CheckED is a product that addresses the prevalence of misinformation and disinformation for teenagers.
Table of Contents:
TL;DR
Problem
Research
Process
Solution
What’s Next?
What Did I Learn?
TL;DR
- Problem: High schoolers struggle with critical thinking skills, a limited media literacy, an over-reliance of social media, confirmation bias, and an influence of peers.
- Solution: We developed the technology to write a script and have each line appear separately on screen on a reel. Enabling quick and easy content creation.
- I conducted a competitive analysis,
Problem
Research
- Simplify the writing process for the user to create as many ideas as possible.
- Content produces itself, work is minimal, and sub-communities naturally grow.
- Make the recording process as approachable as possible.
- Make a points system to display on profile. Gamification or vanity?
- If its only vanity and not for any other purpose, we can leave it out.
- Make recording yourself feel effortless. Add bold text for the on-screen scripts and removed the timer. The more confidence and less pressure, the better.
- Emphasis supporting creators that people want to work with.
- Create a networking through chat but also actively in the access to instantly collaborate on a script.
Process
Task Flows
Site Maps
Solution
What’s Next?
What did I learn?
Communication is key.
Throughout this project, I was in direct contact with the developer and selling the importance of small design changes and pressing for him to slow down in order for me to test users on new changes. By being forced to make changes, we found great mediated solutions together.
Time to zoom in.
Often times, the trouble with an abundance of user research, you are lead to a path of options. I began to realize that we cannot solve the root of the problem. This makes honing in on the problem statement absolutely vital.
Thank you for reading!
Do you have any questions?
Situation
We were tasked with engaging in the discovery-stage processes necessary to guide the creation of an experience, a service, or a system, that can assist people of between 11 and 18 years of age who wish to become more adept and proactive at identifying and recognizing mis- and dis-information in the context of consuming local news media. The development of these outcomes will be particularly critical for the current and future consumption of non-human created media. This project asks my team to explore:
What are the socio-cultural, technological, and environmental factors that comprise “newsworthy” events occurring in their locale?
How do people of this age group generate, share, and consume what they believe to be newsworthy content?
Tasks
Learn the problem space
Identify and validate key tasks that the target population need to fulfill when consuming news media
Develop an inventory of all factors affecting news media consumption
Analyze quantitative and qualitative data gathered to generate insights
Present insights and recommendations for improving identification of mis- and dis- information in teens
Actions
Conduct primary and secondary user research to define the problem.
Identify and validate factors that impact how 11-18 year-olds consume news Identify persona archetypes involved with 11-18 year-olds consuming media
Create user journey maps and develop user storyboards from research
Conduct a competitive analysis to identify product opportunities
Complete a service design canvas to define the product role in the market
Build product wireframes
Result
Created a service design model and wireframes of a product to improve the abilities of 15-to-18-year-olds to identify mis- and dis- information.
Project Process
This project was limited in time to the duration to the first half of our semester, we wanted to break down our project into 5 phases lasting 1.5 weeks: Framing the opportunity, Understanding the user, Exploring ideas and options, Defining the new concept, and Prototyping. This design-thinking framework helped us to accomplish everything in our scope during the allotted time.
Project Scope
Originally, the scope provided to us from our stakeholder was to investigate the news media consumption habits of children ages 11 to 18. When we began planning our project, our team found that with limited resources, we would only be able to focus on high-school age students, ages 14 to 18. The scope was approved so we continued determining our markets.
Identify Target Market
Once our scope was narrowed down, we needed to identify stakeholders involved in monitoring what knowledge these children consume. Based on our research, we found that parents and school teachers are most involved in shaping teen news consumption habits. We used this insight to focus our product on these three demographics.
Understanding the User
Research Objective
Utilize research methods to collect user challenges, contextual factors, and validate assumptions about the consumption of mis- and dis- information in teens.
Research Methods
Primarily, we conducted secondary research, a stakeholder interview, and user interviews after performing a cognitive walkthrough of the previous IHE scheduling interface. Over 200 online reviews and 40 online research articles were analyzed to create a list of factors possibly influencing customer scheduling of IHEs. 8 interviews with potential Signify Health members were completed and then transcribed and analyzed using Dovetail to understand the general schemas that a potential member may have. These methods helped to develop an understanding of the critical factors that could affect IHE scheduling and completion. The insights collected were translated into qualitative and quantitative data and were recorded in Excel, Figma, and Dovetail. This acted as a beacon allowing us to target significant segments of the user journey that would allow for the greatest improvement of IHEs scheduled and completed.
12
Interviews conducted
11
Survey respondents
05
Themes identified
Qualitative Findings
Using our results from the interviews, my team conducted an inductive coding process in Mural to analyze the responses from our participants to find themes from their answers. We analyzed their responses to all 13 of our questions, pulled all quotes from the interviews, and categorized them into themes. After completing coding, we found 4 common themes across all questions: Distrust of any online information, Awareness of hidden agendas, Trusting authority figures the most (regardless of fact-verification)Education plays an important part in opinion-forming
We gathered that any mis- and dis- information solution we create needs to address these topics.
Quantitative Analysis
In addition to the qualitative analysis, we analyzed the quantitative results of our survey using Google Forms. By looking at the distribution of responses to each question, we could turn the numerical responses into insights and potential objectives for our mis- and disinformation solution. Some of the answers were varied, but some themes were identified to guide decision-making later in the process. Across multiple questions, the idea of “trust” was mentioned as an important factor to consider when discussing news media online. Since most news is now consumed online, we wanted to try designing a desktop/mobile solution while keeping the trust factor in mind.
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Exploring Ideas
Persona Archetypes
Using the data we gathered in the surveys and interviews, I aggregated the responses to find trends among our participants. I then used these insights to create persona archetypes that represent three potential demographics for our mis- and disinformation solution.The first archetype is a 17-year-old high school student. Primarily, they want to be able to verify information without over-exerting themselves to do so. They have concerns about online information that does not come from a verified source.
The next persona is of the parent of a high-school teen consuming news media. He wants to be able to keep his daughter safe online by keeping her well-informed. He has concerns about his own digital literacy, as well as a lack of time to dedicate to monitoring his daughter’s online activities.
Finally, the last persona is of the teen’s high-school instructor. He wants to make sure that his students and their families are digitally well-informed to improve their critical thinking skills. He has concerns about the difficulty relating the importance of digital literacy to his students.
User Journey Maps
After creating the personas, I mapped their user journeys to specific scenarios where they were most likely to come across mis- and disinformation. I highlighted the users’ process, feelings, pain points and opportunities. This helped us identify where a solution may be implemented with the most effectiveness.
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Competitive Analysis
To understand where other businesses have tried to tackle mis- and disinformation, I completed a competitive analysis of fact-checking-related software. 5 companies were analyzed on eight different criteria to identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. This analysis was helpful in developing a robust service design later in the process.
Defining the New Concept
Service Model Canvas
With a firm understanding of our problem space and the stakeholders in them, we could now formulate a service model that might effectively reach our target demographic. I built out the service model utilizing the template created by Neil Turner. This tool sets a framework tying every design decision back to the user-centered goals and metrics developed in the canvas.
User Storyboards
The service design canvas, in conjunction with all of our research, allowed us to rapidly iterate on ideas that we believe would have the most impact on improving high school students’ ability to identify mis- and disinformation. We created storyboards to visualize how our best idea might be utilized in context. Taking these visuals as a reference would help us begin the prototyping phase.
Prototyping
User Flows
After creating personas, journey maps, and storyboards, we uncovered many themes that potential features of our application would be able to address. The first step in developing the application was to lay out user flows of app interactions for our target demographic. Due to time constraints, only the flows for the high-school student persona were mapped out.
