Advocating for Social Justice Issues with Unity
SKILLS
Systems Thinking, Wireframing, Interactive Design, Protyping
RESPONSIBILITIES
Conducted user research and iterated on designs with a team of 4
DURATION
March 2021 - Present (TILE Designathon)
PROJECT SCOPE
As I recently transitioned from software development to design, I wanted to put myself in a situation where I would have to implement the design process from start to finish. Hence, I ended up at the TILE Designathon and teamed up with three individuals as we were able to design a solution for any current event over the course of 24 hours.
PROBLEM BRIEF
Ever since the pandemic began, many social issues were put under a microscope as the world saw various movements occur. From #blacklivesmatter to #asianlivesmatter, different races were getting targeted, but with the power of social media, people were able to voice their opinions and dismay of where the world currently stood. However, with social media, there is plenty of false information that gets posted as well, which can send the wrong message to someone who isn’t familiar with that particular social issue. Hence, we wanted to target this problem and ensure that people are getting their information from credible sources.
How might we involve people in reforming racial equality while educating them in the process?
OUR SOLUTION
We decided to design an app that will allow users to take action on different social justice issues while being able to learn about them at the same time.
USER RESEARCH
To get a better understanding of the situation and how to approach it, we began by conducting a survey about how educated people were on social justice issues and shared it with the TILE Designathon discord, where 50 people completed it. From this, we were able to get vital primary research and metrics out of it, which helped us figure out where to start. Some of our takeaways from this included the following:
The majority of participants relied on social media to learn about social issues and are decently informed about them as a result
Half of the participants believe that they aren’t doing enough to support the social causes that they care about
From this, over 50% believe that a lack of community engagement is preventing them from advocating
In terms of how advocacy in social cases can be made easier, the following options were chosen the most:
Having more educational resources made accessible
Being able to connect with other advocates
Knowing when there are opportunities to help
PERSONAS
With the personas, we were able to get a better understanding of the wants/needs of our primary users (one who wants to learn and get educated and one who is a part of an organization to inform people), as well as the pain points that they might have. This is critical because it allows us to see if either of the users addresses any concerns while they are on the path to advocate.
USER FLOWS
After getting a better understanding of our primary users, we went ahead and developed user flows that demonstrate how they would use our solution. During this process, we started to think of different features that we could incorporate into the application so hence, we were able to integrate that into the flows as well.
User Flow of a feature that allows the user to access educational resources
WIREFRAMING
Based on our user flows and user research, we developed wireframes for each of the main features that we planned on including. By doing this, it allowed us to get a better idea of the different layout options and design principles that we can incorporate into our hi-fi prototype.
DESIGN SYSTEM
In terms of visual identity, we wanted to incorporate vibrant colours as we wanted users to have a positive experience when using the app. We decided to try something different with selecting our palette as we would use the same colour twice, but with a reduced clarity (Hence, the “100%” and “50”% beside the colours.) Aside from that, we decided to use a font like Roboto since it allows for easy readability.
FIRST IDEATION (DESIGNATHON SUBMISSION)
With the initial wireframes that we had, we created a hi-fi prototype on Figma while using Adobe Illustrator for some of the designs. Throughout this process, we focused on the most important features, which are listed below.
Onboarding
With the onboarding process, users are able to understand the product, sign up with an account, and set up their personal preferences to allow for customized recommendations to populate the app.
Landing and Chat Pages
On the landing page, the user is able to view other user’s videos that have been posted and use the explore toggle to see a 360-degree view of current events. This creates empathy to let users explore the real world and encourages users to get out and see important landmarks for themselves.
In addition, if a user likes someone else’s content or wants to just have a chat, they are able to do so here both privately and in a community setting.
Discovery Page
With this page, the user is able to choose what topics interest them the most in the form of podcasts, audiobooks, videos, and movies.
Engage Page
Users can be aware of upcoming events in their area and participate in them if they want to. They can even donate to a particular organization of their choice in order to support their cause.
Rewards Page
Based on the user’s activity on the app, they can unlock rewards that will show up here. The more rewards they get, the more populated their world will be on the app, which will appear on the profile as well.
NEXT STEPS
Expand our user research by performing user interviews so that we have a better idea of how to improve the scope of the problem space and further enhance our understanding of the audience that we are designing for
Conduct usability testing by developing the app with various developers to see if our product solved the problem that we were targeting and collect data for feedback on how to improve it