Fakestagram HQ
A Gamified Experience to Highlight Worst Practices of Social Media Platform Design Background
Team
Sayan Chaudhry (Project Manager) Ipsita Mallick (Design Lead) Onyekachi Nwabueze (Research Lead)
Role
User research, UX/UI Design, Persuasive Design Techniques, Low-high Fidelity Prototypes, Visual Design
Timeline
October - December 2020 (7 Weeks)
Overview
The Problem
Over the past decade, social media platforms have become mainstream. Most social media platforms use an ad-based revenue model and are incentivized to have to maximize user engagement.
This often comes at a significant cost to the users’ productivity and mental health. In order to capture more of the users’ attention for longer, platforms use dark patterns to mislead or trick users into doing things they did not intend to.
Some examples of this include endless, uninterrupted feeds of content, push notifications asking you to check new posts, and making it difficult to delete your account.
Fakestagram HQ
Fakestagram HQ is a mobile game designed to teach players about dark patterns, data privacy/security and make them conscious of their usage time of social media platforms in an interactive manner.
Modelled after Instagram’s UI, Fakestagram HQ charts a heroic journey through various levels of quest to destabilize the headquarters of Fakestagram. In each level, the player has to navigate their way around a specific dark pattern commonly used on social media platforms.
Persuasive Design
The game is inspired by the principles of embedded design and social proof to make the gameplay more compelling and engaging.
It draws on concepts of inoculation theory and cognitive dissonance theory to make people better at spotting and avoiding dark patterns, which can make social media platforms a better place.
Process
Define
Topic Definition
We started by broadly defining the domain we would research and propose a design intervention and persuasive outcomes:
Use of Dark Patterns in Social Media
Impact on users’ Mental Health due to High Screen Times
Users’ knowledge & concerns on Data Privacy/Security
Even though social media platforms are ubiquitous, people are very ambivalent about their impact on society. In order to increase their revenues, social media platforms compromise users’ privacy and adopt design patterns that are in dissonance with the users’ well being.
Target Demographic
According to Business Insider’s article, a troubling the depression rates among Young Adults in the age group of 20-25 years has increased the most in the past decade.
Thus, for our design intervention we chose our target demographic as Young Adults:
Recent graduates and people in their mid 20s
Going through massive changes in lifestyle
Re-evaluating how they want to spend their time
Re-evaluating their relationship with technology
Literature Review
We reviewed academic research papers to find the issues related to dark patterns and data privacy. Here are some of the findings:
Focus Groups
We conducted a metaphor exercise by recruiting 9 participants in 3 focus groups to help surface the ways participants think, feel, or behave in regard to specific concepts related to “Social Media”.
They were presented with images representing metaphors. For each of the concepts, the participants skimmed through all of the images in the set and reasoned, if any metaphor resonated with them in regard to that specific concept.
Below are some metaphors participants chose as a pattern:
Finding a Niche
On Personalized Ads
“I feel like advertisements zero in on this as you spend more time on the internet the ads become more specific to the user”
On Social Media Use
“Depending on the social media platform you use, the algorithms then deliver tailored content specific to, or related to your preferred niches and communities.”
A Balancing Act
On Social Media Use
“People kind of walk the line with how they present themselves and how they want to be viewed potentially.”
On Data Privacy
“I feel it is a balancing act because of my own relationship with seeing the value of more data on people having benefits but also potentially an invasion of privacy.”
An Overgrown Greenhouse
On Personalized Ads
“There are just so many advertisements on my social media feed!”
On Screen Time
“It’s always something that is overdone or people spend too much time using screens... The fact that it is overgrown [in the image] shows that a lot of the wrong attention is given to screens.”
User Interviews
We interviewed 6 participants who were frequent users of social media (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, etc.). Some of the questions we asked were:
Social Media & Implications on Mental Health
How often would you say you use social media? What platforms do you use?
Do you have a preferred type or platform of social media? Why is it your favorite?
How do you expect to feel after using social media (immediate rewards/consequences)? Does this differ when using different platforms?
Have you ever taken a “social media break”? Why or why not?
Data Privacy & Advertisement Tracking
How do you think Advertising Tracking works? What do you think about that based on your understanding (how does that make you feel)?
What kinds of data do you think should be kept private or hidden from the public internet?
Have you ever been hesitant about posting or sharing anything on social media? Why or why not?
Insights from User Interviews
Persuasive Outcomes
#1 Encourage users to be more mindful of their use of social media
#2 Make users aware of the negative effects on mental health due to social media dark patterns
Ideation
Future Thinking
In the ideation stage, the team utilized “The Thing from the Future,” a design tool created by Stuart Candy (head of the Situation Lab at CMU) and Jeff Watson. This exercise is an imaginative game that challenges designers to “come up with the most entertaining and thought-provoking descriptions of hypothetical objects from different near-, medium-, and long-term futures.”
Concept Pitches
Additionally, to further brainstorm, each team member came up with 10 ideas related to the problem space, which were then dot voted into final 3 concepts pitched to the entire cohort. Here are the concepts we pitched.
We pitched the three ideas to our cohort and asked them to vote as well as offer suggestions for future iterations.
After analysing voting results, pitfalls of each option, and critiques received from faculty, the team decided to go ahead with “The Frustration Game” idea.
Concept Evaluation
To evaluate the final idea, the team utilized Tarot Cards of Tech, a design tool created by the design consulting firm Artefact, as a means of future visioning, which encouraged us to think through the potential consequences of our design and to iterate based on the insights gained through this exercise.
Make the game as accessible and easy to understand through consideration of the medium and context in which the game is found and played.
Consider different use cases to ensure the game elements are easy to understand by using a variety of cognitive/sensory cues, heuristics and providing flexibility in the game environment which is tested with a diverse set of users.
Since the game is a learning tool, we have room to create an experience that provides valuable resources to all users about concepts surrounding social media usage, dark patterns, and data security.
Provide a pro-social media perspective as we move forward in our defining process.
Our project could raise awareness about how social media platforms exploit human biases, making players cognizant of these facts can make them less vulnerable to them.
We recognize the impact this can have on software engineers and product designers making them more accountable for the technologies they create.
Develop
(Prototyping & Testing)
Lo-Fidelity Wireframes & Sketches
We used paper prototypes for our initial design iterations and low-fidelity mockups of our game.
We were exploring ways to deliver a game-like experience that users can easily become familiar with and find engaging.
Initial User Feedback
Challenging to learn a new gaming user-interface.
Enjoyed being able to select levels and see their progress as they advance.
Mid-Fidelity Prototypes
For our medium-fidelity prototype, we decided to pivot and use a familiar social media user interface (Instagram) to reduce the learning curve of the game’s basic functions.
We also added a character (Instabot) to enhance the storytelling aspect that users found helpful in understanding the game’s objective. We also introduced animations and flows in this stage.
User Testing
People resonated with the visual design of the game
There was a need for microinteractions as some reported feeling lost after tapping an object and not receiving any interactive feedback from the game.
High-Fidelity Prototypes
The goal of our high-fidelity prototype was to mimic, as close as possible, a finished game. We designed two levels for user testing purposes. We hoped to receive feedback on the overall game functions, feel, and flow.
User Testing
Participants reported understanding the concept of a gamified learning experience, but feeling that the language used was too high-level and hard to comprehend for all audiences.
Many users not being able to justify their reasons for downloading the game or playing it in the first place. Users reported feeling frustrated by the lack of clear direction and overall player goal.
Final Iteration
We addressed our feedback by adding a storyline and a clear game objective to our design by implementing the player’s goal of proving their worth to Instabot, that they are fit to destabilize Fakestagram HQ.
To make our game more inviting and exciting we changed the name of our game from ‘The Frustration Game’ to ‘Fakestagram HQ’ - the fictional ‘Instagram’ back-end space imagined as a the app’s headquarters where Dark Patterns are controlled and deployed.
Guerrilla user-testing revealed that players felt more engaged with the game after these changes. Other minor design changes included:
Reducing the amount of text on single screens
Providing more hints and user-friendly help in each level
a shift in the visual design to make the game more appealing to players
Play Fakestagram HQ!
[click the screen to begin]
How is Fakestagram HQ Persuasive?
Embedded Design
A compelling storytelling format that embeds learning objectives implicitly through Instabot’s friendly character arc and a creatively thought out mission to distance the gameplay from the persuasive intentions.
The game stealthily reveals its educational intentions to not interrupt the enjoyment of the game.
Social Proof
Players can share their performance and insights on dark patterns at the end of each level.
Viewing other people’s performance to overcome dark patterns can serve as social proof and provide competitive drive to motivate players and make new players feel inclined to try it out. Thus, more people can learn about how to avoid dark patterns in real life.
Inoculation Theory
Inoculation theory suggests the human mind can build immunity to persuasive messaging by pre-exposure to controlled versions.
Each level in the game exposes an exaggerated, inconsequential and weaker version of dark patterns in a fictional setting which reduces players’ vulnerability to dark patterns in real life, like a ‘psychological vaccine’ against manipulative or deceptive design patterns.
Cognitive Dissonance
As players learn how dark patterns flood social media platforms they might want to re-evaluate their relationship with them. It creates dissonance between their in-game persona and goals and their real-life engagement with social media platforms.
We also hope that in response to this induced hypocrisy, developers and designers might also face dissonance to start making design decisions that avoid the use of dark patterns.
Learnings & Takeaways
More Testing = More Insights? Not Always!
We conducted testing with 12 participants over 4 rounds and there were a lot of overlaps in the user feedback, which was helpful to validate ideas at various stages. However, looking back we got the most useful feedback only after we created (or what we thought was) the hi-fidelity prototype, leading us to some major changes in the final version.
In a professional setting where specific budgets are assigned for user testing, it is better to carefully think about the fidelity of the prototype, create specific goals when testing features, how many tests to conduct and at what critical stages.
Experimentation is Key
This project exposed me to multiple new methods in the research and ideation stages, which were fun and also critical in deriving insights, incorporating every team member’s inputs or ideas and thus improving the quality of concepts and deliverables we came up with.