I contributed to the overall design process as the design lead and mainly oversaw aspects related to product scoping, wireframes, and hi-fidelity mockups and prototyping.
In addition, I contributed to our secondary research and synthesizing these findings to produce our eventual proposed solution.
Pitch Deck. Pitch Video. One Pager.
4 Designers. 48 hours. Figma
In our brainstorm session, we opted to tackle educational inequality in the form of media literacy or lack thereof. A lack of media literacy in our American education system has left us ill-equipped with many falling down a treacherous rabbit hole.
One political movement and organization at the forefront of this is QAnon, found mostly within the alt-right sphere of the political spectrum. The problem here lies not with the conspiracy theorists themselves but their family members, distressed and concerned seeing their loved ones almost unrecognizable. Such theories have resulted in families being torn apart, others even resulting in violence and suicide.
With only a weekend to see this project to completion, we had no time for surveys or interviews, resorting to secondary research.
Those who had familial ties to those misinformed indirectly suffer; their loved ones continue to fall down the rabbit hole and they lose themselves. Confrontations around the subject matter often led nowhere and only bred more resentment and animosity.
While we were ultimately trying to promote media literacy, the nature of the problem was an interesting one.
It would be a tall order to convince conspiracy theorists themselves of their misinformed path. It’s a fair assumption to say most people do not actively seek misinformation intentionally but instead believe what they are told under the guise that it is the truth.
We felt competitors acting in this space were either preaching to the choir or their voices were falling on deaf ears. With confirmation bias in play, we wanted to make sure our users were instead the friends and family members affected indirectly by such misinformation.
Competitors such as Checkology presented themselves as free e-learning platforms, providing educational material and activities to help identify credible information.
However, with our users in mind, we felt compelled to also treat QAnonCasualties as a direct competitor and study how they operated in this space as a support group. There was room for opportunity here; to take QAnonCasualties and scale it into something that could stand on its own.
Comparing this to other media literacy organizations like Checkology, we felt like we had a different approach in promoting media literacy. We wanted to equip our users with the knowledge and resources to have more productive conversations with their loved ones. Asking conspiracy theorists to be the ones to engage with and learn this material themselves may put them on the defensive.
Through our users, they act as the intermediary for more healthy dialogue. In comparison to QAnonCasualties, we wanted a resource that was more than just a subreddit community, as helpful as that may be. Something to stand alone on its own and grow into something more.
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This was my first design hackathon and I'm grateful for this short but rewarding 48-hour experience. Having much less time to work with, this blitz was great in learning how to prioritize. Some parts of the process were going to be left out and that's okay.
