Assignment 1: Social Media Needfinding ​

Planning ​

Theme ​

Misinformation is a huge problem in most forms of modern social media. How might I design a social media app that focuses on misinformation and disincentives it?

Interview Questions ​

1. How often do you use social media?
2. What are the primary reasons you use social media?
3. What kind of misinformation have you experienced while using social media?
4. What are the personal consequences of this misinformation?
5. Has it affected your relationship with anyone close to you?
6. Has it affected your worldview, or how you experience the world around you?

Interview Plan ​

Interview a college student

Interview a middle-aged person

Interview 1 (College student) ​

Raw notes ​

• Uses social media daily for at least 2 hours a day
• Uses social media to look at memes, talk to friends, and find information about special interests
  • Looks at memes on Instagram
  • Talks to friends on Instagram and Discord
  • Looks at Pokémon information/news on Twitter
• Commonly sees misinformation, but it’s usually in the form of memes and is easy to distinguish from the truth
• Talked about how they would discuss misinformation with their friends with the potential that it was true
  • Sometimes someone would look it up and find it to be false
    • This happened with some graphs and statistics they found, the sample size that the stats were produced from was very small
  • Other times no one would look it up and it was just talked about, which resulted in two options
    • Denying it because it disagreed with known facts
      • This happened with some election
    • Agreeing with it because it agreed or did not disagree with known facts
• Talked about how being exposed to misinformation made them more wary of other misinformation
  • Due to finding out when some information is actually misinformation, the interviewee was slightly more likely to check information that seemed strange or did not fit into their understanding of the world

Summary ​

The first interview used social media primarily as a communication tool. They have limited trust in the truthfulness of the information presented online, likely due to growing up from a very young age with the technology and the large exposure to memes and ironic/post-ironic/meta-ironic comedy while using the internet. This likely built an expectation for false information to be presented truthfully, giving somewhat of an immunity towards some kinds of misinformation. There were two kinds of exceptions to this. First, when talking to friends. This is likely due to the trust built between them over months or years that naturally happens. Second, when participating and communicating in a community related to their special interests, which includes Pokémon. This is likely due to the human nature of relating to others that share similar interests.

Interview 2 (Middle-aged person) ​

Raw notes ​

• Uses social media at least weekly, sometimes daily
• Uses social media to keep up with friends, learn about the world, and see news
  • Keeps up with friends using Facebook
  • Learns about the world and sees news on Instagram and TikTok
• Sometimes sees misinformation, but it’s presented as the truth
• Talked about how misinformation caused them to get into an argument
  • The other person was correct, but because of the trust the interviewee had in their online source they refused to acknowledge that they could been incorrect
  • Arguments like this happened multiple times without the interviewee realizing this, causing some strain in their relationships
  • Many of these arguments were about political topics, or were brought back to political topics through relevance to current hot button issues
• In some instances, the interviewee would realize they were wrong, usually after a fairly long argument
• Talked about how being exposed to misinformation made them slightly more wary of other misinformation
  • However, in some instances, it seemed like the interviewee would be more vulnerable to some kinds of misinformation
  • One example is misinformation about vote-by-mail ballots and the accuracy and security of them

Summary ​

The second interviewee used social media primarily as an information gathering tool, which is significantly different to the first interviewee. They also have much more trust in the information presented online, as can be seen by how it has personally affected their relationships with people close to them. This is likely due to generalizating trusting normal news sources to trusting internet news sources. The trust placed in this misinformation caused multiple arguments with family members, most especially their children. Their children seem to have a more liberal worldview, while the interviewee has a more conservative worldview. While this would lead to discussions sometimes as would be expected, the inclusion of misinformation that the interviewee was confidently incorrect about caused the discussions to escalate into arguments. They would also share posts with misinformation not knowing that the post contained misinformation, opening others up to seeing and potentially believing it.

Design Opportunities ​

• Let users know if a post contains misinformation, along with information about why it is incorrect.
  • This would reduce the spread of misinformation primarily within the app and reduce the spread of misinformation when speaking in real life as a secondary effect.
• Let users gives feedback on the truthfulness of information contained in a post.
  • This would allow users who know a post is true to also let other users know the post is true, and vice verse for posts that are false. For example, this could help Interviewee 1 to tell others that a post about a particular Pokémon is false, helping others who also have a special interest in Pokémon.
• Prioritize showing users more truthful information in some cases, such as news, medical posts, and recipes.
  • This would reduce the amount of posts that users see where the misinformation could be harmful to themselves or others, while still allowing comedic posts and memes to be unaffected. For example, this could help Interviewee 2 to see less political misinformation while still allowing Interviewee 1 to share memes with their friends.
• Provide resources to the users to be able to identify misinformation more easily, such as tools within the social media app or short training courses/videos.
  • This would allow users to identify and avoid misinformation within posts more easily. For example, this would help Interviewee 2 to achieve a higher level of inoculation against misinformation that Interviewee 1 already has due to irony/post-irony/meta-irony exposure.