Privacy Policy

Who we are

Art & Mind (decisionart.app) is the online book, reader and decision tools for Art & Mind by Ursina Teuscher and Dan Hahn. In this policy, “we” means the team that runs the service.

Questions about this policy go to ursina@pdx.edu.

What we collect

When you use the decision tools

• Without an account: the decisions you build (options, criteria, ratings and weights) are kept in your browser’s local storage. They stay on your device unless you sign in and save them.
• With an account: your email address, and the decisions and tool work you save.

When you read the book or take part in a course

• Your name and email address, which identify your account and your comments.
• The comments, replies and upvotes you add to course readings, and the private notes you keep for yourself.
• Active reading time: how long you spend actively working in each reading while it is open and in focus. It is used to compute a participation score.
• Your written answers, and your voice reflections if your instructor assigns them (see “Voice recordings and live transcripts”).

When you ask for help

The “Report a problem” form sends us your name and email, your message, the page you were on, your browser and its version, your display settings, and a screenshot if you include one.

When you pay

Stripe processes payments. We send Stripe your email address and name with the purchase. Your card details go to Stripe and never reach us.

When you leave voice feedback

Some pages invite feedback through a voice feedback link. If you use one, we store your name, your recording and its transcript. Anyone who has that link can see and play the recordings left under it, so leave voice feedback only if you are comfortable with that.

When you ask for instructor access

The request form collects your name, email address, college or university, the course you are considering, and an optional message. We store the request and email it to the person who reviews requests, with your address as the reply-to. Requests are not deleted on a schedule; ask us and we will delete yours.

Collected automatically

• Cookies and local storage. These keep you signed in, remember your reader settings (for example theme, reading mode, read-aloud voice and a draft reply you have not sent), and support checkout and course joining. The cookie that keeps you signed in to the reader lasts up to 365 days.
• Server logs. Our hosting providers keep server logs, which can include your IP address, under their own terms.
• No analytics or advertising trackers. The site’s code includes no third-party analytics or advertising trackers.
• Fonts. The site loads fonts from Google Fonts, so your browser contacts Google’s servers when a page loads.

How we use it

We use this information to run the decision tools, the reader and your courses; sign you in and keep your account secure; let your instructor see and grade the coursework you submit; send the emails the service needs, such as sign-in links, book access, course notices and replies to your support requests; answer your questions; and meet legal obligations.

We do not sell personal information. We do not use student data for advertising or to build profiles unrelated to education.

Who can see your coursework

• Your shared comments are visible only to your assigned discussion group and your course instructors.
• Your private notes are visible only to you.
• Your instructors can see your submitted work, your voice reflections and transcripts, your participation scores and your active reading time for their course, and they may use participation as part of your grade.
• When you submit an assignment, your instructor may receive an email with your name and your answer or transcript.

How we use AI

We use AI in three places. None of them sends your email address. The book and the decision tools themselves use no AI.

1. Rating comments. To help instructors gauge participation, we send one comment at a time to Anthropic’s API, with the passage it is anchored to (and, for a reply, the classmate’s comment it answers), to get a suggested quality rating. Your name and account details are not sent. This happens when you save, edit or share a comment, when your instructor asks for ratings to be refreshed, and on a regular schedule. Your instructor can change any rating. An instructor who turns on participation mode for a course stops that course’s comments from being sent for rating; participation mode also gives full credit for any comment, and it does not turn off the other two uses below.
2. “What students are asking.” When an instructor asks for it, we send the text of up to 300 recent comments from the course, with each comment’s reading title and page, to Anthropic’s API to group them into themes for the instructor. Names are not sent, and the summary is not stored. Participation mode does not stop this feature.
3. Answering support reports. To draft replies to “Report a problem” messages, the report (your name, message, page, browser details, display settings and any screenshot) is given to Anthropic’s Claude through Claude Code, running on a team member’s computer. A person reads every draft before anything is sent to you.

The first two uses run through Anthropic’s commercial API. Anthropic’s published commercial terms say it may not train models on customer content from those services, and its privacy center says it deletes API inputs and outputs within 30 days, with stated exceptions (such as legal requirements and usage-policy enforcement). The third use runs through Claude Code rather than our API account, under the terms of the account it runs on.

Voice recordings and live transcripts

When your instructor assigns a voice reflection, we record your audio in the browser and store it, with its transcript, in private storage. Only your course’s instructors (and our administrators) can play it, through links that expire after four hours.

While you record, your browser writes a live transcript using its built-in speech recognition. In many browsers that recognition runs on the browser maker’s servers, so your audio may be sent to them, under their terms rather than ours.

The “listen” feature in the reader uses your device’s own voices and sends nothing to us.

Service providers

We share personal information only with the providers that run the service, and each receives only what its job needs.

• Vercel hosts the website and runs the server code.
• Supabase provides the database, sign-in and file storage, including voice recordings and screenshots.
• Resend sends our emails.
• Stripe processes payments, and also acts as an independent controller of some payment data under its own privacy policy.
• Anthropic provides the AI processing described above.
• Google serves the site’s fonts, and browser speech services may also be involved, as described above.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, to protect the service and its users, or to a successor if the service is sold or merged, under this policy’s protections.

Where your data is stored

Your data is stored in the United States. If you use Art & Mind from outside the United States, your data is transferred to and stored in the United States.

Security

• Every connection to the service is encrypted (HTTPS).
• Database access is limited by row-level security rules, so you can reach only your own data and the course data you are entitled to see.
• Students and readers sign in with one-time email links, so they have no password.
• A small number of administrators sign in with a password managed by Supabase Auth.
• We do not hold a SOC 2 report. Colleges reviewing the service can ask us for our security questionnaire answers.

How long we keep data

We keep your coursework while your course runs and afterward, so grades can be reviewed. There is no automatic deletion schedule today, and you can ask us to delete your data at any time.

When we delete an account on request, its database records are removed. Our deletion tool does not yet remove voice recordings or screenshots kept in file storage, so tell us if you want those removed as well.

Students and schools

We do not sell student data, use it for advertising, or build non-educational profiles from it.

Your choices and rights

You can ask us to show you the personal information we hold about you, to correct it, or to delete it (see “How long we keep data” for what deletion covers today). Each decision tool lets you download a PDF of your work. To make a request, write to the contact address below.

You can unsubscribe from any marketing email. We still send the emails the service needs.

Children

Art & Mind is not intended for children under 13. We do not knowingly collect their personal information. If you believe a child has given us data, contact us and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we post the new version here with its date.

Contact

Email: ursina@pdx.edu
Website: decisionart.app