted due to the sensitive nature of the project. More information available upon request.

CREATIVE DIRECTION

Following this report, OpenArchive asked me to continue providing creative direction and product strategy for the Save app, as the backlog of features had evolved and shifted with recent technological advances. Indeed, decentralised web projects such as Storacha and Raven were reaching consumer-product-level maturity. Their integration presented challenges to the UX, UI and project management of the Save project.

After an intense period of design work meant to tackle these challenges, I kickstarted a rationalisation effort meant to produce a comprehensive and consolidated design system. Existing screens and user-journeys were refined along the new guidelines of this design system, which also provided clear guidance for future development.

This allowed the production of the final version of high-resolution visual designs, delivering precise instructions to developers, consistent rules for the layout of screens, tooltips and other graphical elements, and screen-by-screen user-journeys.