Our Purpose

The Privacy Toolkit provides biomedical researchers with a catalog of design tools and patterns to use throughout the user journey of their mHealth studies and allow users to learn more about data privacy and management. The toolkit also provides accompanying use cases to help researchers decide on which patterns are most appropriate for their mHealth applications. By using privacy patterns, study participants can better understand the types of data that are being collected by the research study app and that they have the ability to change their data sharing permissions at any time. Having multiple touchpoints helps build a trusted partnership between the research team and the study participants.

Our Design Team

The Design Team works across domains at Sage to ensure the solutions we create are intuitive, accessible, inclusive, and easy to use. We are generalist designers who have a diversity of expertise from interaction and visual design to user research. Our approach begins with understanding at a granular level what researchers and research participants need from our tools, so that we know what problem we’re solving. Then, we design solutions that balance trust, functionality, and delight. We do the hard work so users don’t have to. We collaborate with scientists, product managers, engineers, and ethicists throughout the design process so that we maintain the integrity of biomedical research methods while we:

• Conduct user research
• Create user flows and wireframes
• Build high-fidelity mockups and prototypes
• Facilitate user studies and usability studies.

Our Governance Team

The Governance Team explores the real-world implications of open-data sharing, developing policies and procedures for the responsible collection, use, and reuse of research assets. We have developed and tested models for patient-centered consent in app-mediated research studies, engagement and retention of research participants, and data access, protection, privacy, and interoperability.