Exercise 2: Implicitly preventing abuse

The options we discussed for addressing abuse vectors can be divided into two categories: tools that implicitly prevent harassment (keeping harassment from happening in the first place), and tools that empower humans to do so (allowing other users to punish harassers, and giving harassers the ability to reconsider or regret their behavior). For this exercise, we're just going to focus on the implicit tools, which

• Take out the feature
• Reduce interaction
• Reduce visibility
• Don't keep data you don't need

Going back to the abuse vectors you identified in the last exercise, try to think of solutions to them using these principles. The components of a solution to an abuse vector looks pretty much like any software feature proposal. You'll want to make sure you've thought about:

• How does this address the abuse vector? Is there any way around it if someone is persistent or clever enough?
• What are the changes to the UI? Is this going to be a drastic change? Will users need help navigating the new design?
• What are the tradeoffs being made? Is this change going to make the product less fun? More confusing?
• How does this affect the business? Could this affect revenue or public perception of the company?
• What alternatives are there? There should be at least one other option so that decision makers can weigh pros and cons

Take about 15 minutes to come up with at least 3 potential solutions for some of the abuse vectors you identified. Use whatever medium makes the most sense to you. This could be text, drawings, a powerpoint presentation, puppet show, or whatever else you can think of.