Aakriti | UX Researcher & Designer
Rightway
The media industry is a creative sector that includes a variety of outlets and tools for storing and delivering information. This project aims to research on the majorly prevailing issue in the media industry and create a user friendly solution through design thinking process. This project's impact could bring filtered and verified news to the users' handy devices and provide them a way to eradicate fake news.
Project duration: July, 2024 - September, 2024
Empathize. Emerging from our pov to their pov.
When all the problems are in front of our eyes and to know which one of them is on the rise then what's better than creating a poll and getting to know it from the users themselves. The poll made it clear that 'Misinformation & Fake News' is the issue most of the users face. We further researched more.
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Quantitative research creates a ground of numerical data that makes it easy to be counted and measured. We created a google form and circulated among the people of different age groups. This helped us to draw numerical conclusions of the percentage of strugglers and the amount of mistrust subsisting in media industry due to misinformation. Through the attained quantitative data, it can be concluded that majority of people of the age group 19-24 encounter fake news or misinformation and many of them encounter it weekly. People have moderate to low trust in these sources for providing accurate information.
Questionnaire for Interview:
1. Can you describe a situation where you encountered fake news or misinformation?
Follow-up: How did you realize it was false?
2. How has the spread of fake news affected your trust in media or social platforms?
3. Has misinformation ever influenced your personal beliefs or decisions?
Follow-up: How do you think it did?
4. What steps do you take to verify the authenticity of the information you come across?
5. How do you rely on to identify misinformation?
6. How do you think social media platforms handle misinformation?
Follow-up: What could they do better?
7. What role should traditional media (e.g., newspapers, TV) play in countering fake news?
8. Why do you think people fall for fake news?
9. Do you think personal bias or beliefs influence the way people interpret and respond to misinformation?
10. What do you believe could be done to reduce or eradicate the spread of misinformation?
11. Have you ever shared something or received something on social media and later found it to be false?
Follow-up: How do you feel about it?
12. How has misinformation affected your interactions with family, friends or community?
13. Are you familiar with any fact-checking tools or websites?
Follow-up: Which one have you used and how effective do you find them?
14. What features or improvements would you suggest for tools or websites that aim to eradicate fake news to make them more effective for you?
To dive deep into the pain points, goals, emotions and thoughts of the users, we conducted interview with the ones who belonged to the age group 19-24. Through qualitative research, we discovered that misinformation has become a regular part of many people's online experiences. They seem to have less clue about what is true or false and also seemed confused regarding whether fact checking apps are a reliable source for them to believe or not; but they still seem to be sharing or witnessing non-crosschecked news to be surfacing all over online platforms through knowns or unknowns. To understand them better from their perspective, we moved on to the empathizing stage.
We gave the experiences of our target audience a simple storyline through visualization via sketched storyboard that was no less than an aid for us to feel the depth of the situation as those users could feel.
Define. Jotting the unsolved to be solve-able.
The framework that we followed to create a clear and concise problem statement is 5-Ws-and-Hs framework to have the answers for who, what, when, where, why and how to solve the identified issue for the users.
Who: The people who are into watching and reading news.
What: The issue they face revolves around the impact of fake news and misinformation being uploaded, shared, re-shared, and eventually spread.
When: The problem apparently occurs weekly.
Where: They might face this anywhere in the world, either through printed newspapers, television, mobile phones, laptops, social media, etcetera, as the news has different sources to reach out the audience.
Why: The identified issue is important to be addressed because it may incite panic, violence or discrimination; lead to erosion of trust; fuel ideological divides by creating echo chambers where people are exposed only to information that reinforces their views; influence political matters, elections, etcetera.
How: The users may avoid the trap of misinformation or fake news if they are given access to the tools of verification and report along with a safe source of providing them the news.
POV Statement: Amanda is a housekeeper who often witnesses the couple at the house arguing over the difference in various news articles as it is quite difficult to spot the true or false news because of which their situation often ends up with violence and erosion of trust, hence, influencing their personal relation.
Problem Statement: Users often find themselves surrounded by fake news and misinformation being uploaded, shared, re-shared, and eventually spread which reaches out to them through different sources of media apparently weekly, because of which, mistrust and troublesome situations conspicuously occur for them.
To bridge the gap between defining and ideating with a positive approach, we broke down the problem statement into simple questions of "How Might We:
- stop fake news or misinformation to reach out to the users so that they can be free from the false assumptions?
- prevent users from getting into troublesome situations due to fake news so that they can rely on media?
- provide a secured tool for users so that they can easily know which information is true?
- make it easier for the users to identify and report fake news or misinformation so that they don't fall for the trap?"
Ideate. Generating the solve-able variables.
Generating ideas at times can be easy or get over one's head. To get a head start in brainstorming, we used the technique Crazy 8s. This was conducted in 2 rounds to get a broad set of ideas that can be implemented.
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For everyone to be crystal clear about the prioritized ideas and fair decision of selection of the features, we moved further with dot voting, in which each participant had a specific colored dot which they had to put on the ideas that can be taken further for finalization.
Finalized Idea: A dedicated mobile app which shows the verified news directly from the initial sources and detects false news. If the app has the permitted access to other apps then it displays false news in red and verified news in green. It may also have an automated fine system if any uploaded news is reported to be fake by majority of users.
Prototype. Carving the variable into constant.
The main tasks of the dedicated mobile app are to provide verified news and also detect the suspicious news if the necessary permissions are allowed by the users. This app even allows the users to report the suspicious news and promises false-info free news delivery to them. We created an information architecture with carefully arranged organizational, search, labeling and navigation systems and referred it for creating simple and intuitive wireframes.
While creating wireframes, we had to be careful about the placement of elements and the main focus was providing 'ease of use' to the users. The wireframes were tested by the other designers and respective changes were made to enhance the wireframes with better changes followed by creating mockups of minimalist style.
