Increasing User Empowerment through
Participatory and Co-design Methodologies
D1.3.1c
September 2014
Authors
Verónica Donoso, Maarten Van Mechelen, Valerie Verdoodt
Affiliation
ICRI & CUO
ISBN
*********
EMSOC
T + 32 (0)2 629 16 14
E [email protected]
W www.emsoc.be
Twitter #emsocnews
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Abstract
In this deliverable we explore ways of increasing user empowerment by employing
participatory and co-design methodologies. The deliverable summarises the main
results of the Legal Design Jam and the co-design sessions with children and parents.
Both these exercises constituted concrete efforts to increase the transparency of the
Terms of Use of popular websites by actively integrating relevant stakeholders and end
users into the design process. At the end of this report we suggest guidelines that can
accompany the development of more meaningful, user-friendly and user-centric
approaches towards designing legal communication in particular for more vulnerable
consumers/users such as young children.
Special thanks to…
All the enthusiastic participants of the Legal Design Jams, especially to the master
students, children and their parents, for providing their valuable input and original
ideas for this publication.
We would like to thank Microsoft and Ketnet, for providing us with the opportunity to
propose new ideas and for being open to feedback.
Last but not least we a big thank you to Ellen Wauters and Stefania Passera, for their
valuable input and their help during the Legal Design Jams.
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Table of Contents
Abstract
3
Special thanks to…
3
List of figures and tables
5
1
Executive summary
6
1.1
The EMSOC project .......................................................................................................6
1.2
Increasing transparency of social media as a mechanism for user
empowerment .............................................................................................................................6
2 Empowering social media users to enforce their rights and respect their
obligations through increased transparency
7
2.1
Challenges for transparency .....................................................................................8
3
Participatory design: An empowering methodology to increase transparency
11
4
The first Belgian Legal Design Jam
12
4.1
Legal Design Jam definition and methodology.................................................. 12
4.2
Participants and procedure .................................................................................... 13
4.3
Interaction among the participants ..................................................................... 13
4.4
The process of achieving a user-friendly “Purchase policy”.......................... 14
4.5
General results ............................................................................................................ 15
4.5.1 Problematic issues identified .......................................................................................... 15
4.6
Results by teams ......................................................................................................... 17
4.6.1 Team “User-friendly summary” ...................................................................................... 17
4.6.2 Team “Purchase policy” .................................................................................................... 19
4.6.3 Team “Return & refund policy” ...................................................................................... 21
4.6.4 Teams “Layout” and “Icons” ............................................................................................ 23
4.7
Conclusions ................................................................................................................... 24
5
Ketnet Co-Design Session with children
24
5.1.1 Participatory Design with children: an emergent field? ..................................... 24
5.1.2 Beyond Representation: Interpreting Co-design Artefacts ............................... 25
5.1.3 Co-design as a tool for child-friendly Terms of Use .............................................. 25
5.2
Towards child-friendly terms of use ................................................................... 26
5.2.1 Co-design jam with children and parents ................................................................. 26
5.2.2 General procedure ............................................................................................................. 27
5.2.3 Sensitizing ............................................................................................................................. 27
5.2.4 Introduction and warm up ............................................................................................. 28
5.2.5 Ideation and selection ...................................................................................................... 29
5.2.6 Break ....................................................................................................................................... 32
5.2.7 Elaboration through making.......................................................................................... 32
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5.2.8 Presentation and discussion .......................................................................................... 33
6
Analysis and results
33
6.1
High-level expert review of Ketnet’s Terms of Use ........................................ 34
6.2
Classification of online risks following the EU Kids Online 3C`s model . 37
6.2.1 Classifying online risks: Children vs. parents` perspectives ............................. 37
6.2.2 Classification of risks: Ketnet`s perspective ............................................................ 42
6.3
Conclusions of the analysis..................................................................................... 44
6.4
Recommendations on how to improve the Ketnet Terms of Use.............. 46
6.4.1 Our agreement .................................................................................................................... 47
6.4.2 Rules of the game ............................................................................................................... 48
6.4.3 E-safety tips .......................................................................................................................... 52
7
Reflections and conclusions
53
8
References
55
9
Annex 1. Pre-assignments Legal Design Jam
59
9.1
Tasks common to all teams .................................................................................... 59
9.2
TASKS Team 1: Text and Layout ........................................................................... 59
9.3
TASK Team 2: creating a user-friendly, visually enhanced summary .... 60
9.4
TASK Team 3: visualization of the purchase process.................................... 61
9.5
TASK Team 4: visualization of the return policy process ............................ 62
9.6
TASK Team 5: icons ................................................................................................... 62
10 Dutch Summary
63
List of figures and tables
Figure 1 designing a user-friendly “purchase policy”.................................................................. 15
Figure 2. Paper prototype of the proposed user friendly summary ...................................... 18
Figure 3 Digital mock-up of the user-friendly summary ............................................................ 19
Figure 4 Post-it draft of the Flowchart of the purchase process ............................................. 20
Figure 5 Digital prototype of the purchase process workflow ................................................ 21
Figure 6 Digital prototype of the return & refund policy scheme ........................................... 22
Figure 7 Digital mock-up of the suggested Terms of Use layout and related icons ......... 23
Figure 8 Sensitizing material: Timeline family activities ........................................................... 28
Figure 9. One of the three child characters used during the Jam ........................................... 30
Figure 10 Parents visualizing their top-10 tips ............................................................................. 32
Figure 11 EU Kids Online classification of risks relating to children`s internet use
(exemplars only)............................................................................................................................... 34
Figure 12 Parental consent requires agreeing with the Terms of Use and the privacy
disclaimer ............................................................................................................................................ 35
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Figure 13 Extract from Ketnet Terms of Use .................................................................................. 46
1
1.1
Executive summary
The EMSOC project
The goal of the EMSOC project, funded by IWT, is to critically assess the belief that the
user is being empowered in a social media culture. The research is structured
according to three main areas of interest in society where user (dis)empowerment is
taking place related to social computing, namely, inclusion, literacy and privacy. An
interdisciplinary team from Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Universiteit Gent and KU Leuven
has collaborated since the end of 2010 to provide fundamental and evidence-based
answers to the challenging assumptions and principles of the EMSOC research project.
1.2
Increasing transparency of social media as a mechanism for user
empowerment
Throughout EMSOC we have studied social media use in Flanders with a special focus
on how their use and appropriation can affect user empowerment. One important
aspect that emerged throughout our research was the lack of transparency
surrounding many (commercial) practices related to the use of social media services.
In December 2013 we held the EMSOC transparency workshop where a selected group
of experts and practitioners gathered together to discuss possible ways to increase
transparency in and across social media platforms in creative, user-centred and
meaningful ways. Even though the participants in the workshop had very diverse
backgrounds, there was a general consensus that one problematic area affecting social
media was the way (legal) information was provided to users/consumers. In general,
information such as the Terms of Use or Privacy Policies governing the use of social
media services are very hard to understand. This is partly because the language used in
these texts (legalese) is complex but also because of users` cognitive and contextual
constraints (e.g. lack of time or motivation). As a consequence, most social media users
are unable to assess and process legal information such as contracts or Terms of
Service correctly. During the workshop we also brainstormed on possible ways to
improve the efficiency of information provision. Some of the ideas discussed included
exploring the potential of visualisation techniques, simplifying legal language and
timing the information provision in ways that can facilitate users’ understanding of complex (legal) information. In particular, the concept of Legal Design Jams developed
and presented during the workshop by Stefania Passera caught the participants`
attention and was considered as a very practical and useful methodology to increase
the transparency of information provision towards social media users. Inspired by this
idea, EMSOC decided to organize the first Belgian Legal Design Jam on April 4th, 2014.
During this Jam we worked in collaboration with Microsoft on the Terms of Use and
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Sale of their Microsoft Online Store. The main idea was to think about different ways to
make the document more accessible and user-friendly. A second exercise was done in
collaboration with the popular Flemish children`s Ketnet website, operated by the
public service broadcaster. Here, we organized two co-design sessions with children
and parents. The aim of these sessions was to let children and their parents think about
‘alternative’ ways to present Ketnet Terms of Use in a way that better responds to their
life experiences and viewpoints.
In this deliverable we summarize the main results of the Legal Design Jam and the codesign sessions with children and parents. Both these exercises constituted concrete
efforts to increase the transparency of popular websites and above all to extract Best
Practices that could guide the development of more user-friendly and user-centric
ways of designing legal communication and to reflect on the lessons learnt throughout
these processes.
2
Empowering social media users to enforce their rights and respect their
obligations through increased transparency
‘Terms of Use’, which you have to agree to when you create a social network profile, are the traditional way of providing consumers with information so that they can make
“informed” decisions regarding a particular product or service. Research, however, shows that even when supplied with the appropriate information most users are still
unable to assess and process legal information such as contracts or Terms of service
correctly. This is partly because the language used in these texts (legalese) is complex
but also because of users` cognitive and contextual constraints (e.g. lack of time or
motivation). The fact that Terms of Use in SNS are usually not read nor fully
understood by users in social media platforms is, therefore, not surprising. What is
new, however, are the challenges that the very nature of social media pose to
transparency. Through the EMSOC project we attempted to look at these challenges
and proposed ways to deal with them:
•
•
•
Social media users are a heterogeneous audience comprising all layers of
society from very young children to the elderly. Conversely, Terms of Use are
drafted with a single, standard user in mind making them difficult to grasp
for a wide majority of the population.
Documents such as Terms of Use and privacy policies are intended for users,
but seem to be drafted by lawyers for lawyers. In order to enhance users’ trust but also to help users make really informed decisions, more userfriendly texts and formats are needed.
Information about the rules governing social media services is usually
provided when the user registers for the service and it is often made
available through links at the bottom of pages or quite hidden in the
navigation. Accessibility of such information is, thus, not always up to par.
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•
2.1
We need to start exploring more effective ways of presenting such
information. For instance, by providing intellectual property rights
information when it is really relevant to users (e.g. when uploading a picture
or a video).
Citizens have the right to know what their rights and obligations in social
media platforms are and this can only be achieved if the laws and rules
governing these services reflect users’ and consumers′ needs, expectations and values. This means that user-centric, dynamic and contextual ways of
providing legal and policy-related information to users are required. Avenues
worthwhile exploring include ‘Smart disclosure’, i.e. using big data to provide
users with personalized information as well as visualisation and information
design. Research is needed to explore the most meaningful ways to put these
concepts into practice and to explore the ethical and legal implications this
could have for providers as well as for users.
Challenges for transparency
Many laws require companies to inform users about the terms governing their
services. Nonetheless, research shows that they do not always employ user-friendly
mechanisms to distribute this information effectively. As a consequence, company
policy or legal documents, both offline or online, are rarely read or understood by
users (Wauters and Donoso, 2014).. This implies that a large amount of people are
agreeing to terms and conditions without knowing the content and possible
consequences of these contracts. The fast evolution of new technologies and the
Internet leads to new dynamics between users and technology, but also between
citizens and the legal contracts ruling these services. This has posed important
challenges to transparency. For instance, given the frequency with which people enrol
for new online services, download applications or buy online products, they are more
than ever being confronted with (online) legal and policy documents. These legal
documents can sometimes pose risks to users, for instance, in terms of data protection
and privacy. It is crucial, therefore, that users and consumers have a good
understanding of what these documents entail, i.e. understanding the rules that govern
the use of specific online services as well the implications of their online behaviour. In
order for this to happen, users should not only be able to easily access such documents,
but above all, they should be able to grasp them. Only then, will users and consumers
be in a position to assess if it is really worthwhile opening an account on X social media
service or if it is safe to buy X product on Y online shop.
In the specific case of social media services, the rules governing these platforms are
traditionally included in the ‘Terms of Use’, which users have to agree to upon registration, i.e. when they give their “informed” consent. Research, however, has shown that even when users are supplied with the appropriate information, most of
©EMSOC – IWT - Brussels Leuven Ghent - 2011 – Authors:
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them are still unable to process these legal texts correctly. This is partially due to
cognitive and contextual constraints, like lack of motivation to read the contract or lack
of time1. The use of legal jargon and difficult sentence structures (‘legalese’) add up to
the inherent complexity of legal documents. Indeed, already in 1963, Melinkoff found
that “the language of the law has the strong tendency to be 1) wordy, (2) unclear, (3) pompous, and (4) dull”.2 He also found that “the language of the law is ‘full of long
sentences, awkward constructions, and fuzzy-wuzzy words.’ The result is often nothing less than a failure of communication”.3
As legal texts are usually full of archaisms, redundancy and chaotic verb structures,
some advocate the use of plain language to facilitate their comprehension. Adler
(1991) for example discovered that the level of understanding of legal texts by people
with a non-legal background was much lower than what solicitors expected.4 Similarly,
a 2010 survey of the Canadian Plain Language Institute of British Columbia showed
that out of ten types of publications, legal publications were considerably perceived as
the most difficult to understand.5 Because of this, certain initiatives promoting the use
of plain language in legal texts have already been taken, for example the
implementation of the Plain Writing Act of 2010 in the US. In the EU, several European
directives state that the information regarding the processing of personal data should
be provided in an intelligible form, using clear and plain language.6 The plain language
EISENBERG Melvin A., “The Limits of Cognition and the Limits of Contract”, Stanford
Law Review, 47(2), 1995, 211-259, 213; JOLLS, Christine, SUNSTEIN, Cass and THALER,
Richard, “A Behavioral Approach to Law and Economics”, Stanford Law Review, 50(5),
1998, 1471-1550; KREPS, David, ‘Bounded Rationality’ in Newman (Ed.), The New
Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and the Law, Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke, 1998,
168-173; BAKOS, Yannis, MAROTTA-WURGLER, Florencia & TROSSEN, David R., “Does Anyone Read the Fine Print? Testing a Law and Economics Approach to Standard Form
Contracts”, CELS 2009 4th Annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies Paper, NYU Law and Economics Research Paper No. 09-40.
2 MELLINKOFF, David, “The Language of the Law, Little, Brown and Company”, Boston, 1963, 24.
3 Ibid., p. 27.
4 ADLER, Mark, “Bamboozling the Public”, New Law Journal, 26 July 1991, available at
http://www.clarity-international.net/downloads/Bam.pdf.
5 PLAIN LANGUAGE INSTITUTE OF BRITISH COLUMBIA, Critical Opinions: The Public’s View of Lawyers' Documents, 1993, Plain Language Institute Vancouver, 5-6.
6 See for instance, Council Directive (EC) 93/13 on unfair terms in consumer contracts,
1993, OJ L095/29 (Unfair Terms Directive); European Parliament and Council
Directive (EU) 2011/83 on consumer rights, amending Council Directive 93/13/EEC
and Directive 1999/44/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council and
1
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approach was tested on the general public by Trudeau in 2011. The study established
that the majority of respondents preferred plain language.7 Nevertheless, the use of
plain and simple language in legal texts has certain limitations since there is always the
risk of oversimplification resulting in a devaluation of the specific meaning of the legal
concept.8 This also implies that the mere use of plain language will not be sufficient to
solve the lack of transparency of legal documents such as the Terms of Use. Therefore,
focusing on innovative ways to present textual information to users is also necessary.
Presenting information digitally provides challenges but also opportunities which can
be explored. For instance, apart from making sure that legal complex documents are
easier to read (e.g. more user-friendly texts and layout), documents can also be
designed and visualised in such ways that they can be integrated into the graphic user
interface and be presented to users at times and places in the navigation structure
which relate better to the user`s normal online behaviour.9 Nowadays, the form and
design of legal information only plays a limited role in Regulation. However, the
presentation of Terms of Use or other legal documents can have a crucial impact on the
user’s decision-making process.10 Research has shown that design can enhance the
level of understanding of users.11 Furthermore, the way information is presented can
have an impact on the behaviour of users towards that information. 12 This is why it is
repealing Council Directive 85/577/EEC and Directive 97/7/EC of the European
Parliament and of the Council, 2011, OJ L304/64 (Consumer Rights Directive).
7 TRUDEAU, Christopher R., “The Public Speaks: An Empirical Study of Legal Communication”, 14 Scribes J. Leg. Writing 121 (2011-2012), 2011, Available at
http://ssrn.com/abstract=1843415.
8 BEN -­‐ SHAHAR, Omri and SCHNEIDER Carl, E. (2011), “The failure of mandated disclosure”, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Vol. 159, 713.
9 For example visual design techniques have been used in order to create textured
agreements. These techniques include for instance the use of bold key terms and
phrases, bullet points, catchy quotes or symbols. Interestingly, people were willing to
spend more time reading these textured agreements. KAY, Matthey and TERRY, Michael,
“Textured Agreements: Re-envisioning Electronic consent”, Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS), 2010, July 14-16.
10 HELBERGER, Natali, “Form Matters: Informing Consumers Effectively” (November 15, 2013), Amsterdam Law School Research Paper No. 2013-71. Available at SSRN:
http://ssrn.com/abstract=2354988.
11 KIM, Nancy, “The Duty to Draft Reasonably and Online Contracts”, in: DiMatteo, Larry
et al. (eds.) Commercial Contract Law: A Transatlantic Perspective, Cambridge
University Press, New York, 2013, 191.
12 JOHN, Leslie, ACQUISTI, Alessandro and LOEWENSTEIN, George, “The Best of Strangers: Context Dependent Willingness to Divulge Personal Information”, 2009, available at ©EMSOC – IWT - Brussels Leuven Ghent - 2011 – Authors:
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important to also pay attention to the way information is delivered to different types of
users rather than just attempting to simplify written texts.
3
Participatory
transparency
design:
An
empowering
methodology
to
increase
In this deliverable we summarize the main results of the Legal Design Jam and the codesign sessions carried out with children and parents in the framework of EMSOC.
Both these exercises constituted concrete efforts to increase the transparency of the
Terms of Use of popular websites by actively integrating relevant stakeholders and end
users into the design process. At the end of this report we suggest guidelines that can
accompany the development of more meaningful, user-friendly and user-centric
approaches towards designing legal communication in particular for more vulnerable
consumers/users such as young children. Throughout these exercises, we employed
Participatory Design as a guiding principle. Participatory Design is often defined as a
set of theories, practices and studies related to end-users as full participants in
activities leading to software and hardware computer products and computer-based
activities (Greenbaum et al, 1991; Schuler et al, 1993).
Participatory Design has urged us to consider ‘users’ as co-designers of their
technology and of the practices that may be reified in that technology. The field is
extraordinarily diverse and this diversity has not lent itself to a single theory or
paradigm of study or approach to practices (Muller, 2002). Participatory Design
originated in Scandinavia in the 1970s and 80s. This early Scandinavian work was
motivated by a Marxist commitment to democratically empower workers and foster
democracy in the workplace. Early work took the form of experiments conducted by
university researchers in alliances with organized labour. Subsequent work
supplemented the foundational democratic motivation with a need for combining
complex knowledge for realistic design problems (Spinuzzi, 2005).
Many researchers and practitioners in Participatory Design are still motivated in part
by a belief in the value of democracy, a value that can be seen in the strengthening of
disempowered groups, in the improvement of internal processes and in the
combination of diverse knowledge to make better services and products (Muller,
2002). On the other hand, Participatory Design has also achieved a status as a useful
‘commercial tool’ in some settings or a sort of ‘corporate mainstreaming’ Participatory Design (Iversen, 2010). Such a pragmatic approach to Participatory Design is
concerned with developing better products and increasing revenue by involving those
SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1430482 or
http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1430482.
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you design for. Involving potential users is believed to give you better insights, which
you could not have if they were not part of the process.
A more authentic Participatory Design vision goes beyond letting potential users
participate throughout the design process with the sole aim of making better products.
Under this less pragmatic conception, it is not the use of participatory methods that
makes particular work as being Participatory Design. Instead it is about when, how and
why these methods are used that renders the approach as being participatory.
Foremost, Participatory Design is about negotiating values realised through
participation. In this sense, people whose activities and experiences will ultimately be
affected most directly by a design outcome should have a substantive say in what that
outcome is (Iversen, 2010). We rely on Rokeach’s (Rokeach, 1973) notion of values as
something that a person or a group of persons consider(s) important in life.
4
The first Belgian Legal Design Jam
The EMSOC project organized the first Belgian Legal Design Jam on 4th April 2014. It
was hosted at the KU Leuven by the Interdisciplinary Centre for Law and ICT (ICRI) in
collaboration with Miscrosoft. The workshop was led by Stefania Passera, the creator
of the LDJ concept. During this Jam we worked on the Terms of Use and Sale from the
Microsoft Online Store, thinking of different ways to make the document more userfriendly. Five teams worked complementary, each of these concentrated on improving
a particular aspect of the document.
In a period of only 3 hours each team had to move from concept and paper sketches to
a digital mock-up of their proposed solution. All the teams succeeded in coming up
with concrete, fresh ideas.
4.1
Legal Design Jam definition and methodology
According to Passera (2012) “a Legal Design Jam (LDJ) brings together a group of motivated individuals from different fields (e.g. designers, lawyers, policy-makers,
coders, innovators, business people, etc.) and, together, give an extreme user-centric
makeover to a legal document. The idea is borrowed from hackathons and service
jams, and seeks to engage people to rethink and innovate the very concept of what a
legal document should be, look and feel”. The idea of the Legal Design jam has been inspired by the belief that citizens have not only the right to access legal information,
but this should above all be clear and well-communicated. In contrast, policies, licenses
and contracts are often boring, complex and inaccessible. Legal Design Jams attempt to
improve the current situation by exploring new ways of designing legal communication
which incorporate insights from information design and visualisation. An important
aspect of Legal Design jams are their focus on user experience and a modus operandi
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based on concrete scenarios of use. In practice, during a LDJ, participants will ideate
and prototype a new version of a (complex) legal document (e.g. Terms of Use or
privacy policies). This new version will go beyond the simplification of textual
language and will include creating visualisations and good layouts as well as rethinking
the structure of the document in terms of good storytelling.
4.2
Participants and procedure
The participants included students from the LLM Research Master in Law (KU Leuven
and University of Tilburg) as well as designers, coders and legal and user experience
researchers who acted as facilitators. The Microsoft Attorney, Nick Owers, writer of
the Terms of Use and Sale from the Microsoft Online Store, also joined the Jam. His
presence was particularly useful to provide the background about these Terms of Use
but also to directly answer the participants` questions about the document itself.
During the LDJ participants worked in five different groups which focused on the
following tasks:
- Team 1: Redesigning the layout and the structure of the text
- Team 2: Creating a user-friendly, visually enhanced summary
- Team 3: Visualization of the purchase process
- Team 4: Visualization of the return policy process
- Team 5: Creating a family of icons to make the meaning of the text more intuitive
Before the Jam each team received a pre-assignment which worked as a sensitising
strategy whose aim was twofold: 1) Make sure that all the participants had read and
understood the 13-pages document before the Jam. This was necessary in order to
ensure that all the participants attended the jam with a similar level of knowledge
about the document and to 2) maximize the effective working time during this rather
short three-hour session. Annex 1 includes the pre-assignments each team received.
4.3
Interaction among the participants
As it can be expected from any interdisciplinary group working together on the same
task, against time, collaboration can be very enriching. However, there is also the
possibility that conflicts arise, particularly because of the diverse backgrounds of the
team members, but also because the tasks each team was assigned were quite
challenging in themselves. As we could observe during the session, participants within
different groups employed similar strategies in order to deal with potential difficult
issues or conflict situations such as disagreements among team members on specific
issues. In general, when confronted with sensitive situations participants tried to solve
them in constructive ways by proposing ideas and asking the other team members for
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their opinion until they reached an agreement. It was also interesting to observe how
law students interacted with designers and tried to visualise difficult issues together
following a kind of “trial and error” method. In all the participating groups, the final
proposed solutions seemed to satisfy all group members and be the result of effective,
intensive, cooperative work.
4.4
The process of achieving a user-friendly “Purchase policy”
In the specific case of the team in charge of designing a user-friendly purchase policy,
the designer started the discussion by asking the other participants one question:
“Where do you think a Consumer would start with the whole return process?”. After
discussing potential answers to this question, the participants first separated the text
into chunks and tried to identify different steps for the consumer to take. As soon as
they started the discussion, they immediately decided to work with a poster and
started writing ideas on post-its in different colours which they stuck on the poster.
This, at first sight simple decision, denotes the willingness of the team members to
work together collaboratively. Indeed, a poster represents an attempt to include
everybody in the design process allowing all participants to share ideas in an open,
democratic way. The decision of working with post-its gives flexibility to the creative
process as it allows participants to change their mind and immediately be able to
incorporate new insights into the design by just moving or replacing post-its. After
moving post-its around constantly and through long discussions, they finally reach an
agreement. In parallel to these discussions, and mainly due to the short time to come
up with a digital mock up, the designer simultaneously draws a draft flow chart trying
to reflect the ideas represented in the poster. Whenever necessary, participants
addressed the Microsoft’s representative to ask him questions and clarify aspects which were not clear to the group (e.g. the difference between EDS, Services), this
allowed them to understand the text better, and to close certain discussions.
The designer’s first draft was displayed on the wall and participants were asked to provide their feedback by first looking at it from a distance and then afterwards give
suggestions for improvement. After exchanging ideas, the designer decided to draft a
totally new flow chart. The participants worked in a very structured way, namely by
taking the post-its of the poster according to the different steps the consumer has to
follow and then showing them to the designer one by one.
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Figure 1 designing a user-friendly “return policy”
In general, we could observe that in all the working groups there was a lot of
discussion, for instance, about which should be the first question that a customer
should get to see, i.e., how to present information in a way that is meaningful and
relevant to the consumes? In spite of these lively discussions, participants were always
polite and had a positive mind-set. They were also very committed to the task and they
made evident efforts to try to cover as many options as possible. In sum, we could
observe that in the different groups the designer and the participants with their legal
background, were thinking in different, but complementary ways, which resulted in an
interesting, lively and constructive interaction.
4.5
General results
4.5.1 Problematic issues identified
Even though all the groups focused on different tasks there were a number of
problematic issues identified and shared by all groups. Among these, the most pressing
ones according to the participants were the following:
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1. The text is too long (13 pages) and it contains too much information. They
assume a common person/customer will not be willing to read all that
information before acquiring a product or service. In particular, specific
sections of the contract were difficult to grasp even for this group of
Master Law students. For instance, many did not understand the
difference between the services or goods mentioned in the contract such
as “ESD, Services, Software”. There are also specific clauses which are not very clear. For instance, what happens when a service/product has been
opened/used/consumed? Are customers still able to return it within the
14 days period stipulated? Other comments referred specifically to the
use of sentences such as “to the extent permitted by law”. They assumed this is not very helpful for consumers, as it is difficult to understand what
sentences like this concretely mean. According to the participants, there
were a number of instances similar to these which made the text obscure
and difficult to understand for potential customers. Therefore, they
concluded that the textual aspect of the contract needed some serious
improvement. Participants also indicated that they would use plain
language in order to facilitate the contract comprehension. They also
referred to the use of icons and pictures to help achieve this goal.
2. In terms of layout, participants mentioned that they would make big
changes to the current structure of the text. The main issue being the fact
that information was too dispersed across the text so there was the need
to categorise information differently placing information that belongs
together under more meaningful categories/headings.
3. As regards accessibility of information, different issues were discussed.
For instance, in the specific case of “exceptions”, i.e. those cases where the return and refund policy does not apply, participants noted that these
were not easy to find. Another example was information on the “trial period offer” which, according to participants, should be given more attention as it is important for the consumers to be aware of this type of
information.
Discussing what type of information should be made more prominent
from a consumer`s point of view led participants to exchange ideas
regarding what information a particular consumer would actually find
most interesting or relevant. They also mentioned the fact that different
types of consumers may require different solutions, but in general, the
point was made that important pieces of information should be made
more prominent. This could be achieved, for instance, by:
 Layering the information. This means that instead of providing a
full contract at first sight, consumers would be provided with a
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summary of the most relevant information. This summary would
contain hyperlinks to direct users to specific sections of interest
within the contract.

Using keywords, but also capital or block letters would make the
text more readable, according to participants. Moreover, this
strategy would help users to find the most relevant information
quickly by facilitating the search for important information.
A few aspects of the documents were considered as not presenting major difficulties,
among these, participants liked the fact that the text was formulated in an active way,
i.e., putting the customer in a prominent position and addressing him/her as having the
possibility to make decisions by themselves: “You may withdraw”, “you must inform
us”. 4.6
Results by teams
4.6.1 Team “User-friendly summary”
This team was in charge of creating a user-friendly summary, i.e., an easy-access,
visually pleasant overview of the content of the Terms of Use. Users without a legal
background find it hard to read through a long legal document to find the information
that is relevant to them. With the help of a user-friendly summary a simpler overview
of the most important topics is provided so the readers can more easily find their
“way” through the clauses and navigate deeper into the document only when it is
meaningful or necessary to do it.
This team elaborated a visual user-friendly summary inspired by Microsoft’s tiles motif. In their proposal they suggest that every topic in the summary works as a link to
a relevant piece of text in the Terms of Use. Figures 1 and 2 show the paper prototype
and the finalized digital mock-up of this idea respectively.
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Figure 2. Paper prototype of the proposed user friendly summary
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Figure 3 Digital mock-up of the user-friendly summary
4.6.2 Team “Purchase policy”
The challenge of this team was to guide the users through the purchase process of
goods, software and services in the Microsoft Store. Depending of what is being
purchased, different “rules” apply. In order to inform customers well, these differences should be communicated in a simple and clear way. As a possible way of tackling this
issue, this team chose to develop a flowchart which summarises the actions customers
would normally go through when purchasing online products via the Microsoft Store.
As Figure 4 illustrates, the actions performed by customers during the step-by-step
purchase process are represented by the green tiles at the centre of the flowchart.
Green was chosen as a colour which traditionally represents actions which are
OK/allowed to be performed. Keeping this information in a central position also
responds to the need of making the most relevant information easily accessible to
(potential) consumers. Additionally, the yellow tiles represent the additional, but still
relevant information the customer needs to know in relation of each choice or action
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made during the purchase process. As part of the conceptual design, this team
envisioned that the flowchart would be better implemented as an interactive
visualisation, so that users can click on each tile to get, firstly, a plain language
explanation of what it means, and, eventually, at a later step access the original clause
of the Terms of Use in order to get the full information in all its detail. Layering makes
it possible for every single user to read only the amount of information they are
looking for, no more, no less. Figures 3 and 4 illustrate the post-it draft and the
finalized digital mock-up of this idea respectively.
Figure 4 Post-it draft of the flowchart of the purchase process
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Figure 5 Digital prototype of the purchase process workflow
4.6.3 Team “Return & refund policy”
But what happens if the purchase process doesn’t go completely smoothly, and the customer wants to return the product? One of the teams took up the challenge to
explain in a simple way what to do, and which rules to follow, in order for customers to
obtain a refund. Consumers are often worried that there is going to be some fine print
preventing them to return the product. Therefore, it is crucial that this type of
information is presented in a transparent, clear and simple way. By doing this not only
customer experience and service can be greatly improved, but also trust will be
enhanced. As figure 5 illustrates, the complex “return & refund policy” can be simplified in a few steps.
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Figure 6 Digital prototype of the return & refund policy scheme
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4.6.4 Teams “Layout” and “Icons”
The presentation of the original text of the Terms of Use also needs to be well designed
to avoid the “wall of text” first impression, which can easily scare readers away. The two remaining teams worked at a clearer, less cluttered layout, and at a system of
icons, which, by providing salient “visual anchors”, can make the text more transparent and memorable. Figure 6 displays the proposed layout and alternatives so that the icon
system can be integrated into the text.
Figure 7 Digital mock-up of the suggested Terms of Use layout and related icons
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4.7
Conclusions
Our main conclusion deriving from the Legal Design Jam is that transparency is crucial
for user-friendly legal communication. Throughout the exercise, different ways of
enhancing transparency were brought forward. Firstly, all teams agreed that
simplification of textual language is key for a better understanding. Thus, a plain
language explanation for each important topic could be useful. Besides this, lay-out and
length of the text can have an important impact on the level of understanding of
consumers. As information is often dispersed and most consumers only want to have
certain information, for example they specifically want to know how a product can be
returned. In this regard, adding different layers to the text makes it possible for
consumers to navigate deeper into the document only when it is meaningful or
necessary to do it. Other visualisations that were found particularly helpful were
providing visual anchors or icons, using different colours, a flowchart, etc. Another
lesson we learned is that the cooperation between people from different backgrounds
can lead to interesting debates and can push participants to think out of the box. As a
final observation, it is important to note that there are certain aspects we were not able
to tackle during one single jam but which could also be important to explore in the
future as these can present challenges to transparent legal communication. Examples
include the timing of the information provision, i.e., when should what information be
presented or finding the right balance between providing thorough and complete
information versus the use of plain language, i.e. exploring the risk of
oversimplification. Last, in spite of the attempts we have made to suggest more userfriendly ways of presenting these legal documents and policies, we lack the empirical
evidence to guarantee that these changes will be enough in order to engage consumers
and nudge them towards becoming better informed consumers able and willing to read
legal documents, such as Terms of Use or privacy policies.
5
Ketnet Co-Design Session with children
5.1.1 Participatory Design with children: an emergent field?
Within the area of Child Computer Interaction (CCI) children have participated in the
design of technology for over two decades using a variety of established methods (e.g.
Dindler et al, 2005; Druin et al, 2002; Scaife et al, 1999; Walsh et al, 2010). Generative
techniques such as ‘co-design’ are often used in Participatory Design with children. Sanders (2009) defines co-design as a specific instance of co-creation, referring to all
kinds of collective creativity with users and other stakeholders as it is applied across
the whole span of a design process. Co-design has been found to make it easier for
participants to reflect upon and express their knowledge, feelings and dreams than
when talking without any concrete reference materials. The basic principle behind codesign is to let people make designedly artefacts and tell a story about what they have
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made (Sleeswijk Visser, 2005). These methods typically involve children in dyads or
groups, rather than individually, reflecting a theoretical commitment to the notion that
meanings are socially and collectively produced (Buckingham, 2009).
During design activities, children’s values may be implicitly expressed as something they care about and find important. Values do not progress stepwise in one direction.
Rather they emerge, develop and ground recursively and dialogically over the course of
the design process (Iversen et al, 2010; Halloran, 2009). The way we work with values
in participatory design with children is centred on dialogue. Therefore, one of our core
tasks as researchers is to orchestrate this dialogue with and among children and to
make sure value conflicts are transcended and translated into meaningful design
concepts. Special attention should thereby be given to group dynamics that may impact
this dialogical process (Van Mechelen et al., 2014).
5.1.2
Beyond Representation: Interpreting Co-design Artefacts
Co-design artefacts are often regarded as a neutral means of accessing children’s perspectives. Hence, design researchers tend to limit themselves to a descriptive
analysis of co-design artefacts or rely exclusively on what participants say or write
about their creations. Co-design artefacts are, however, always ‘constructed’ and therefore do not give access to the ‘voices’ or even the ‘inner lives’ of participants in a
direct an unmediated way. Buckingham (2009) refers to this approach as ‘naïve empiricism’, arguing that data from creative research cannot be taken at face value: these data need to be analysed with special attention for its visual dimensions.
Besides this ‘celebration of representation’, there is a tendency to analyse co-design
artefacts solely in ‘computing terms’, that is, on a functional or attribute level (e.g., Guha et al, 2013; Walsh et al, 2010). Many design researchers fail to recognise that the
values that are implicitly expressed in co-design artefacts are often more interesting
than the design ideas as products per se. Focusing on the underlying motives behind
design choices can reveal why specific design attributes are important and how they
serve children’s values. Climbing up the ‘value ladder’ enables researchers to reach out into the ‘opportunity spaces’, rather than being limited to problem solving right from the onset. Moreover, making values explicit opens up possibilities for a re-alignment of
values between adults and children, as well as across groups of children working
together (Halloran et al, 2009).
Since values are dynamic in nature, we cannot simply identify them, and design for
them. Participatory Design, in its authentic sense, aims at reformulating values and
transcending possible value conflicts (Iversen et al, 2010). These ’negotiated values’, in turn, provide researchers with a well-grounded starting point for (re)design (Van
Mechelen & Derboven, 2014).
5.1.3 Co-design as a tool for child-friendly Terms of Use
Terms of Use, the contract users have to agree to when they create online accounts,
social media profiles or when downloading applications, are the traditional way of
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providing users with information so they can make ‘informed’ decisions regarding these services. Agreeing to the terms of use of online services establishes certain rights
and obligations that both users and the online service provider have to respect.
Therefore, the way users behave on these online services can have legal consequences.
A well-known problem with Terms of Use is that people, let alone children, do not read
them carefully or do not fully understand its content, nor its consequences. For these
reasons, there is a strong need for user-friendlier Terms of Use which are transparent,
unambiguous and easy to understand (Wauters, Donoso and Lievens 2014).
To tackle this problem for Ketnet, a Participatory Design approach was employed as a
way of giving children a ‘voice’ in redesigning their Terms of Use. Since technology can
no longer be considered value-neutral (Manders-Huits, 2011), we need to take
children’s ideas and underlying values into account to detect and transcend potential value conflicts between children, parents and, in this case, also Ketnet. This way, we
can make the Terms of Use more meaningful and child-friendly. During co-design
activities, children exchanged ideas and visualised ‘alternative’ Terms of Use that better resonate with their life-world and viewpoints. Throughout this process, children
could implicitly express their values as something they care about and find important
with regard to Ketnet’s Terms of Use.
5.2
Towards child-friendly terms of use
5.2.1 Co-design jam with children and parents
Over a period of two weeks, two co-design jams were organised at the Centre for User
Experience Research (CUO, iMinds – KU Leuven). 12 children aged 9 to 11 and one of
their parents participated in our study which consisted of two co-design sessions with
6 children and 6 parents (the mother or the father of each of the participating
children). In both co-design sessions, after a short introduction, children and parents
were split up into two groups which worked separately and in parallel on one
assignment. When both groups finished their task they presented their proposal to
each other and had a discussion about the ideas presented. According to existing
literature this is probably the most optimal group size (Heary et al, 2002). Children and
their parents were recruited via the Flemish broadcaster Ketnet and were not familiar
to each other, resulting in a ‘heterogeneous’ group of participants representing different parts of Flanders, Belgium. Many authors suggest that heterogeneous groups
are more capable of coming up with diverse ideas (e.g. Franz, 2012; Sawyer, 2008).
The design challenge for both co-design jams was: “How can we make the Terms of Use of Ketnet.be more child-friendly so that they could better resonate with children`s lives
and at the same time be more meaningful to children and their parents.
* (footnote) Ketnet’s television channel aims at Flemish -12 year olds by offering them
a diversity of children programs. The site Ketnet.be provides children with a funny,
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safe and interactive online offer. Ketnet goes beyond TV or computer screens as well.
For instance during the school holidays, Ketnet and its wrappers organise external
events to be present amidst the world of their viewers: the children. Ketnet aims at
stimulating children to be creative, to use their imagination and to discover and
understand society at their own pace. This is the reason why children play a very
important, active role on Ketnet.
5.2.2
General procedure
We used a blend of two different approaches to co-design: ‘Cooperative Inquiry’ (Druin, 2002; Guha et al, 2013) and the ‘Context mapping’ procedure as described by (Sleeswijk Visser et al, 2005). The goal of Cooperative Inquiry is to support
intergenerational design teams in understanding what children as technology users do
now, what they might do tomorrow and what they envision for the future (Druin,
2002). Context mapping on the other hand is a systematic approach to elicit contextual
information of product use. Generative techniques are often used in Context mapping.
The basic principle thereby is to let people make designedly artefacts and tell a story
about what they have made (Sanders, 2000; Sleeswijk Visser, 2005).
Three researchers were involved in each co-design jam: two facilitators, one for the
children and one for the parents, and a “fly-on-the-wall” observer making notes. In addition to these notes, the presentation and discussion at the end of each co-design
jam were recorded on video and a report was written immediately afterwards. Each
session lasted for about three and a half hours and typically consisted of the following
stages:
 Sensitising (one week in advance)
 Introduction and warm-up (30 minutes)
 Ideation and selection (45 minutes)
 Break (45 minutes)
 Elaboration through making (45 minutes)
 Presentation and discussion (45 minutes)
5.2.3 Sensitizing
By means of individual assignments for both children and parents we triggered
reflection in a playful and creative way before the actual co-design jam. Approximately
one week ahead of each session, we introduced the assignment via e-mail. Participants
were asked to map activities they did together with their child/parent during the past
week on a continuum ranging from ‘not so fun’ to ‘super fun’. They could either write it down or draw the activity on the continuum (see figure 8). Through this ‘sensitising activity’, children and parents were better able to access their experiences and underlying values regarding the design challenge. Besides triggering reflection, the
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sensitising assignment was also used as an icebreaker at the start of the co-design jam
since none of the participants had met each other before. Therefore, participants were
supposed to bring their completed assignments to the session, where they served to
initiate the dialogue among the participants. For more detailed information on
sensitising we refer to Sleeswijk Visser et al (2005).
Figure 8 Sensitising material: Timeline family activities
5.2.4 Introduction and warm up
The co-design jams took place in the Design room (i.e. a big open space that can be
used and rearranged for different purposes) at the Centre for User Experience
Research (CUO, iMinds – KU Leuven). First, one of the researchers introduced the
design challenge and the goals of the day. He/she explained that Ketnet is interested to
know more about children’s and parents’ ideas on how to make their website a safe environment for children. What kind of tips would they give to other children about
what is allowed and what not on Ketnet.be? What kind of behaviour do they expect on
the website? We pointed out that Ketnet was interested in ideas on how parents could
foster children to actually apply these tips.
Next, we divided children and parents in two teams and each team moved to a different
room so that they could work on their assignment without being distracted by the
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other team. The researcher allocated to a group made sure the children/parents felt at
ease before continuing. He/she asked questions such as ‘How many children do you have and of what age?’, ‘Do you have a profile on Ketnet.be, and if so, what do you use it
for?’, ‘Where do you go to school? Do you like going there?’ etc. As part of this warm up, the facilitator discussed the sensitising assignments for another 10 to 15 minutes.
During these discussions, children implicitly expressed their underlying values
concerning (fun) activities with their parents.
Finally, the researcher explained the ‘rules of the game’ for the co-design jam. These
were by no means hard but rather soft rules such as ‘listen to each other’, ‘there are no
bad ideas’ and ‘you may walk around but stick to your team’. 5.2.5 Ideation and selection
As a tool for ideation we developed three ‘extreme characters’ (Jansen et al, 2013). A familiar problem with brainstorming is that, generally speaking, participants have a
hard time thinking beyond the familiar (Bowen, 2009). Therefore, we prepared three
sheets presenting humorous and somewhat extreme child characters in their
bedrooms: one bully with a catapult who likes to play violent games, one nerdy looking
kid with an iPod interested in archaeology and a big fan of Star wars and, finally, one
girl whose favourite colour is pink and who loves horse riding (See figure 9). In
addition to these ‘extreme characters’ we provided a list of activities these children might want to do online (i.e., on the Ketnet website). The activities include among
others: liking something, uploading photos and videos, posting a comment, modifying
your profile, adding friends, updating your status, etc. Extreme characters combined
with scenarios or, in this case, activities have shown to be a powerful tool for ideation
(Jansen et al, 2013).
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Figure 9. One of the three child characters used during the Jam
Both children and parents were asked to come up with tips for these fictitious
characters. We encouraged children to brainstorm for tips by reminding them that they
could express their ideas freely, since there were no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ ideas (see figure 10). Also, we encouraged them to build on the ideas of others in the group and to go for
as much diverse ideas as possible. Each team was divided in three duos and each duo
had approximately five minutes to come up with tips for one of the ‘extreme characters’. All tips were written down on post-its. After approximately five minutes,
each duo received a new sheet with another character until each duo had worked with
all three character sheets.
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Figure 10. Children working in groups, each group discussing a character.
Next, we asked the team to group all similar ideas across the different character sheets
together. Each team member could then vote for his or her favourite ideas by means of
three little stickers (i.e., sticky dot voting) (Gray, 2010). Only one vote could be given to
a tip they themselves had come up with. The 10 most popular tips were taken to the
next stage for further development.
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5.2.6 Break
We provided quite a long break of 45 minutes since 9- to 10-year-olds’ attention span is rather limited. Participants could grab a sandwich and have a drink, and children
could play outside if they wanted to.
5.2.7 Elaboration through making
In this phase, each team was asked to elaborate on the selected tips by visualising their
top ten on a big sheet of paper. Each team had creative material at their disposal such
as coloured markers, scissors, tape, coloured paper and a big sheet of A1 paper. Both
teams had about 45 minutes to visualise their top ten tips. They were free to choose
how to approach this task (e.g. by drawing the tips, designing an interface for the tips,
illustrating the tips with concrete examples, etc.) (See figure 11). The only thing they
had to keep in mind is that the visualisation will be used to present their tips to the
other group (i.e., the team of parents or children) and in front of a camera.
Figure 101. Parents visualising their top-10 tips
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5.2.8 Presentation and discussion
In approximately five minutes, the teams prepared a presentation about their top ten
tips. While one team presented their tips, the other team (i.e., the team of children or
parents) functioned as a jury. After the presentation, the jury could ask critical
questions. We stressed that the jury should focus on the content rather than on the
form of the presentation. The facilitator moderated this dialogue between jury and
presenting team and asked some additional open-ended questions inspired by UX
laddering as described by Zaman et al (2010). Thereby, the deep reasons and values
behind teams’ choices were revealed. Questions included among others: ‘Can you give a concrete example of how and when a child should apply this tip?’, ‘Why is this tip so important for you?’, ‘How can parents and Ketnet help children to get to know these tips?’, ‘Why/why not?’ etc. Presentation and discussion took about 20 minutes per team. After each team presented and discussed their visualisation, a short wrap-up
followed and the session ended. Before leaving, each child and his/her parent received
a Ketnet goodie bag and two cinema tickets.
6
Analysis and results
We qualitatively analysed the data without using pre-set expectations. The raw data
used for analysis consists of various elements from the co-design jams: observation
notes, reports written after the sessions, visualisations, video footage and verbatim
transcripts from the presentations and discussions. The following structure was
applied for data analysis:
 Transcribing and coding the presentations recorded on video.
 Contextualising the tips of each team with all the sessions’ materials.
 High-level expert review of Ketnet’s Terms of Use.
 Classifying Ketnet’s Terms of Use and the tips from children and parents in
three main categories of risks following the EU Kids Online model for the
classification of online risks (3C`s) (Livingstone et al., 2011) (See figure 12).
This model classifies online risks into three main categories:
o Content: child as receiver (of mass produced contents)
o Contact: child as participant (in (adult-initiated activity)
o Conduct: child as actor (perpetrator / victim in peer-to-peer exchange)
 Further subdividing the tips of each main category into five subcategories:
‘aggressive’, ‘sexual’, ‘values’, ‘commercial’ and ‘other’. This last category was added by the researchers analysing the data as some of the risks mentioned by
either the children, their parents or in the Ketnet website did not fit the 3C`s
model.
 Comparative analysis to show relations and differences in the views (and
underlying values) of Ketnet, parents and children.
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
Summarising results and formulating a well-founded advice for Ketnet.
Figure 112. EU Kids Online classification of risks relating to children`s internet use (exemplars only)
6.1
High-level expert review of Ketnet’s Terms of Use
Terms of Use, the contract which users have to agree to when they create online
accounts, social media profiles or when downloading applications, are the traditional
way of providing users with information so that they can make “informed” decisions regarding these services. Agreeing to the terms of use of an online service establishes
certain rights and obligations that both users and the online service provider have to
respect. Therefore, the way users behave on the website can have legal consequences.
In the case of Ketnet the “Terms of Use” (Gebruiksvoorwaarden) are divided into two subsections, namely “Tips” and the actual “Terms of Use”. The “Tips” section does not only contain information on the house rules (e.g. “don`t publish personal information about others”) but also recommendations on how to behave safely on the internet in
general (e.g. “Don`t believe everything you see or hear online”).
When a child creates a Ketnet profile known as a Ketprofile (Ketprofiel) they must
provide their parent`s e-mail address so that an e-mail is sent to their parents
informing them that their child has created a profile on the website and explaining to
them what the site is about and how it works. Without providing a parent`s e-mail no
Ketprofile can be created. In order for parents to grant parental consent they must read
and accept the Terms of Use as well as the privacy disclaimer governing the site (See
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Figure 13). Without ticking the box that says “I agree with the Terms of use and the privacy disclaimer’ no Ketnet account can be created. This step is probably parents’ and children`s first encounter with the Ketnet Terms of Use. There is no guarantee,
however, that parents (and their children) will actually read the Terms before ticking
the box that says that they agree with them.
Figure 123. Parental consent requires agreeing with the Terms of Use and the privacy disclaimer
The Terms of Use are also accessible via a hyperlink placed at the bottom of each
Ketnet page but they are not prominently placed on the website, so finding them may
be difficult especially as some scrolling is required. Scrolling is a feature that especially
younger children usually find difficult (Nielsen, 2010).
The current version of the terms of use contains two separate sections, one named
“Tips” and one named “Terms of Use”. As the name indicates the Tips section provides pieces of advice for children on how to behave safely on the internet. It describes what
users are allowed to do on the website and what they are not (e.g. “Do not pose naked in front of the webcam”). It also provides tips regarding a responsible and safe use of the website (e.g. “Never talk to people you do not know in the real world”). The information
is presented through 26 bullet points, which is quite long, especially considering the
audience these tips are written for, i.e. young children and their parents. These 26
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bullet points are not grouped in any meaningful way what makes their comprehension
even more difficult. Moreover, they refer to a wide range of very specific allowed and
prohibited behaviours on this specific website such as “Don`t send long chain letters”
but, at the same time, they also refer to netiquette rules which apply to safe and
responsible internet behaviour in general (e.g. “behave in the online world as you would
in the offline world”). In the last bullet points users are warned that if they don`t follow
“these rules of the game, KETNET can decide to terminate their Ketprofile”
The subsection called “Terms of use” (Gebruiksvoorwaarden) contains 12 bullet points
which explain in a formal legal tone the rights and obligations of children using the
Ketnet website. The first bullet points deal with issues related to copyright law and
portrait rights. Similar to the first subsection, it describes what users are not allowed
to do (e.g. “Do not post any copyright protected material”). Additionally it mentions what users should do in order to be compliant with copyright law or portrait rights
(e.g. “Ask consent of the owner of the copyright before posting music of videos”). Besides this, there are bullet points mentioning the KETNET privacy policy, the terms of use of
other websites and a topic seemingly out of place related to viruses (e.g. “ Any files that
you send to KETNET should be virus free”). This subsection also contains a series of exoneration clauses related to both infringements of users of the website (e.g. “KETNET
cannot be held liable by any third party in case users do not abide by copyright law or
portrait rights”) as well as technical difficulties (e.g. “KETNET is not responsible for
technical problems such as malfunctions or interruptions”). Thus it can be said that these 12 bullet points contain a rather broad range of legal issues, not all of them grouped in
a meaningful way. Furthermore, the language used in this subsection is rather difficult
and not really suited for young children, as they might not be able to grasp the
meaning, let alone the legal implications, of terms like “liability”, “copyright” or “privacy”. Users are warned that if they do not respect these Terms of use, their
profiles might be terminated.
Lastly, the Terms contain a number of recommendations of a preventive and coping
character. For instance, in the case of preventive measures the Terms provide tips
such as the following: “Keep your password safe”, “First discuss with your parents, if you want to call someone you met online” or “Be careful when you use the webcam”. In the
case of coping, some examples include: “Let your parents and Ketnet know about what
you do or experience on the website”, “Confide in a person you trust”, or “If something happens to you on the Ketnet website you can communicate this to the Ketnet editorial
staff”. Ketnet Terms of Use also offer information about points of contact where
children could report unpleasant or problematic situations they may have encountered
on the website, including the Belgian Safer Internet Centre. Finally, Ketnet warns its
users that they are not responsible for the unintended consequences related to the use
of the Ketnet-site.
©EMSOC – IWT - Brussels Leuven Ghent - 2011 – Authors:
36
6.2
Classification of online risks following the EU Kids Online 3C`s model
After the expert review of the Ketnet terms of use, it was evident that much of the
content of the Terms of Use related to the prevention and coping of online risks.
Therefore, we attempted to classify Ketnet’s Terms of Use and the tips from children and parents according to the EU Kids Online model for the classification of online risks
(3C`s) proposed by Livingstone et al. (2011) (See figure 12). This model classifies
online risks into three main categories:
o Content: Here the child is positioned as recipient of mass produced
content
o Contact: The child is viewed as participant in adult-initiated activities, if
unwillingly
o Conduct: Here the child is perceived as having an active role either as
perpetrator or as victim in peer-to-peer exchanges (i.e. child as actor)
Each of these categories is further subdivided into four subcategories, namely:
‘aggressive’, ‘sexual’, ‘values’ and ‘commercial’. For the sake of our analysis we added
the category ‘other’ because some of the tips mentioned by either the children, their parents or the Ketnet website did not properly fit any of the risk subcategories
proposed by the EU Kids Online model (e.g. “Play outdoor more often; there is more out
there than just the internet”). In some cases, it was necessary to classify the same tip
under different risk cells, for instance, in the case of children`s tip “ Don`t lie about your
age when signing up for an SNS” was associated to both exposure to potentially
inappropriate content (e.g. adult content) as well as the risk of being contacted by
(adult) strangers. An important conclusion from our analysis is that the same online
behaviour can be associated to several areas of online risks. In our analysis we tried to
focus on the children`s and parents` views as expressed during the sessions. Therefore,
in a few cases the same (or very similar behaviour) is categorised differently by
parents and by children as they do not necessarily perceive the same actions as leading
to the same potential online risks (See tables 1 and 2).
6.2.1 Classifying online risks: Children vs. parents` perspectives
When categorising the tips proposed by children we observe that most of them fall into
the category “conduct”, i.e. the child as actor either as victim or perpetrator. We also observe that within this category children tend to focus on aggressive and valuerelated types of behaviour. In terms of aggressive conduct, they mainly warn other
children to behave nicely towards others (“don’t be naughty or negative towards others”; “don`t use dirty language, for instance in an email where others can see it”). They
also recommend children not to cyberbully (“don't cyberbully because some children
don't like it and they might commit suicide”); and not to hack someone else`s profile (e.g.
Don`t hack someone`s profile, e.g. erasing their games or memory).
©EMSOC – IWT - Brussels Leuven Ghent - 2011 – Authors:
37
General
Aggressive
Content
(child as receiver (of
mass production)
 Don`t lie about your
age when signing
up for an SNS

Be careful with
viruses

Contact
(adult-initiated activity);
child as participant
 Don`t lie about your age
when signing up for an
SNS
 Don’t give your address
 Only add people you
know in real life as SNS
friends.
 Don’t put private content on the Ketnet
website such as your
bank
account
or
address
Conduct
(child as actor)
Perpetrator/victim
 Think first, act later, e.g.
when adding a new friend
 Think before you post
pictures on your profile
 Don’t put private content on the Ketnet website such as
your bank account or address

Don’t play violent games, e.g. one in
which you have to
kill opponents





Sexual

Values






Commercial

Watch
out
for

Don’t add people you 
©EMSOC – IWT - Brussels Leuven Ghent - 2011 – Authors:
Don’t use dirty words; don’t offend others
Don’t be naughty or negative
towards others
Don’t use dirty language, e.g. in an email or where others
can see it
Don’t cyberbully because some children don’t like it and they might commit
suicide
Don’t hack someone’s profile, e.g. erasing his/her games or
memory
Be aware that some people
might want to steal your
(online) identity
Don’t put private content on the Ketnet website, such as
naked pictures
Think before you post
pictures in your profile, e.g. a
selfie in bikini
Use your profile well, i.e. be
honest
Be a good loser, e.g. when
playing an online game
Don’t upload pictures of your friends if they don’t want you to
Don’t brag, e.g. when you’re the best gamer
Always be honest on the
Ketnet website
Warn your parents when you
38
phishing practices
don’t know; it might be an older man phishing
for your bank account
Other
want to buy a song online



Ask
your
parents
for
permission when signing up
for an SNS
Don’t sit in front of your computer the whole day
Play outdoor more often;
there is more out there than
just the internet
Table 1 Classification of risks according to the children`s perspective
In the category conduct/values, children advise others to behave positively online (e.g.
“always be honest on the Ketnet website”, “be a good loser when playing an online game” or “don't brag that you are the best gamer”). Within this category, children also refer to
privacy-related concerns as well as privacy-responsible behaviour (e.g. “Think before
you post pictures on your profile”, “don`t upload pictures of your friends if they don`t want you to”). The privacy-related concerns (e.g. don`t post naked pictures) usually appear
accompanied by the “think before you post” discourse which has traditionally been
associated to the protection of someone`s (online) reputation. Even though children
refer to a few examples which could be considered as sexual in nature (e.g. “ don`t post
naked pictures”; “Think before you post pictures on your profile, e.g. a selfie in bikini”),
the analysis of children`s quotes seems to indicate that children`s main concern relate
to reputational issues, for instance the fear of particular types of content being
found/seen by people for whom this content was not meant to be shared with. The fear
of being contacted by strangers with sexual intentions (e.g. grooming) was not
explicitly mentioned by any of the children during the co-design session, although
other types of contact risks by (adult) strangers were implicit such as “Only add people you know in real life as SNS friends”. Of course, we cannot discharge the possibility of
children being inhibited by their parents or the researchers` presence which may have
prevented them from talking about more sensitive issues such as sexuality. It is also
possible, however, that because of their young age they simply do not perceive sexual
risks (by strangers) as a real threat.
Other concerns/risks expressed by children but which are not mentioned too often
refer to commercial conduct (e.g. “warn your parents when you want to buy a song online”), age-appropriate use of the internet (e.g. ask for permission when signing up for
a SNS”) and avoiding excessive internet use (e.g. Don’t sit in front of the computer the
whole day”, “play outdoor more often, there is more out there than just the internet”). The second most popular category of risks that children referred to are contact-related
risks. Within this category children mainly warn other children not to give away
©EMSOC – IWT - Brussels Leuven Ghent - 2011 – Authors:
39
“contact” information (e.g. “don`t give out your address” or “Don’t put private content on the Ketnet website such as your bank account and address”) but also not to add people
they do not know to their profiles (e.g. “only add people you know in real life as SNS
friends”). When it comes to commercial contact types of risks, it is interesting to observe that few children seem to be aware of them. In one case, one child referred to
the case of phishing (“Don’t add people you don’t know; it might be an older man
phishing for your bank account”) which would typically be a risk an adult would run
rather than a child. This probably indicates that some parents talk about these types of
online risks at home and this is why some children might be aware of them. It is
important to stress, though, that only one out of 12 children referred to this type of
risk.
Last, the type of risks children refer to least often are content-related risks. Within
these, children mention violent video games (“Don’t play violent games, e.g. one in
which you have to kill opponents”), but also being confronted with viruses. Children also
warn other children that they should not lie about their age when signing up for socialnetworking sites (SNS). We interpreted this warning as belonging to the category
general content as signing up to websites as an older person may allow children to get
in touch with content which may be inappropriate for their age. Nevertheless, “ageappropriateness” can also refer to contact-related types of risk because signing up as
an older person would allow children to be potentially contacted by adult strangers.
From the analysis of children`s tips it seems relevant to make a distinction between
“contact” information such as address, phone number, e-mail address, etc. (i.e.
information that would allow children to be potentially contacted by
‘inappropriate/dangerous” people such as strangers) and “private” information, i.e. information/things children do not wish to share with everybody, but rather with a
select group of people such as close friends, same gender classmates or other people
they may trust (e.g. pictures in bikini).
In the case of parents, it is interesting to observe that their tips target different types of
potential online risks by children. As opposed to children who give emphasis to
conduct-type of risks, i.e. giving emphasis to an active role of the child, parents display
a more protective type of behaviour by suggesting tips to children which would help
them “protect” themselves from risky adult-initiated activities (e.g. “Block adults with bad intentions in a chat environment”) as well as from potentially inappropriate content
(e.g. “Avoid child inappropriate content”). Not surprisingly, parents seem to view their children mainly as potential “victims” rather than as active participants of potential peer-to-peer online risks (See Table 2). Parents also seem more aware of potential
commercial risks. Indeed, they provide several tips such as “If you have to pay for a certain service/game on the website, always ask your parents’ permission”. Even though, most parental tips concentrate on contact and content risks, parents also gave
children some tips as regards their online conduct. These mainly focused on preventing
©EMSOC – IWT - Brussels Leuven Ghent - 2011 – Authors:
40
cyberbullying (e.g. “Do not approve of or like bullying action”), respecting other people`s privacy (e.g. “Don’t post pictures of others without their permission”) and protecting
children`s online reputation (e.g. “Do not post naked pictures”). The latter tip was also
classified as a sexual/contact type of risk as posting naked pictures seemed to be seen
by parents as both a potential risk for children to be contacted by adults with “bad intentions”, but also a risk to their child`s reputation (e.g. sexting). Aggressive
Content
(child as receiver (of
mass production))
 Avoid
child
inappropriate content
Sexual

Avoid
child
inappropriate content
Values

Avoid
child
inappropriate content
Contact
(adult-initiated activity);
child as participant
 Block adults with bad
intentions in a chat
environment
 Only add people that
you know as friends
 Block adults with bad
intentions in a chat
environment
 Only add people that
you know as friends
 Only use your webcam
in the presence of your
parents
 Do not post naked
pictures
 Only add people that
you know as friends
Conduct
(child as actor)
Perpetrator/victim
 Do not cyberbully
 Do not approve of or like
bullying actions
 Do not curse on the
Ketnet website
 Do not post naked
pictures



Commercial



Do not post nor “like” negative messages
Whenever
posting
pictures or videos online,
think carefully about what
you want to post
Don’t post pictures of others
without
their
permission
Whenever you want
to participate in an
online contest, first
discuss this with your
parents
Provide neutral and
commercial-free
information
about
child-appropriate
topics
If you have to pay for
a
certain
service/game on the
website, always ask
your parents’ ©EMSOC – IWT - Brussels Leuven Ghent - 2011 – Authors:
41
Other
permission

Do not post personal
information like your
address,
telephone
number,
email
address, bank account
number, etc.

Avoid excessive Internet
use
Table 2 Classification of risks according to the parents` perspective
6.2.2 Classification of risks: Ketnet`s perspective
As opposed to the classification of risks resulting from the analysis of the co-design
sessions with parents and children, the classification of tips proposed for the Ketnet
website is solely based on the information contained on the Terms of Use of the
website and, therefore, it lacks contextual information to interpret if certain tip should
be classified under a specific single category of risk or under several ones (See Table
3). Therefore, we decided to interpret every tip as broadly as possible and we put them
under all the categories where they seemed to fit best. For instance, “Don`t give out personal information” was categorized under contact risks as a potential sexual risk
(e.g. grooming), but also as a commercial (e.g. targeted advertising) and value-related
risk (e.g. by sharing personal information you may compromise your privacy).
Aggressive
Content
(child as receiver
(of
mass
production))
 self-harming
content
is
forbidden
Contact
(adult-initiated
activity);
child
as
participant
 talking to strangers
is forbidden
Conduct
(child as actor)
Perpetrator/victim










Sexual


Don`t
give
out
personal
information
Don`t talk to people
©EMSOC – IWT - Brussels Leuven Ghent - 2011 – Authors:


Don`t make threats to others
Don`t incite violence in the “real world”
Don`t
promote
selfharming behaviour
Don`t promote eating- disorder
behaviour
Promoting drugs use is prohibited
Bullying is forbidden
Stalking is forbidden (repeated
friendship requests)
Hacking is forbidden
Make sure you don`t hurt or make
other people feel uncomfortable
Everyone is unique, don’t insult/discriminate on the basis of
gender/origin/disabilities
Don`t pose naked in front of a
webcam
Don`t upload images where nudity
appears
42





Values

self-harming
content
is
prohibited


that you don`t know
in real life
Grooming
identity theft or
hacking
are
prohibited
Don’t meet (nor get in
touch)
with
people that you
don’t know in real life
Don`t
pose
naked in front of a
webcam
Only add friends
that you know
Don`t
give
out
personal
information
Only add friends
that you know




Don`t divulge erotic messages
Don`t give out personal information
Don`t talk to people that you don`t
know in real life
Only accept friendship requests
from people that you know















Commercial


Be honest when you play online
games and in the contests
where you participate
Never pretend to be someone
else
behave online as you would
offline
Don`t
publish
personal
information about others
Think
before
you
post
something online
Be polite
Respect everybody
Hacking is forbidden (and
penalized)
Don`t post pictures/videos of
people unless you`ve asked
them for permission to do it
Don’t post pictures or videos of yourself without thinking
Don’t start a chain letter
Use a real picture of yourself
Behave like you would do in the
offline world
Ask permission before you tag
someone
Don’t post any copyrightprotected material (e.g. music)
Don`t
give
out
personal
information
Only add friends
that you know
Other
©EMSOC – IWT - Brussels Leuven Ghent - 2011 – Authors:

All the material that you post
43
should be virus-free, should not
have any technical problem and
should not damage any computers
Table 3 Classification of risks according to the service provider`s perspective
In general, the current version of the Terms of use give particular attention to conduct
risks. Indeed, the Tips section (within the Terms of use) are a long list of prohibited
behaviours on the site (e.g. “Don`t upload images where nudity appears”, “Don`t divulge erotic messages”, “Don`t give out personal information”) plus a number of a number of general suggestions on how to keep safe online (e.g. Don`t talk to people that
you don`t know in real life”, Think before you post something online”). Some of the tips
go beyond e-safety and refer to general socially expected (online) behaviour (e.g. “Be polite”, “respect everybody”). As previously explained in section 6.1, apart from esafety tips the Terms of Use contain a subsection which focuses on legal issues. This
specific sub-section of the Terms contains 12 bullet points which mainly refer to
copyright issues and potential consequences of law infringement on the site.
6.3
Conclusions of the analysis
When comparing the current version of the Ketnet website Terms of Use with the
views expressed by parents and children during the co-design sessions we can observe
that even though they differ from what the service provider currently offers on the
website, we can still recognize interesting and complementary elements which can
help us elaborate Terms of Use for online service platforms which can be more
meaningful and engaging for children. From the tips elaborated by children one of the
main conclusions is that they recognize themselves as active users of the platform. As
such, they feel the need to teach other children to behave responsibly on the website.
From here we can conclude that new generations of Terms of use should find ways of
successfully teaching and guiding children to behave responsibly on the online
platforms they employ. This could be achieved by, among others, providing concrete
examples of behaviours users of the platform (do not) approve of. Parents, on their
turn, put the emphasis on protecting their children from third-party (e.g. commercial
content) and adult threats (e.g. grooming). They somehow seem to have a view of
children as vulnerable individuals, not yet fully aware of the dangers that the internet
offers and, therefore, also not fully capable of coping on their own with these risks.
They expect, therefore, that Ketnet not only provides tools to educate children
regarding online risks and how to best tackle them, but they also expect the service
provider to offer a platform which is extremely safe by design. This is reflected in the
“protective/preventive” character of the tips they devised, but also in the general design recommendations they came up with, for instance, that the website should offer
differentiated access to sections and functionalities depending on the age of children,
or offering additional safety features on chat or other communication features present
on websites (e.g. monitoring features on chat so that no adults “with bad intentions”
©EMSOC – IWT - Brussels Leuven Ghent - 2011 – Authors:
44
can interact with children). It is also interesting to observe that parents expect media
literacy and, in particular, e-safety information to be embedded throughout the whole
website. According to them this would be useful to increase its effectiveness, but also
to ensure a real positive impact on children`s behaviour. According to them this could
be achieved by, for instance, providing contextual e-safety tips or reminding children of
the “rules of the game” at relevant times rather than keeping this information in
specific sections of the website such as the Terms of Use. According to parents, keeping
this information only on dedicated sections of the website increases the risk of this
information not being found or read, or simply not being meaningful enough for users.
On the contrary, providing this information at key, relevant moments, for instance,
when uploading a picture or when adding a new friend, could be more effective in
fostering children`s safer online behaviour.
As opposed to parents and children`s views, the service provider seems to struggle in
finding the right balance between educating children to behave responsibly and safely
on the Ketnet website and trying to make clear to users what their (legal) rights and
obligations on the website are. This conflict is evident in the structure (and content) of
the current version of the Ketnet Terms of Use, characterized by a long list of unrelated
general netiquette rules, specific e-safety tips, allowed and forbidden behaviours on
the website, and legal clauses (See figure 13). In the following section we discuss
concrete ways of making the current Terms of Use more child-friendly based on the
general tips offered by parents and children as regards the Ketnet website and on our
expert review of the Terms of Use13.
13
The version of the Ketnet Terms of Use that was reviewed for this report is dated
©EMSOC – IWT - Brussels Leuven Ghent - 2011 – Authors:
45
Figure 13 Extract from Ketnet Terms of Use
6.4
Recommendations on how to improve the Ketnet Terms of Use
One of the most important conclusions of our analysis is the need to have transparent
and child-friendly Terms of Use. As suggested by Passera (2012), more user-friendly
legal documents can be achieved in a number of ways, for instance, by simplifying the
textual language, by including and creating visualizations and good layouts as well as
by rethinking the structure of the document in terms of good storytelling. In the
©EMSOC – IWT - Brussels Leuven Ghent - 2011 – Authors:
46
specific case of children, we believe that the timing of the information provision also
plays an important role. In this section we try to look at some of these aspects with the
aim of increasing the child-friendliness of the current Ketnet Terms of Use. Because of
the scope of this deliverables, our recommendations remain on a rather conceptual
level. Future work should focus on empirical research to test the validity of our
suggestions.

The need to distinguish legal from non-legal content: In the current version
of the Ketnet Terms of Use there is no clear distinction between the ‘do`s and don`ts governing the website), the ‘e-safety tips/examples’ and the actual legal aspects of the ‘Terms of Use’. It is important, therefore, to separate this information into clear-cut categories and provide each of them with easy-tounderstand labels. A possible division of content could be the following:
1. Our agreement: a section devoted to the legally-binding aspects which
govern children`s use of the platform (e.g. copyright issues)
2. Rules of the Game: a section containing examples of the “do`s and don`ts” ruling the use of the website
3. E-safety tips: a dedicated section providing advice to ensure children`s
safe online experience on the website
Below we discuss each of these categories in more detail.
6.4.1 Our agreement
Probably the most challenging aspect of this exercise was trying to convey legal
communication in a child-friendly way. In the case of Ketnet this is particularly
difficult due to the young age the website targets. This is why it is fundamental to rethink the Ketnet Terms of Use from a perspective that better fits children`s needs, their
rights and their not-yet fully developed cognitive capabilities. Increasing transparency
in the case of children means communicating things differently, but openly,
establishing clear boundaries regarding what is allowed on the website and what is not
and, above all, relating the legal content as much as possible to the children`s
worldviews and experiences so that it becomes truly meaningful and engaging.
Children are not adults, and therefore when it comes to legal communication, they
should not be treated as such. This is why when children register on the Ketnet
website, they should be informed about, on the one hand, the rules that apply on the
website (i.e. “the rules of the game”) and, on the other hand, the legal aspects (i.e. “our
agreement”) governing the use of the website. In the case of the “agreement”, a
transparent contract with young users should consider:

It is important to think carefully about what the service provider wants to
achieve when establishing a contractual agreement with children (and their
parents). Therefore, it is crucial to consider the legal aspects involved and
translate this into a child-friendly language that is easy for children to grasp,
©EMSOC – IWT - Brussels Leuven Ghent - 2011 – Authors:
47



but which also clearly conveys that you are talking about issues which should be
taken seriously.
The “agreement” should be easily-accessible to children at all times. Whenever
necessary (e.g. when performing an action that could risk breaking the
agreement) children should be reminded of this “agreement” or specific parts thereof. These reminders should be “dosed” so that children get the right
amount of information at the right time and are not overloaded with
information.
In order to encourage children to follow the “agreement” they should receive
positive incentives for their good behaviour on the Ketnet website. Possible
incentives could include offering additional features on the website such as
immediate access to higher levels in games or special access to episodes of their
favourite TV show, etc. only accessible to those children who fully respect the
agreement.
It may be a good idea to add as an article which clearly stipulates that the
acceptance of the “rules of the game” is an important part of the “agreement”
itself.
6.4.2 Rules of the game
Based on the tips provided by children and their parents, we came out with a
new, more concise categorization of “do`s and don`ts” which apply to the Ketnet
website (See Table 4). During the co-design sessions participants proposed to
refer to this section as the “Rules of the game” (rather than Terms of Use) as it was believed that most children would be acquainted with the terminology and
it would be easy for them to understand the meaning of the metaphor. As
opposed to Terms of Use, the rules of the game have a more generic character.
They serve to explain to children (and their parents) what is expected of them on
the website. They should clearly, but also concisely communicate to children the
idea of what is “good/accepted” behaviour on Ketnet and what is not. Just as any “rules of the game” which should be well-known and accepted before a game
begins, the Ketnet rules of the game should also be presented to users before
they start using the platform. Table 4 suggests a more meaningful categorisation
of items more in line with children`s reality. It is also important to use generic
categories rather than long lists of exhaustive examples. This can be done by
using “umbrella” labels which can cover a wide range of potentially unlimited
online risks. By following such an approach, the amount of information
presented to children will be drastically reduced and the text will gain in
simplicity and readability. We also suggest that less relevant items such as very
specific or too general examples (e.g. “don`t refresh the page too often” or
“behave online as you would offline”) can either be deleted or placed under a
©EMSOC – IWT - Brussels Leuven Ghent - 2011 – Authors:
48
second layer of information only accessible to users interested in finding out
more about the “Rules of the game”.
Rules of the Game
Examples of possible content/tips
under each rule
1. SHARE
YOUR
KETNET
 Let your parents (and Ketnet) know
EXPERIENCES WITH US AND
about what you do or experience on
WITH PEOPLE YOU TRUST
the website
 If something goes wrong on the
Ketnet website, talk about it with
your parents or someone you trust.
And please let us know by clicking
HERE!
2. PROTECT
YOUR
INFORMATION
PERSONAL
 Keep your personal information
such as your telephone number,
address or e-mail safe and only
share it with people you know and
trust, never with strangers!
 Think before you post pictures,
videos, messages or other content
on our website. Remember that
once you post it other people can
also see it!
 Don’t share your password and keep it safe!
3. PROTECT OTHERS`
INFORMATION
PERSONAL
 Don’t post pictures or videos or tag
people in pictures of people unless
you are sure they are OK with it
 Respect other people’s privacy
 Never use someone else`s account.
Every account is personal and
should only be used by its owner
4. BE CAREFUL WITH STRANGERS
©EMSOC – IWT - Brussels Leuven Ghent - 2011 – Authors:
 Don`t accept friends` requests from
people you don`t know in real life
 First discuss with your parents if
you want to get in touch with
someone you have only met online.
49
Never go to a meeting alone and
without letting your parents know!
5. BE CAREFUL WHEN YOU UPLOAD
CONTENT



Please make sure that you do not
use material that others have
created without their permission
(e.g. a song of your favourite band)
Make sure that all the material
that you post to our website is free
from viruses so that you don`t
damage yours nor other people`s
computers
Be careful when you use the
webcam and don`t pose naked in
front of t. The person on the other
side may record what you do or
say
6. BEHAVE IN A POSITIVE WAY
 Share interesting, fun, educational
and other types of positive content
online
 Don`t share websites which can be
harmful for you or others (e.g. don`t
post sites about drugs, unless it
contains educational information)
 Be honest when you play online
games and in the contests you
participate
7. BE NICE TO OTHERS
 Be polite
 Respect everybody
 Don`t hurt people nor make them
feel uncomfortable. Ketnet is for
everybody and everybody should
feel happy and safe by using our
website!
 Bullying is absolutely forbidden on
Ketnet, so if you hear or see
someone trying to hurt someone
else, please let us know by clicking
©EMSOC – IWT - Brussels Leuven Ghent - 2011 – Authors:
50
HERE!
Table 4 Examples of possible “Rules of the Game” for the Ketnet website

Timing and layout of the information provision: The rules of the game
should first be mentioned during the registration procedure, but should also
be accessible on the website at all times. For each rule of the game, a second
layer can provide specific examples. The latter can also appear in the form of
contextualised e-safety tips (e.g. when posting a picture). These examples
are not meant to be exhaustive, but should help children grasp what is
meant by that particular rule. As children`s online behaviour evolves
continuously, but also because the Ketnet platform also does (e.g. when
adding new features or sections), it is important to find ways to remind
children of these rules in subtle, but effective ways so that they can have a
positive impact on children`s behaviour on the Ketnet platform. Last, the
rules should be kept updated, ideally based on the input Ketnet received
from its users (e.g. through the input received via the reporting
mechanisms).
It goes beyond the scope of this deliverable to discuss the most appropriate format the
“Rules of the Game” should have as this will be highly dependent on the “Look and feel” of the Ketnet website and on their young audience`s taste. What is important though is
that they should be designed keeping the following guidelines in mind:

Generic, but clear rules. The rules should be relevant, concise, formulated in a
child-friendly language and general enough so as to cover a number of related
behaviours. It is advisable to include a few concrete examples that illustrate the
rule well so that children can easily grasp what the rule is about (See table 4). If
the child doesn`t understand what the rule is about he won`t be able to follow
that rule.

Limited number of rules. Do not overload the children and their parents with
unnecessary information, certainly not on the first encounter. There are plenty
of opportunities to present more information afterwards (e.g. through layering).
Therefore, keep the number of rules limited to the most essential ones.

Layering: Do not present all the information at once, but in layers. Overloading
children with information will hinder the comprehension of the rules. If a child
wants to know more about a specific rule, a second layer can provide additional
examples to illustrate that rule. A third layer could be useful to link the rules to
other existing content on the Ketnet website (e.g. a related video on the “Vet op
het net” section) or in other relevant external websites.
©EMSOC – IWT - Brussels Leuven Ghent - 2011 – Authors:
51

Easy to read: Make “the rules of the game” and the content under these rules easy-to- read. This can be achieved by improving the legibility of the texts (e.g.
using child-appealing typography) and their readability, i.e. facilitating the text
comprehension by means of child-friendly language and avoiding legalese.

Emotional appeal: Make the rules attractive to children. This can be done by
incorporating non-textual elements, such as child-appealing characters, music,
videos, etc. In other words accompany the written texts by audio-visual and
interactive elements that children would find attractive.

Engaging rules: The rules of the game are meant to help children and Ketnet
ensure a pleasant, but at the same time, safe experience on the website. In order
to guarantee this all Ketnet users should follow a number of rules. These rules
should work in the best interest of the child, but should also be coherent with
the service provider`s mission and vision. It is, therefore, important to find the
right balance between providing a fun user experience and providing the right
level of protection for the children active on the platform. In order to achieve
this, the rules of the game should be engaging so that children feel it is
meaningful for them to follow these rules, rather than perceiving them as being
imposed on them. Giving children a voice in the rule-making process can be
useful in elaborating rules that really matter to them. A concrete idea could be
providing an 'idea-box' for children to send suggestions about new (examples
of) rules or agreements, or modifications to existing ones. Another possibility
would be to develop a sort of “crowd-sourcing” feature where children can actively interact, discuss, propose and eventually vote on current and new rules.
Such a mechanism would serve two important purposes. On the one hand, it
supports children’s active participation in the rules-making process, and on the
other hand, it serves an educational and awareness-raising function because by
actively engaging in discussions children would learn about their peer`s online
experiences on the platform. Ultimately, children would be given a real
opportunity to have a say and be heard in the Ketnet policy-making process,
essential in order to ensure an effective policy uptake (Donoso and Lievens,
2013).
6.4.3 E-safety tips
As regards the e-safety tips, we suggest, whenever possible, to follow these guidelines:
 Context-specific tips: e-safety tips should be offered to users at relevant
moments through their interaction with the website, for instance, as examples
for the rules of the game during the registration procedure but also whenever it
is relevant for users to be reminded of potential online risks (e.g. right before
uploading a video). Ideally, they should be context-specific and be presented
unobtrusively so that the users perceive them as useful rather than as a
hindrance to their online experience.
©EMSOC – IWT - Brussels Leuven Ghent - 2011 – Authors:
52
7

Relevant tips at relevant moments: The number of e-safety tips is
theoretically unlimited, as long as they are relevant and appear only in relevant
contexts (e.g. when posting a picture, when changing your password, etc.).

Easy to read: e-safety tips should be easy for children to understand. This can
be achieved by improving the legibility of the texts (e.g. using child-appealing
typography) and their readability, i.e. facilitating the text comprehension by
means of child-friendly language and avoiding legalese.

Multi-modal formats: e-safety information should not only be presented
through text but in a multi-modal way. Ketnet already does this through their
videos and quizzes on their “Vet op het Net section” section. Perhaps it would be interesting to explore other multi-modal formats which can be appealing to
children as well, such as (mini) games, etc.

Emotional appeal: In order for the tips to be really appealing to children they
should be presented in formats which appeal to children. Therefore it is highly
advisable to incorporate audio-visual, interactive and fun elements into the tips.

Engaging tips: Just like the “rules of the game”, the e-safety tips should also
serve the purpose of helping children to enjoy a pleasant, but also safe
experience on the Ketnet website. It is, therefore, important to provide tips
which are engaging enough and which motivate children to follow them. The
tips, should, on the one hand, reflect areas that could be problematic for
children on the website, and, on the other hand, it should offer them different
options to cope with such issues (e.g. informing them about available reporting
tools, etc.). Last, the tips should not only be used to warn children about
potential online risks, but they should also reinforce children`s positive
behaviour on the website.
Reflections and conclusions
In this deliverable we explored how the use of participatory and co-design
methodologies can support and guide the process of designing more user-centric legal
communication. Our study confirms previous research that claims that
users/consumers need to be provided with more transparent, user-friendly and
meaningful Terms of Use. As literature suggests, this can be achieved in a number of
ways, for instance, by simplifying the textual language, by including and creating
visualizations and good layouts, by rethinking the structure of legal documents as well
as by timing the information provision in more effective ways. Arguably, even more
crucial is the active participation of users during the design process. Only by actively
engaging all relevant stakeholders (including lawyers who write these documents) and
users/consumers it is possible to give them a real opportunity to have a say and to be
heard in the policy-making process. Increasing their level of involvement in this
©EMSOC – IWT - Brussels Leuven Ghent - 2011 – Authors:
53
process will also serve to create more engaging, appealing and meaningful legal
documents.
In the specific case of young children, we conclude that one of the most challenging
aspects is to convey legal communication in a way that they can understand. This is
why it is fundamental to re-think legal documents such as Terms of Use and Privacy
Policies from a perspective that better fits children`s needs, their rights and their notyet fully developed cognitive capabilities. Increasing transparency in the case of
children means communicating things differently, but openly, establishing clear
boundaries regarding what is allowed on the website and what is not and, above all,
relating the legal content as much as possible to the children`s worldviews and
experiences so that it becomes truly meaningful and engaging. Children are not adults,
and therefore when it comes to legal communication, they should not be treated as
such.
We hope that the analysis and guidelines proposed in this report can guide the
development of more user-centric approaches towards designing legal communication,
in particular for vulnerable consumers and users such as young children. We also hope
that these ideas will be useful for Microsoft and Ketnet, whenever they decide to
update their Terms of Use or other policy documents. Hopefully many other
organizations will follow these steps and will start producing user-friendlier,
transparent, useful legal documents for their customers and users.
Last, in spite of the attempts we have made to suggest more effective ways of
presenting legal documents and policies, we lack the empirical evidence to guarantee
that these changes alone will be enough to nudge users/consumers towards becoming
informed consumers, able and willing to read legal documents. We, therefore,
encourage future research to focus on translating these guidelines into concrete ideas
and to develop evidence that can guide the design of future legal communication so
that it is really effective in reaching its audiences and in informing them the way they
deserve.
©EMSOC – IWT - Brussels Leuven Ghent - 2011 – Authors:
54
8
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9
9.1
Annex 1. Pre-assignments Legal Design Jam
Tasks common to all teams
Read
through
the
document:
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msuk/en_GB/DisplayTermsOfUseAndSalePage
/
1) Look at the structure of the document and the headings used for parts and
paragraphs. Could it be made easier? Could important information be given
more salient position?
a. Reorganize the document for better “storytelling” - this means possibly
changing the order and the numbering of the clauses, merging clauses,
splitting clauses and creating a clear, possibly plain language hierarchy
of headings. As a guiding principle, think of the target readers of this
documents (Online Store customers) and what would be the best
information order for them.
b. Lastly, create a table of content for the old and for the new documents, so
as to clearly show your modifications.
2) Highlight in red sentences and paragraphs that could be eliminated (e.g. they
are redundant).
3) Highlight in yellow sentences and paragraphs that are confusing, or hard to
understand, or could benefit from a visual explanation and/or reformulation in
better language.
9.2
TASKS Team 1: Text and Layout
During the Jam, your team will be responsible of creating the final structure/order of
the document and design its layout. For the 2 following tasks, it is enough that you list
and describe in a nutshell your ideas, maybe with the aid of a small sketch. Just make
quick, small experiments, so during the jam you will be ready to discuss concrete ideas
and suggestions with your team-mates.
These 2 tasks can be saved in a separate document, if for example you find it easier to
use a different software to collect and show your ideas.
1) Identify parts of the text could be more effectively be replaced by bulleted lists.
2) Develop ideas for visually effective headings
3) Think of ideas in which bolding and/or italics and/or text in a different color
could be used consistently to highlight key concepts or structure in the text. For
example, what if all terms like unless, nothwithstanding, including, excluding etc.
would be italic? Or if important words would be bold? Would it make the flow of
the text clearer?
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59
4) Experiment with alternative approaches, while avoiding to make the text messy
— you want to create distinctive cues, not more noise.
You can look at the following examples of legal texts with clear(er) layouts for
inspiration:
- https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Trademark_policy
- https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Trademark/License/GLAM
- have a look, but don’t share further the file! - - https://www.dropbox.com/s/0bwk37xopvo0n7b/Legislation-layout-RW071113.pdf
- http://nl.about.pinterest.com/terms/
- http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
- examples
at
the
end,
and
a
good
read
in
general:
http://www.davidberman.com/NewFormatForCanadianLegislation.pdf
9.3
TASK Team 2: creating a user-friendly, visually enhanced summary
During the Jam, your team will be responsible of creating a summary of the document,
to be placed for instance at the beginning of the existing document, that can work as an
easy, fast, clear way for the readers to get an idea what the key contents of the
document are.
For the following task, you don’t need to fully develop your idea, but just sketch and explain few solutions. Just make quick, small experiments, so during the jam you will
be ready to discuss concrete ideas and suggestions with your team-mates.
This tasks can be saved in a separate document, if for example you find it easier to use
a different software to collect and show your ideas.
1) Start collecting preliminary ideas of what type of user-friendly summary could
be used for the Microsoft Terms of Use and Sale. What key information would be
there? What format would be better (e.g. a table? a summary test enriched with
icons? a process diagram? a mix of elements? something else…?)
You can look at the following examples of user-friendly summaries for inspiration:
- last
image at
http://legaldesignjam.com/2014/03/20/ldj-with-domusacademy-students-things-milano-report/
- https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Trademark_policy
- http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy
- https://www.lookout.com/legal/privacy
- http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
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60
-
9.4
results from Group One (abstract) and Group Four (poster) at
http://legaldesignjam.com/2014/03/20/ldj-talent-garden-milano-report/
page
4,
6
and
7
of
http://legaldesignjam.com/wpcontent/uploads/2013/11/CISG_booklet.pdf
TASK Team 3: visualization of the purchase process
During the Jam, your team will be responsible of creating a visualization that
summarizes the rules about the purchase process, and puts them in context, by
showing the process itself.
For the following task, you don’t need to fully develop your idea, but just sketch and explain few solutions. Just make quick, small experiments, so during the jam you will
be ready to discuss concrete ideas and suggestions with your team-mates.
This tasks can be saved in a separate document, if for example you find it easier to use
a different software to collect and show your ideas.
1) Focus on the description of the purchase process [bits of relevant information
might be spread around different clauses, from 12 to 17]
2) Think of ways to create a process diagram explaining how a purchase process
works (e.g. a flowchart? a “metro map”? etc). Think of ways to avoid confusion if there are process differences between the purchase of hardware, software and
downloads.
You can look at the following examples of process diagrams for inspiration:
- registration procedure diagram at http://legaldesignjam.com/2014/03/20/ldjwith-domus-academy-students-things-milano-report/
- page
5
and
8
of
http://legaldesignjam.com/wpcontent/uploads/2013/11/CISG_booklet.pdf
- from
page
6
onwards
https://www.dropbox.com/s/t1tiw27bhctdf7c/JYSE_English_translations_DRA
FT.pdf
- http://www.legaltechdesign.com/visualawlibrary/2014/03/11/how-acriminal-case-moves-through-the-court/
- http://www.legaltechdesign.com/visualawlibrary/2014/02/14/dormantcommerce-clause-analysis/
- some
of
the
visualizations
in
these
slides
https://www.dropbox.com/s/91qkmx68gbj1kpt/visu_slides.pptx
©EMSOC – IWT - Brussels Leuven Ghent - 2011 – Authors:
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9.5
TASK Team 4: visualization of the return policy process
During the Jam, your team will be responsible of creating a visualization that
summarizes the rules about the return/refund process, and puts them in context, by
showing the process itself.
For the following task, you don’t need to fully develop your idea, but just sketch and explain few solutions. Just make quick, small experiments, so during the jam you will
be ready to discuss concrete ideas and suggestions with your team-mates.
This tasks can be saved in a separate document, if for example you find it easier to use
a different software to collect and show your ideas.
1) Focus on the description of the return policy process [clause 18]. Think of ways
to create a process diagram explaining how this process works (e.g. a flowchart?
a “metro map”? etc). Think of ways to avoid confusion if there are process differences between the return&refund of hardware, software and downloads.
You can look at the following examples of process diagrams for inspiration:
- registration procedure diagram at http://legaldesignjam.com/2014/03/20/ldjwith-domus-academy-students-things-milano-report/
- page
5
and
8
of
http://legaldesignjam.com/wpcontent/uploads/2013/11/CISG_booklet.pdf
- from
page
6
onwards
https://www.dropbox.com/s/t1tiw27bhctdf7c/JYSE_English_translations_DRA
FT.pdf
- http://www.legaltechdesign.com/visualawlibrary/2014/03/11/how-acriminal-case-moves-through-the-court/
- http://www.legaltechdesign.com/visualawlibrary/2014/02/14/dormantcommerce-clause-analysis/
- some
of
the
visualizations
in
these
slides
https://www.dropbox.com/s/91qkmx68gbj1kpt/visu_slides.pptx
9.6
TASK Team 5: icons
During the Jam, your team will be responsible of creating a system of small icons that
can enrich the document by signalling and marking key concepts. During the Jam, your
team will also have to coordinate with Team 1 (layout) as to decide where the icons
would be placed best in a good document layout.
For the following task, you don’t need to fully develop your idea, but just sketch preliminary few solutions. Just make quick, small experiments, so during the jam you
will be ready to discuss concrete ideas and suggestions with your team-mates.
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This tasks can be saved in a separate document, if for example you find it easier to use
a different software to collect and show your ideas.
1) Think of ideas on how icons could be used to enrich this document. For
instance, some examples:
- One icon per clause, opening up its meaning?
- A set of icons used to refer to recurring concepts (e.g. “you need to look up your local law”, “to do: you need to take action in a certain way in order to maintain your rights”, “prohibition”… etc.)
- Two sets of icons (e.g. must, must not, no obligation towards the other
party…), one for Microsoft and one for the customer used to mark the role of each party in each clause
You can look at the following examples of icons for inspiration:
- http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
- page
4:
http://legaldesignjam.com/wpcontent/uploads/2013/11/CISG_booklet.pdf
- NB! This is a mockup, don’t share it: https://www.dropbox.com/s/e3uu8vvw5ssfzwz/hoas_%20T%26C_A3.pdf
- NB! This is a mockup, don’t share it: https://www.dropbox.com/s/fxgv1j0syfcvegv/HOas_housing%20rules_A3.
pdf
- https://www.dropbox.com/s/t1tiw27bhctdf7c/JYSE_English_translations_D
RAFT.pdf
- https://www.lookout.com/legal/privacy
- http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/privacy-icons/
- https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Trademark_policy
10 Dutch Summary
“Doorheen het EMSOC project bestudeerden we het gebruik van sociale media in Vlaanderen, met een bijzondere focus op hoe dit gebruik een invloed kan hebben op
het empoweren van gebruikers. Een belangrijk aspect dat naar voren kwam in ons
onderzoek was het gebrek aan transparantie omtrent vele (commerciële) praktijken in
het kader van het gebruik van sociale media diensten. In december 2013
organiseerden we een workshop rond transparantie, waar een selecte groep van
experts en mensen uit de praktijk werden uitgenodigd. Samen gingen we op zoek naar
mogelijkheden om transparantie te verhogen in en omtrent sociale media platformen,
op creatieve, gebruikers-geïnspireerde en betekenisvolle manieren. Hoewel de
deelnemers verschillende achtergronden hadden, waren ze het er toch over eens dat
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de manier waarop (juridische) informatie wordt vertrekt aan gebruikers/consumenten
problematisch is. In het algemeen is de informatie die we terugvinden in
Gebruiksvoorwaarden of een Privacy beleid voor het gebruik van sociale media
diensten heel moeilijk te begrijpen. Deels komt dit door het complexe taalgebruik van
deze teksten, maar evenzeer door de cognitieve en contextuele beperkingen van
gebruikers (bijvoorbeeld een gebrek aan tijd of motivatie). Ten gevolge hiervan zijn de
meeste sociale media gebruikers niet in staat om juridische informatie zoals contracten
of Gebruiksvoorwaarden correct te begrijpen. Tijdens de workshop brainstormden we
ook over mogelijke manieren om de efficiëntie van informatieverstrekking te
optimaliseren. Sommige ideeën die hier werden voorgesteld waren het gebruiken van
visuele technieken, het vereenvoudigen van juridisch taalgebruik en het timen van de
mededeling van informatie, dit alles op een manier waarop gebruikers complexe
juridische informatie kunnen begrijpen. De deelnemers waren in het bijzonder
geïnteresseerd in het concept van de Legal Design Jams dat werd ontwikkeld en
gepresenteerd tijdens de workshop door Stefania Passera. Dit concept werd
beoordeeld als een zeer praktische en handige methodologie om de transparantie van
informatieverstrekking aan sociale media gebruikers te verhogen. Geïnspireerd door
dit idee besloot EMSOC om de eerste Belgische Legal Design Jam te organiseren op 4
april 2014. Tijdens deze jam werkten we samen met Microsoft aan de
Gebruiksvoorwaarden van de Microsoft Online Store. Het idee was om na te denken
over verschillende manieren om het document toegankelijker en gebruiksvriendelijker
te maken. Een tweede oefening werd georganiseerd in samenwerking met de populaire
Vlaamse kinderwebsite van de openbare omroep, Ketnet. Samen met Ketnet
organiseerden we twee co-design sessies met kinderen en ouders. Het doel van deze
sessies was om kinderen en hun ouders te laten nadenken over alternatieve manieren
om de Ketnet Gebruiksvoorwaarden voor te stellen, op een manier die beter
overeenstemt met hun levenservaringen en meningen.
In deze deliverable geven we een samenvatting van de meest belangrijke resultaten
van zowel de Legal Design Jam als de co-design sessies met kinderen en ouders. Beide
oefeningen waren concrete pogingen om populaire websites transparanter te maken
en bovenal om ‘Guidelines’ te definiëren, die kunnen helpen bij de ontwikkeling van meer gebruiksvriendelijke en gebruikers-centrale manieren voor het ontwerpen van
juridische communicatie en om na te denken over de ‘lessons learnt’ tijdens deze processen.
©EMSOC – IWT - Brussels Leuven Ghent - 2011 – Authors:
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