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Context
How might we improve upon the landscape of modern education?
With the prompt given, the team assessed different elements of the sentence. First, we discussed modern problems in education that we've faced in our own lives. We highlighted the impact of online classrooms due to the pandemic; However, we assumed many other groups would cling to similar ideas.
I brought forward the current issue of media literacy. The limited attention spans heightened by the rise of short form content across multiple applications have made it more difficult to gain unbiased information. Everyone's words are taken for face value. An app that could combat misleading and critically challenging information became our main focus of research
Background Research
Can we make fact-checking more convenient?
With the growing influence of social media on individuals’ perception and knowledge of global news, there also comes an important topic of media literacy. Media literacy is “the ability to critically analyze stories presented in the mass media and to determine their accuracy or credibility”. With the growing use of social media, it is imperative to differentiate between factual news from misinformation or potential biased information. Our app, Wellverse, is meant to combat these risks and educate users on media literacy and how to better analyze/read mass information on social media.
Through an intial research process, we discovered these statistics about media literacy:
Nearly three out of four (72%) Americans say skills in media literacy are important in the face of intentionally misleading or inaccurate information in the media
68% were interested in learning how to better distinguish between true and false information online, especially when it comes to identifying misinformation generated with artificial intelligence
This phase gave us the confidence to expand upon this budding idea. There needed to be a solution to accompany the rising interest in media literacy. Therefore, we asked: How might we address the unprecedented rate of misinformation in the media to better inform users?
The Problem
It is troublesome to differentiate between truth and falsified information, especially with the rise of artificial intelligence. Many people receive information from a single source and take it for face value. This increases misinformation overall.
The Solution
We set out to create an app that is able to detect information generated by artificial intelligence in addition to linking related articles. This app can work as an extension that works across multiple platforms.
User Interviews
Would addressing misinformation make a difference in real-world application?
We used Google Forms to conduct a secondary round of user research and collect data from other individuals.
Our Objectives:
○ Find out a more detailed description of the impact short-form media has on media literacy
○ Curate a list of the top used applications where users gain information from
○ Discern user knowledge on misinformation and biased text
○ Add features to our base app that would benefit users the most
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Findings & Analysis
We found that most people are self-sufficient in fact-checking.
Many of the interviewees already expressed their awareness of media literacy. They stated how misinformation is one of the worst dampeners to media literacy.
Some even feared for misinterpretation and the spreading of misinformation on social media affecting vulnerable groups. Users who are less tech savvy are high susceptible to this pandemic. Many users surveyed believed media literacy awareness should be put at the forefront to put an end to this modern problem.
Major Findings
Short form and reactionary content as well as AI generated content have changed the course of our understanding of reality and factual information. The accessibility of such information has allowed an outburst of misleading news articles and personal statements. This leads to further manipulation of perspectives, and echo chambers.
Half of the interviewed people rated their frequency of fact-checking at a 5 or lower on a scale of 1-10, 10 being extremely frequently. The other half rated themselves a 6 or higher.
Almost all users receive their news from at least one social media outlet. Paired with the lack of effort to address the knowledge people process, it proves media literacy to be a problem worth solving in this modern era of education.
Ideation & Design
We moved on to the creation process, keeping our research at the forefront.
Site Map
I created a site map to layout the team's plan for the features we wanted to include based on our research. Keeping the key findings in mind, we created a system that could fact check information from all types of outlets on a consistent basis. The main pages are the login and homepage. The onboarding process ensures access to other platforms for both easy login and also internet browsing. On the main body of the app consists of scan, feed, and profile features.
Mid-Fidelity Wireframes
Since the lo-fi frames were already based on tried and true methods. Our team went over the layouts to discard or add any features that would make the fact-checking experience even more streamlined.
Results
Loosening up the stray ends before the final presentation.
Hi-Fidelity Wireframes
Our team focused on the main pathways from our initial site map: Create Profile, Scan, Feed, and Profile. These elements were enough to convey the necessary functions needed in order to answer our HMW statement. We decided to enhance the mid-fi frames with a simple aesthetic that would place the focus on the information.
Most of the users interviewed already have the will to learn more about media literacy but find it inconvenient. The app should keep a continuous flow and point out information the user would want to know more about.
We should aim to execute the hi-fidelity frames with a similar style to a basic search platform. There should also be a minimum number of tabs to reduce confusion on the user side.
The loading page and initial sign-up process takes into account the user profile and the email they will use to receive updates about articles. These articles will be specifically curated according to the history of the articles viewed.
View similar posts that align with your topics of interest on the home page.
The trending news includes which social media platform each news was posted on.
Users can upload a link or a screenshot of an article or social media post. The uploaded content will reappear in a user's article if they wish to revisit their previously scanned works.
Scanning an article will lead to this tab. Wellverse will scan the content and provide articles that either support or counter the perspectives shown by the language used in the original content
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Reflection
Concept is key but user-testing is vital to bringing those concepts into reality.
This was many of the members' first design-a-thons and proved a valuable experience. Our previous knowledge was built upon in a short time frame, magnifying each step of the design process. Working quickly removed any time for hesitation and the team went for approaches that we would not normally move forward. However; due to the nature of this process, we focused on functionality and our concept.
One of the key parts, user testing, was missing from the creation of Wellverse. This was inevitable, but made us realize the true value in reiteration and interaction. There are certainly aspects that could have been improved with the proper user testing after the ideation and design phase. Despite these delta points, we are proud to have achieved a top five ranking within Design Frontiers. We will continue to take these notes and progress our design processes even further.
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