Providing young adults the tools and resources to foster a healthier social media experience.
Role
team
advisors
Timeline
client
UX Researcher UX Designer
Hillary Soletic Awanee Joshi
Roger Mader Criswell Lapin Julius Tapper Darshana Nair Kinza Kasher
Sept-Dec 2021
Deloitte Digital (Doblin)
overview
In light of recent whistleblower exposés, we explored the harmful implications of social media on young adults' mental health to reimagine what [a small corner of] social media might look like through a more socially responsible lens.
Responsibilities
Liaison between team & sponsor
Research
Prepare & Conduct Interviews
Synthesis & Ideation
Prototyping & User Testing
Storyboarding Solution
Project summary
The problem
Social media companies have not done enough (and not quickly enough) in reaction to the mental health crisis their products have spawned.
of 18-29 year-olds use at least one social media platform.
of 18-25 year-olds report mental illness. These age groups also report high social media usage.
That 25% accounts for
4.99 million people
With so many people’s mental health at stake...
how might we help social media companies become more socially responsible for their users’ well-being?
The Solution
A set of plugins that seamlessly integrate into social media platforms–granting users the ability to take control in counteracting harmful mental health effects without altering the original user experience of the platform.
design strategy
Vision vs. scope
Because the scope of this issue is so vast, we decided to zero in on one specific platform, issue, and sub-issue category to most clearly demonstrate our solution.
Focus: Body Image
high fidelity plugins
Insight
"Instagram knows so much about me, but I don't know that much about it."
solution
1. Know your usage
View breakdown of categories to better understand who you're following.
Insight
“Problems from social media have a way of affecting me even when I’m offline.”
solution
2. See your plugins
This new icon houses all of your wellbeing plugins.
Insight
“I don’t want to unfollow my friends, but I also don’t want to see certain parts of their lives.”
Solution
3. Curate your newsfeed
Personalize a plugin’s settings to constrain certain kinds of content in your newsfeed.
Insight
“These Instagram influencers always look so good, but it's not necessarily always true. Sometimes they photo edit their photos.”
Solution
4. Filter Transparency
View the filters and edits that have been applied to a particular image on your newsfeed.
Insight
“It’s so easy to forget that people only show the highlights of their lives on social media.”
Solution
5. Find Support
Provide reminders about social media's impact on mental health and links to resources for users that might be struggling more than others.
The approach
design process
Roger Mader's 4D Design Process converges and diverges to identify the project goal, discover user needs, design the optimal solution, and deploy for the greatest market impact.
the ask
Project charter
We started the project by making a project charter to document the brief given to us by our sponsors at Deloitte.
primary research
Asking the Right Questions
To gain insight into the companies, we interviewed 4 Experts in the field of social media and big tech; as well as 7 end users to understand people’s usage patterns and inflicted problems.
7 End Users (18-24 y/o)
interview goals
What would the ideal (healthy, engaging) social media look like to young adults?
What does “socially-responsible” tech means to young adults?
Are there any deal-breakers that would stop their social media usage?
What companies/institutions do people associate with being socially-responsible?
4 Experts (designers working in social media & big tech)
interview goals
Their perspective on social responsibility of social media platforms
Their current design process and potential frameworks for socially responsible design
How do company goals affect their process and outlook
synthesis
Key insights
01 Awareness = Sustenance
When it comes to social media’s toxicity, who is to blame? Well, the answer is twofold: both the algorithm and its users are at fault.
02 Share the Blame
Social media companies only take action when their reputation is at stake–which means large-scale user awareness prompts change.
03 Issues are Relative
No two users are the same. Everyone experiences different issues on social media; and because user well-being is so nuanced, the solution must be highly customizable.
04 Intrusion vs. Intervention
There’s a fine line between intrusion and intervention. Content that may be triggering to one person, may be content another person is seeking out.
Prevalent issues
Prevalent issues across all major platforms can be summarized into 6 defining categories.
Mental Health
Privacy Protection
Time Consumption
Community Wellness
Content Moderation
Information Verification
Defining Personas
Based on our bucketed characteristics from interviews, we were able to categorize users into four distinct personas:
*Our solution is based on Content Consumer #1, as much of our research found young women to be exceptionally vulnerable while on social media.
DESIGN STRATEGY
10 types of innovation
We utilized Doblin's 10 Types of Innovation as a diagnostic tool to understand where the industry's deep-seated problems arise, as well as to discover new opportunities for viable, altruistic change.
Not all interventions were viable due to profit margins, therefore we decided to focus on the areas of Product Performance in order to make the biggest impact on user wellbeing.
5-E UX Journey
Solution Objective
design
balance website
The first part of our solution is the Balance website, which provides social media users information about the myriad problems on the platforms, as well as access to download the plugins.
Business model
how this would work
The service will run as a B2B, enterprise model; reliant on social media companies granting Balance permission access to their APIs. We will have an initial 6 month period with Instagram, and after those 6 months, Balance would hold the rights to sell those same features and functions to other platforms.
Learnings
The Power of specificity & Testing
Due to the nature of our brief, a great deal of our time was spent researching. Intent on understanding this problem from various perspectives, we were often completely overwhelmed by the web of issues at play. We hit so many roadblocks, it often felt like one step forward, two steps back. Where we found respite, however, was when we began to down and focus on only one particular issue.
Another big takeaway was the value of usability testing from the very start of our ideation and wireframe stage. It helped us realize our assumptions early on–making our design decisions more robust.
