Sunflowers
Project background:
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In nowadays online communities, echo chambers, filter bubbles and confirmation bias fostered distorted and radical views.
Young generations engage with News and Politics are primarily mediated via the internet. By affection of filter bubbles, Echo chambers, Confirmation Bias, the Disinhibition effect and argument, people won’t be able to think critical, and become more and more establish radical.
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Project goal:
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We are aiming to design an online mobile platform that bring critical thinking to young generation and engage them in the ‘big topics of the day’, as well as their ability to balance ideas and perspectives.
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My great teammates:
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Mia My Ly
Sara Teh
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We call us Team Strawberry!
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My role in this Project:
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UI designer(early stage)
UX designer
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Project Duration:
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2021.05 - 2021.06
Teamwork in Team Strawberry
This is the first half offline (back to online after 50% of process, ‘THANK YOU’ COVID-19) teamwork project I ever done. Before the project starts, we spent some time sitting together know each other and see when we are available every week. And set up a basic project outline. We agreed that we do all the UX process and early prototyping together, then Sara will in charge of sketching the final interface and I will made a high fidelity prototyping based on that, while we doing those, Mia will run group walkthrough testing during all our changes.
Secondary Research
Understand the concept
We each go search for the concept of this project background, and summary them then share with each other. Therefore, we can have deeply understand of the project background.
What is 'today's hot topic'
As we sitting together, we thought we could also look at what are the hot topics of currently world. We could know what topic is causing the most intense discussion.
Concept interviews
As following the hot topics research, we explored them and choose these three main topics to design our interviews question.
Brainstorm interview question
Final interview question
Lots of interviews
Team power
Mental model
Interview domain
The challenge we were facing
Based our interview results, we found people won’t willing to step out of their comfort zone, especially online. They have no reason to change their mind or spend time listening to an argument that they don’t like or agree. We noticed that people are now lacking motivation to break the echo chambers and filter bubbles etc. We need to find a way to meet the behaviour of young people and the fast pace of today's society, to push them get in touch with different arguments and review their own speakings.
Define
Personas
As compare these two personas, we agreed David is the guy we are looking for!
Empathy Map
Ecosystem map
Competitor analysis
Inspirations​
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- proactive recommendation of opposite argument​
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- User threshold/Rules​
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- Rewards and punishments system
Looking for solutions
Problems
How Might We
Crazy 8s
Silent vote
Final solutions
VS bar
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Under each post in forum, we made a VS bar show the number of people supporting both views, which can most directly remind users to think critically
Sunflowers
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When users communicate, accept new points, be recognized by others and any other engagements in this application. They will get a ‘Sunflower’, that representing their active and positive behaviour in this online community.
Badge system
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As user reply, comment or post something under a specific topic, they will level up in this topic area. They will receive a badge that they can show it in their profile, as they attempt more in this area, they can level this badge. Therefore, they will have the motivation to communicate more, to think more.
Prototyping and testing
As we found the ways to solve the challenges, we start to make the basic wireflow and paper prototyping.
As we make our prototyping at home, the lockdown because of COVID-19 comes again. The resting of progress is back to online AGAIN.
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Anyway, we each made our version of prototyping and basic layout. And meeting together to make our final draft of layout.
Team production
Sara takes over all the sketching works, including colour, theme, fonts and UI structure.
After Sara finishes, I take over the file and do a high fidelity prototyping to try my best to achieve every feature we create.
While Sara and I working in progress, Mia run massive number of group through tests to make sure every UI structure and interface interaction is reasonable and loved by users.
Production showcase
Personal reflection and project summary
This is not my second time working on a group project, but the first one lasted less than a month.So, I could say this is my first time to participate in a full group project. Through this project, I had a clearer understanding of my position in a team, and I can spend more time to come up with interesting concepts if I don't need to draw UI, such as the badge system I came up with this time. Also, I can make some high fidelity prototypes more easily and efficiently.
As for this project, I really had good with Sara and Mia, we don’t know each other before the project but end up as good friends. I used my strengths of searching for information and prototyping, and came up with a core feature idea that contributed all I could to my group. I would say I enjoy the relaxing working atmosphere such as this time. But because this time I work with my classmates in University, I think working in real life design company won’t have such relaxing atmosphere. Anyway, I still look forward to doing a more formal and more complex in the future, with more group number as well.