Twitter had a pretty obvious insight: Online privacy plays a crucial role in the well being and shared experience of hundreds of millions of people. The problem: privacy is f’ing boring.

The brief: Get hundreds of millions of people to engage with the subject of privacy.

Unfortunately the average privacy policy is 4,000 words long and unbelievably dense.

The fact that billions of humans scroll past them as fast as humanly possible (for fear their eyeballs may catch the merest glimpse of the jargon) is not only an inexcusable design flaw—it’s a massive glaring, global problem that seemingly every company in existence refuses to acknowledge, let alone address.

Until now.

Twitter Data Dash: an 8-bit game designed to educate and illuminate 450 million people on the (extremely boring) and critically important subject of online privacy.

From the start, Twitter quickly gravitated toward the idea of turning privacy—something people avoid at all costs—into something they’d be genuinely excited to interact with and share.

That simple seed was the starting point. A clear and unwavering vision of how we wanted the work to make people act and, perhaps more importantly: feel. All innovation starts with similar questions or reframes, and it was this one that led us to the idea of empowering people through play; weaving insights, information and tips about Twitter’s tools throughout the levels of a 80’s style retro video game.

Each level of the game was designed and inspired by Twitter’s key privacy features, woven with insights and information that playfully leveled up people’s understanding of privacy.

When they first reached out to us, Twitter’s Privacy and Design team was underway rethinking and rewriting their privacy policy so it presented itself to people as something other than a massive, relentless sledgehammer of text. They began by thoughtfully breaking it down. Structurally. Visually. Linguistically crafting in a way that no longer required you to acquire a Harvard law degree to understand.

Audience insights revealed that Twitter truly has it's own Twitterverse — its own lingo, slang, inside jokes, array of niche communities and more. That sense that anyone can find community on Twitter was powerful. That also weighed heavy in relation to some of the violent language and privacy issues the platform had dealt with for years.

This set the stage for the solution Twitter would ultimately pursue — a whimsical, colorful game that captured the intricacies of the brand, and simultaneously acting as a platform for education.

Web and Mobile Experience (iOS and Android)

Scale: Twitter is a global social platform, and so the launch notified all 450M members around the world. To integrate a level of inclusion that accurately reflects the platform, we localized the messaging, artwork, and custom elements to accommodate nine different languages.

Brand relevance: Twitter’s business objective was to design an experience that tackled a massive global problem in a way nobody ever had before. Less than 24 hours after the launch, the game — and the subject of privacy — have been featured in countless major publications worldwide, and played by millions of people around the globe. Game over. Job done.

In the case of Twitter, and specifically the globally important subject of online privacy, the best way to change the game… was to make one.

Overall reach: 450M

Impressions from press: 250M

Media value from press: $2M

Built and launched in 3 months

# of companies that have acknowledged nobody reads privacy policies = 1

How do you measure the impact of an experience that intentionally didn't include any tracking or measurement, since that would be counter-intuitive to the entire point of the project? That's right — zero tracking. KPIs like CTR, time on site, shares and more are out the window.

What we know for certain: on May 11, 2022, every Twitter user was notified of the game — that's more than 450M users.

And, well, the press ate it up. From The Washington Post to the Verge, TechCrunch, Adweek, The Guardian, Gizmodo, Mashable and more, press brought in over 250M impressions, the equivalent of more than $2M in media value.