A card game born from years of privacy trainings, uncomfortable moments, and the repeated observation that people understand privacy best when they feel it first.
They emerge when data, features, and context combine in ways that suddenly feel uncomfortable. A piece of data might seem harmless. A feature might seem reasonable. But together, in a specific app, something suddenly feels wrong.
In our privacy trainings, we repeatedly saw that people only truly understood the impact of these combinations when they felt that moment of discomfort.
That reaction, the moment of “cringe,” often appears before people can explain why.
Context & Cringe was created to make that moment visible. Not to replace structured analysis, but to surface the instinctive signal that something deserves closer attention.
Privacy impact is often felt before it is fully understood.
The game makes that feeling the starting point.
Players combine three cards, pitch their idea in 30 seconds, and let everyone else judge whether it feels acceptable or deeply uncomfortable.
The goal is simple: make your own app feel acceptable. Make everyone else’s feel deeply uncomfortable.
But the real value happens in the discussions that follow. Players quickly discover that privacy problems rarely come from one element alone — they emerge from how everything fits together.
Pitch in 30 seconds. Then vote:
The point of the game is not winning. It is the moment when someone says “Wait... I would not be comfortable with that.”
Context & Cringe was created by Kim Wuyts and Avi Douglen. It grew directly out of the trainings and workshops they have delivered at security conferences and within organizations around the world.
Kim is a privacy engineer and researcher focused on making privacy usable in real-world systems. Her work bridges the gap between privacy theory and engineering practice, helping teams design systems that respect users while remaining technically practical. Kim frequently speaks about how context shapes privacy risks in modern applications.
Avi is a long-time application security expert, trainer, and community leader. He has spent years helping engineers understand how design decisions translate into real-world security risks, known for bringing complex security concepts to life through engaging talks, practical examples, and a healthy dose of humor.
Over the years, Kim and Avi discovered that privacy conversations often become clearer when approached from unexpected angles.
At one point, they even delivered privacy talks as comics-style characters: Professor Privacy and Captain Security.
The lesson was simple: people engage differently when the format invites them to play rather than just listen.
Context & Cringe follows the same philosophy. It is a game. But the conversations it creates are very real.
They once showed up to a security conference as comic-book superheroes to talk about privacy.
It worked.
Context & Cringe is the next iteration of that idea.
The game does not provide the final answer to privacy design. Instead, it helps people recognize the moment when something feels wrong.
Because privacy impact is often felt before it is fully understood.