Fractal
Bachelor's thesis. A mobile app concept that helps non-expert employees recognise and report cyber threats.
View on BehanceClient
Politecnico di Torino
Role
UX Design
Year
Client
Politecnico di Torino
Role
UX Design
Year
2024
Fractal
Bachelor's thesis. A mobile app concept that helps non-expert employees recognise and report cyber threats.
View on BehanceProcess
01
Research
Desk research on threats, attacks and best practices. Then two interviews with cybersecurity specialists.
02
Synthesis
Five personas, an affinity diagram and How Might We questions. Two journeys of the same phishing attack.
03
Concept
Three ideas guide the app: awareness, action, sharing. Social channels, workshops and a web platform support it.
04
Interface
Three sections, one colour each. A fractal logo and a moodboard explored with DALL-E. The fractal images on this page are AI-generated.
Brief
From weak link to first defence
Security culture often treats employees as the weak link. My thesis started from the opposite idea. With the right tools, people who are not experts can raise a company's level of security. The question was how UX design and communication could help. My supervisor, a researcher at Links Foundation, guided the research methods.
Approach
Two experts, two journeys
I interviewed the CSO of a cybersecurity firm and a cybersecurity researcher. Both described the same gap. Small companies often ask for help only after an attack. According to the CSO, many incidents are never reported because people are embarrassed by the mistake. I then mapped a phishing attack twice, from the attacker's side and from the team's side. Attacking looked engaging. Defending looked slow and stressful. The app had to make the defence side simpler.
Outcome
A concept built for teams
Fractal has three areas. Training offers short modules, exercises and a glossary. Threats lets anyone report a suspicious email in three steps and reach the security staff. Tools collects add-ons. An admin sets the learning plan, like a teacher with a class. The project ends with an interactive prototype. It was not tested with users: testing the report flow is the next step.
Interviews
2
CSO and cybersecurity researcher
Personas
5
Four company roles and one ethical hacker
Journeys
2
One phishing attack, two points of view
App sections
3
Training · Threats · Tools
Prototype
The interactive prototype
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