.png){kind=logo}
How might we be able to improve upon X’s current features to encourage media literacy?
ui/ux design
redesign
Currently the polarization of society is ever prevalent on social media. How might we be able to improve upon X’s current features to encourage media literacy?
Through expanding contextualization and encouraging users to be critical and empathetic of the social media’s narratives, it can be transformed into a positive environment
5 wk redesign
Solo UX exploration
Figma
“Media literacy is the active inquiry and critical thinking about the messages we receive and create.”- Professor of Communication Studies at Rhode Island College, Renee Hobbs
Media literacy is the contextualization of how differing world views cause others to interpret the same piece of content differently. It is the act of understanding how multiple perspectives effect of how others make sense of the world.
Elon describes X’s purpose as “a service for friends, family, and coworkers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages.” However, X (formerly Twitter) has known to be a space for discourse and news in addition to pure entertainment
- Digital News Report
Twitter is a strong platform with 4.6+ rating on iOS and 520 million+ active users. To start my research I decided to view different reviews with varying filters in order to gauge a general idea of strengths and weaknesses the users experience.
I created a competitor analysis to analyze how global platforms are engaging to tackle this problem.
This gave me perspective of which methods were most popular and the effect that they had.
In order to get a larger understanding of how users feel about X’s approach towards media literacy, I conducted 2 semi-structured interviews and a survey with 32 responses
thought current approaches such as Community Notes creates further misinformation and divide
of respondents do not feel X is a comfortable space to express opinions or have productive debates
relied on user discussion for determining what they would consider to be fake news
agreed there was a need to encourage media literacy
Rather than media literacy, X focuses more on the idea of free speech. I researched competitor tactics and X's current features learn how problems such as information are being addressed and how my solutions could integrate with current features.
Gives readers a notice and/or share additional context with them. They describe this "includes media that is significantly and deceptively altered, manipulated, or fabricated." Labeled posts are subject to reduced visibility.
Certain users can report posts for hate, abuse & harassment, child safety, privacy, spam, sensitive or disturbing media, and deceptive identities. Since fall of 2023, the misinformation report has been taken down
Community Notes participants can write a note with additional information, to provide public context on a post that is misleading. Anyone can fact-check a post, and if enough people upvote it, then their note will be appended to the original post.
- David Rand, Professor of MIT Sloan School of Management
1. The current solutions towards aiding media literacy is encouraging polarized views
Features such as community notes are not being regulated transparently causing individuals to note on tweets that “don’t feel right” rather than encourage active research.
2. X is being used for a variety of uses such as entertainment, online debates, and news which is all being addressed under the same solutions
The split uses of X is causing more discontent as users voices who claim their content is purely for entertainment are being censored or certain individuals who share unpopular views feel as though their voices are silenced.
3. Media literacy is not the focus
Rather than encouraging critical or productive thinking, X’s current features encourage popular votes and low bar in participating in community notes. It cater’s towards a majority overrules mindset.
The goal was to encourage empathy and contextualization to users with differing views.
With this in mind I created designs that could not only stop misinformation but encourage sharing ideas that are not weaponized.
Intentions may not be recognized through text. By allowing users to interpret in a way the post was meant, miscommunication can be limited and healthy conversation encouraged.
This includes new features such as:
1. Choosing labels such as "Just for fun" or "Persuade" openly invites interaction and will not be subject to Community Notes.
2. The "Inform" and "Other" labels are taken as fact or news. These are subject to Community Notes. This way users are able to decipher if they choose to support this source or not with plentiful context.
3. This feature of labelling can be turned off from visibility anytime.
Posts with the inform label will have additional layers of information to be helpful for convenient analysis.
This includes new features such as:
1. A credibility score rated by Community Notes members
2. A heat map linked with articles supporting or arguing any portion of the post
3. Full transparency of Top Rated, Random, and Most Recently written notes.
Although community notes is completely anonymous because X aimed to allow comfortable contributions, incentivizing users and allowing them to choose not to be anonymous allows them to take accountability and continuously contribute
This includes new features such as:
1. A mentorship status that guides new users to write thoughtful notes determined by the current writing impact score
2. A badge that rewards top contributors that can be shown not anonymously if selected
This project had a prompt that I truly cared about which made me increasingly appreciate the process.
Here are some thoughts that I will take on with the rest of my UX journey.
One of the key problems identified through my research was consistent mixed reactions to X's current tactics. If my features were to be implemented, understanding how to possibly analyze the effectiveness would unlock a deeper understanding to solving the media literacy problem.
Community Notes uses a bridge-based algorithm meaning they reward users that have upvotes by users that disagreed with their points previously. Exploring how we could reward users who appeal to diverse perspectives and designing with the algorithm in mind could unlock more solutions.
With more resources and time I would have liked to pursue a fully working prototype that connected the ideated solutions together. This way I could convey a full and more realistic experience.
This project had a prompt that I truly cared about which made me increasingly appreciate the process.
Here are some thoughts that I will take on with the rest of my UX journey.
This project led to research about people who had very opposing views than mine. Designing with the intent to create the user's experience better for a wide range of demographics helped me exercise my own empathy skills as a product designer.
Overall, creating the redesigns were simple because X has a strongly established design system. However, I felt as though it continuously restricted the amount of freedom I could take in order to create features that felt plausible to being on the real app.
