Heart of the Elephant
Printed Flavors
NVIDIA@SIGGRAPH
Here for Now exhibition
Designer Timelines
Montauk
In Transit: Three Ways Home
Jordan
Ivy Film Festival 2025
Atlas Bakery
Data Defenders








Data Defenders


February 2025


Advisors – Marisa Mazria Katz, Julia Netter, Scott Griffy
Collaborators – Natalie Ho, Anthony Zhang, Ritvik Bhadury, Cindy Peng
On December 5th, 2024, Rhode Island’s RIBridges program, a computer system that allows Rhode Island residents to apply for governmental benefits like Medicaid and food stamps, was breached by cybercriminals. The names, social security numbers, and other confidential information of 650,000 people were held hostage; some of it leaking onto the dark web.

Data Defenders aims to make these connections between our everyday and digital lives more tangible and transparent, physically highlighting how our personal data branches out from the places we go on the web. Through humorous and seemingly innocuous events, this game aims to highlight how much digital information these companies acquire about us, simply via our online presence. It’s practically impossible to keep your data completely off the web, but we can do our best to try and protect it.













Process and Playtesting


The initial game did not include the Data Broker tiles nor the lanyard badges. These elements were later added during the playtesting progress, as we realized that this game was missing motivating elements for the players. Adding ways for players to “sabotage” other people’s internet presence by forcing them to place extra tiles helped add another dimension of excitement in the game. 





© 2025 Brianna Cheng
all rights reserved