Veritas
An avatar based intervention against misinformation by Gaby Gayles, Dylan Smith, Asit Parida, Katherine Jiang, Katelyn Duncan, Lena Li
We are designing an avatar based game to empower folks against misinformation. As they progress through the game, they learn to look at content critically. We are employing multiple persuasive design strategies like fictionalization and obfuscation. We relied on embedded game design in order to avoid reactance from users which generally manifests when people have their actions and beliefs challenged. We look to build upon our understanding of goal pursuit and persuasion through communication to mitigate dissonance created by the “fake” news around us.
Anything that’s secret, clandestine, loaded with such a supercargo of speculation, misinformation, disinformation and, for that matter, accurate revelations, creates an appetite.
Charles McCarry on why fake news seems so appealing
Why are we doing it?
No wonder that dictionary.com’s word of year for 2018 is “misinformation”. The rampant spread of “fake” news is giving individuals a difficult time consuming information around them. It doesn’t help that such events, in themselves, generate malformed cognitions so consonant with our beliefs that we fail to see through them. There is no doubt that such content is created with a malicious intent by those with ulterior motives but the propagation of this content has to be attributed to our own social circles. We simply believe that the news is true because we trust the source i.e. a friend of ours who re-tweeted or shared the article from somewhere (ELM). In fact, misinformation, as a concept, has been in existence for centuries. It’s only with the ubiquitous social media channels that the such news content has started spreading with people susceptible to their own confirmation bias and belief disconfirmation. And with the current polarising political climate around the world, people tend to seek out and believe information which aligns with their currently help attitudes and beliefs without looking critically examining it.
How are we doing it?
Generative Methods: We started with our literature review for the topic wherein we focused on instances of mishaps arising out of misinformation and went through research papers on the topic. For e.g. , from studies such as Containment of Misinformation Spread in Online Social Networks by Nguyen et al., we learned about the different pathways people receive misinformation and important characteristics of misinformation, especially in the form of blurbs that are “convenient”, “efficient”, and “trustworthy” sources. We also conducted research on virtual pet games and found they can serve as a catalyst for behaviour change.
Evaluative Methods: The brainstorming sessions put us on a path towards a tamagotchi-like game concept where users take care of fictional, virtual, and animated creatures.Through taking care and generating affinity for the personalised creature, we designed the game to show that misinformation can affect individuals directly, and even cause harm. Our initial user-testing results (think aloud sessions) with our paper-prototyping helped us validate the need we were addressing.
I loved decorating the creature.
— Participant testing our paper prototype
I think it’s fun and learning how to care for your worble seems like it’ll be really entertaining. I like that you receive misinformation and I assume that some information you receive will be accurate because otherwise I will realize everything everyone tells me is a lie .
— Participant during a think-aloud test session
What are we making ?
We created a fictional world in which users are given a creature, affectionately called a Worble, to take care of. Throughout the course of the game, users receive information from friends in their pet community on how to take care of their Worble. Some of the information is true and will help their Worble grow and develop, and some of the information is false which makes the Worble sick. Users accelerate their experience points as they correctly differentiate between the true and false information. Their Worble levels up, gaining skills and becoming cuter.
- Introduce the player to our fictional world and the avatar based creature in their care.
- Personalize your avatar and the creature we start taking care of during the gameplay.
- Raise the creature by engaging with in-app activities which teach them new tricks and gain experience points (XP) through levelling up.
- Interact with simulated characters in the game, conversing with them, participate in activities and build trust.
- Train users to look at news critically by having them validate information they receive from the virtual pet community.
- Incentivise users to keep playing the game over time.
What did we learn?
Fleshing out gameplay and character development takes time but is quite vital to get your message across effectively. The artifacts did get more refined as we progressed through our design iterations. For most of us, this was our first brush with game design and the process was exhilarating as we were able to apply teachings directly from our Persuasive Design class into our intervention.
Game design is so hard …. I will get it done nonetheless !
- Katelyn Duncan, project contributor
We’ll continue to build the game. So much more to add here later …
Credits
Special thanks to Geoff Kaufman, Professor of Persuasive Design at Carnegie Mellon University for his mentorship throughout the design process.
