Privacy Enhancing Technology forMetaMeta

View Live Project
  • tag
    Visual Storytelling

Built with

Greensock Animation Platform

The digital advertising ecosystem is evolving as users demand more privacy, as regulations expand and mobile operating systems and browsers are updated to respond to this new environment.

Meta is developing new forms of digital advertising which are less reliant on third-party data, and instead use 
Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs). These PETs protect data in new ways and improve transparency and user control. Based in cryptography and mathematics, these technologies are highly technical and often misunderstood 
in the industry.

Craig Walker worked with Meta to develop communications tools to explain these PETs, giving advertisers, 
regulators and policy-makers an understanding of how they work to protect and increase data privacy.

Capturing tales from the cryptographers

Working closely with the Meta team of data scientists and cryptographers, we designed separate digital explainers for three PETs: Multi-party Computation, In-device Learning and Differential Privacy. The narratives and content for each were built from the explanations, stories and experiences of the data scientists and cryptographers in sharing
 the work they do.

Meta sketches

From storyboards, to stories

We worked closely with the Meta team to develop the PET explainers. In weekly workshops, we delved into the details of these technologies and then took a step back to see how we could explain it to non-technical audiences. The Meta PET team shared how they explain their work to friends and family, which uncovered powerful analogies and simplified language. Together, we iterated and refined storyboards and narratives until they were technically correct as well as compelling for an everyday reader.

Making complex technologies relevant

Not only did we need to make the technology easy to grasp and relay, it was important that they show their impact and value in relevant and relatable ways. We developed storylines and characters (based on Meta’s new illustration guidelines) to reflect the types of users and industries that would resonate with advertisers, regulators and policy-makers. This has gained traction from internal and external stakeholders alike, who have praised the work for its brevity and simplicity in explaining complex technologies.

A simple workflow for complex code

We worked with the design team at Craig Walker to create a fluid and efficient workflow between scriptwriter, designer, illustrator and developer. Using Greensock Animation Platform we found the balance between tying the main animations to scroll and maintaining movement by keeping minor animations off the scroll. We prototyped the structure early with minimal artwork to make sure the complicated movements in the story were well planned before diving into the detail. Designers and developers worked closely to plan and execute the complex pinned animations involving many motion paths for the objects. We worked with the Meta's WordPress VIP team to develop a custom theme to hold the animations that met the high standards of code needed for meta urls.

More Work

AMP
AMP Sortation

  • tag
    Visual Storytelling

We teamed up with Figure agency to create an eye-catching redesigned site as part of a rebrand for AMP, an AI-powered waste sortation toolkit.

Made with Next.js and Prismic, and deployed to Netlify - this site is a slick statement of intent, with subtle interactive animations built-in throughout and notable for its high-fidelity 3D scrolling animations. We built the site with the capacity to scale to multiple international versions and to be nearly 100% customisable for the client- with re-purposable modules available to use and reorder throughout the site.

Meta
Data Co-Design Workshop

  • tag
    Virtual Reality
  • tag
    Rapid Prototyping

The Metaverse provides designers and policy makers with many challenges. How designers responsibly request for consent to use, collect and then respond to body-based data is one of those challenges.

In conjunction with design studio Craig Walker, Supermarket was enlisted by Meta to design a co-design workshop for external privacy and technology experts which particular body-based data. The output of this work will be a published report, privacy frameworks and design patterns which aim to support industry in developing people-centred and transparent metaverse experiences for users.

As part of this workshop we built 4 XR scenarios that let users experience interactions and understand the data collected in that interaction.

These scenarios were vital to provide context to policy makers, some of whom had little experience of VR. They allowed for more informed participation, deeper exploration of solutions and better outcomes within the workshop.

Internal
Flexible Visual Systems Design Tool

  • tag
    Rapid Prototyping

“In a world of constant change, everything rigid will break. We need to unlearn static approaches and learn to see, understand and design flexible systems.” - Dr. Martin Lorenz

We came across the amazing research on Flexible Design Systems by Dr. Martin Lorenz through his recent book. This chimed with us as designer-developers delivering work that needs to be applied flexibly across various outputs. In order to extend and investigate Martin’s research, we partnered with design studio Public Websites to prototype a custom design tool using the concepts described in the book. We created a UI that could generate millions of designs through limited variations and incorporated ChatGPT to allow for text based input to populate that UI.

Meta
Privacy Enhancing Technology

  • tag
    Visual Storytelling

Meta is developing new forms of digital advertising which are less reliant on third-party data, and instead use Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs). These PETs protect data in new ways and improve transparency and user control. Based in cryptography and mathematics, these technologies are highly technical and often misunderstood in the industry.

Supermarket, together with Craig Walker, worked with Meta to develop beautiful, in-browser animations to explain these PETs, giving advertisers, regulators and policy-makers an understanding of how they work to protect and increase data privacy.

Internal
NRL Performance Timeline

  • tag
    Data Visualisation
  • tag
    Visual Storytelling

As an exercise in the possibilities 3D brings for data visualisation and interrogation we built a timeline that tracks the performance of all teams in the Australian based National Rugby League competition since 2015. The timeline allows users to track their team against others, interrogate the form of their team at every round, filter comparative teams in or out and see the Grand Final winners at the end of each season all in one timeline.

Meta
Personalised Advertising for People and Businesses

  • tag
    Visual Storytelling

The personalised advertising ecosystem is a major reason we can use digital services for free. Supermarket was asked by Meta to build a visual explainer showing that ecosystem works, and the value that it brings to both individuals and businesses. This explainer uses complex pinned and multi-layered web animations built using GSAP and controlled by scroll.

Highland
Fleet Builder

  • tag
    Visual Storytelling
  • tag
    Data Visualisation

As part of the launch of the new Highland brand we were asked by design studio Figure to create a scrolling interactive data visualisation to help new customers understand the savings they could make by using Highland to electrify their school bus fleet.

The user inputs data about their existing fleet, their electrification goal and their target deployment schedule. That data is then visualised and used to personalise an immersive animated journey through Highland’s product offering and process. The data then becomes part of a dynamically generated PDF for the user to take away.

Internal
Tumbling Tower

  • tag
    Virtual Reality

To celebrate the launch of the studio we created a digital tumbling tower based on a real life version created on a lazy Sunday afternoon on the living room carpet. We used physics, gravity control and some 3D typography. We turned this into a browser based VR experiment for guests to experience at our launch party. When entering this VR version users can bat away the blocks and typography with the large glass orbs that are tracked to their controllers. This VR version was built using the WebXR device API through the excellent library react-xr. Other tools and libraries used were Vectary, use-cannon & react-three-fibre.

TTC Labs
Automated Avatar Generator

  • tag
    Rapid Prototyping

Labeling is an important step in (supervised) machine learning, but is susceptible to bias. We built a tool that asked users to label three images within a workshop. The workshop was designed to demonstrate the need for diverse people, diverse labels and diverse images training AI. Workshop participants are asked to categorise and label the features on three images. These labels were then used to generate an avatar from hundreds of image assets. If consent was given the results were collected in Airtable. These results were then available to further workshops to allow bias to be examined. Airtable provided an easy to use API for submitting results to a database and the perfect interface for periodic export by the design team.

TTC Labs
Digital services for young people explainer

  • tag
    Visual Storytelling

How do we empower, protect and guide young people from different communities around the world to navigate the shifting digital landscape?

Craig Walker & TTC Labs created a series of co-creation workshops with youth leaders and policy makers in Australia, the United States and the UK, in order to create design principles informed by local contexts.

Supermarket was then asked to deliver a visual explainer as an engaging introduction to the topic for designers and general public alike. The explainer tells the stories of three personas through illustration and animation across desktop and mobile. We used complex pinned web animations built in GSAP and controlled by scroll.

TTC Labs
Trustworthy AI Experiences

  • tag
    Visual Storytelling

When people don’t understand how AI-powered digital products come up with results, they might be less likely to trust them. Designing people-centric approaches to AI explainability by driving towards greater understanding and agency can help build more trustworthy digital products and services.

TTC Labs asked Craig Walker & Supermarket to build a visual explainer as an engaging introduction to the topic and their research. We used complex web animations built in GSAP and controlled by scroll to do this.