Woke - Designing a Platform for Productive Online Debate

Stephen Sandlin
Nov 7 · 7 min read

If you’ve ever seen an aggressive political argument on social media that made you let out a long sigh and close the website, this article speaks about an optimistic solution to that issue.

The mobile application, “Woke,” was designed to create a social media/game platform where users debate from both sides of a topic, creating an atmosphere that values understanding and honesty.

For my role as the sole UX/UI Designer for the Woke mobile application, a project with Ironhack Berlin, I was tasked with analyzing user research, finding commonalities between very different user personas, and developing a UX solution to the mobile application’s needs that would allow users from all backgrounds to meet on one social media platform and discuss their political, cultural, and social views with other users in a light-hearted debate atmosphere.

To accomplish this task, first I performed three types of research: quantitative general research (Pew Center research), targeted surveys (15+ responses), and personal interviews (20+ interviews). These resulted in four main findings with four key takeaways:

Stress Reduction

When discussing politics on social media, 59% of people find the experience to be stressful and frustrating. With this in view, the experience provided by the application should, if possible, allow for stress-free political dialogue.

Bilateral Approach

The majority of both Republicans (58%) and Democrats (60%) find it stressful to talk about politics on social media with people they disagree with. Although some may assume this app would target one side or the other, based on these nearly equivalent statistics there clearly exists a mutual need, illustrating that the application should be bilateral in its approach.

Counter Desirability Bias

64% of respondents believe people don’t speak their minds due to worries of being criticized for their opinions. This statistic indicates potential “social desirability bias” where users are afraid to share a view that contrasts popular opinion, resulting in public disengagement in the political sphere.

Social Involvement

79% of respondents believe social media helps get people involved in issues they care about and 74% believe social media brings new voices into the political discussion. With this as one of the positive points, it demonstrates the social involvement that the Woke is capable of facilitating if successful.

Laying the Groundwork

Onboarding and General Information

Mid-Fidelity Wireframes — Pre-testing
Finalized UI Screens with Swipe Info Pages

For a bilateral approach that embraces users from both sides of the political spectrum, the user interface design specifically tried to remain neutral, yet modern with a clean design that avoids too radical of a tone while also distancing from being too conservative. This was accomplished with a dark blue/orange color scheme matched with Futura typeface and a Washington monument as the central background image.

On the user experience side, however, in order to tackle the highest individual pain points related to stressful political dialogue and social desirability bias, Woke chose to shift exclusively to switch-side debating. Generally in debates, whether casual or serious, the focus is on one-sided debating: two debaters each align with a stance and defend it strongly. Switch-side debating is a bit different:

Switch Side Debating - Two users are given a debate topic and assigned roles of “Agree” and “Disagree.” They debate until the timer goes off. The timer resets and from there, they switch and argue from the opposite stance. By having the user debate both for and against a stance, the debate, therefore, values a comprehensive understanding of the issue over a firm argument from only one perspective.

For my research, not only did I collect quantitative data about user’s political opinions in regards to social media, but I also engaged in 20+ personal debates with different testers, covering many different topics ranging from light-hearted (pets, popular culture, foods) to more serious (immigration, human rights, healthcare).

Although it would seem that the more sensitive topics would cause higher stress, users followed up with feedback that actually showed the opposite:

Throughout the course of the UX design process, I continually tested these areas with users and made necessary adjustments to ensure the majority, minority, and even edge cases were all being equally involved, hence the split into two types of participants:

Active versus Passive Participation

Passive Participation: Watch

Passive Participation —Live Streaming Based on Filters/Categories

One of the most common themes in the personal interviews was hearing people say “I probably wouldn’t use this app to debate, but I’d be interested in watching other people debate.” This confirmed the popular 1% rule in internet culture (generally, only 1% of the users of a website actively create new content, while the other 99% of the participants only observe).

So how can the platform realistically maintain participation when the respondents and general research indicate an affinity towards passivity? The answer lies in properly valuing the input of viewership.

The original design focused on active participation, but after user tests emphasized otherwise, it was determined to redesign the home page to engage passive participants over active debaters, showing live streams that can be viewed. Viewers can also give points that will help the judge decide a winner, write comments, and choose to follow their favorite debaters.

Active Participation: Play

Active Participation — Different Play Options Based on the User’s Preferences

Despite the application’s main use as a live debate streaming app, however, active participants still need an enjoyable user experience in order to facilitate a stream of content. Therefore, since low-fi wireframe testers responded best to a home page split into two separate tabs for playing and watching, this was ultimately executed from mid-fi wireframes on to the final design.

With the “Play” tab, users were able to see a screen offering general rules, frequently asked questions, and options for online matches (with users partitioned into a judge role to award points), offline matches between friends, and practice matches without a judge.

Gamification Meets Social Media Platform

Profile Building and Interaction

For the application’s blend of gamification and social media, comparable to Twitch with the live streaming intertwined with users and followers, several different options were tested. Initially, the focus was on the gameplay aspect, but with the testers’ higher interest in watching rather than playing, this demanded a change to a social media platform.

To expand into a full-fledged social media platform where users can interact, follow their favorite streamers, and post content on their own page, a series of card sorting exercises with different testers proved what items would fit best into the user’s own profile editing page, the publically-visible profile page (see: Joe Biden profile), the listed teams page, and streaming leaderboard.

The card sorting exercises resulted in a detailed sitemap with a profile page containing setting options, personal posts, followed streamer posts, hashtag recognition, team status, and comment writing.

For the publically visible profile, a user can easily see whether they’re following another user and while they cannot post directly on that person’s wall, they can mention the user in their own posts to initiate a public conversation. The user’s debates are also shown in chronological order for archived viewing.

By integrating in this way, users found it more engaging to delve deeper into the application, moving from a superficial playing of the game to in-depth profile building and long-term engagement with posts and follows.

Team Status and Leaderboard with Filters

Though the social media aspects of the application can stand on their own, for the blend of game and social media platform, there was the inclusion of teams with exclusive team benefits and access to a private team wall. Not only would this help users connect with like-minded watchers, but it would also allow for players to have future team competitions.

For the leaderboard, this would also serve both the game aspect with the accumulated user points ranking top players and the social media aspect of popular streamers ranking in the most viewed even if they don’t win the most debates.

Next Steps and Outcomes

In future versions of the application, the current event potential would present a way to have users engaged in a more immediate way. For example, there could be a higher engagement by offering exclusive debate topics related to a country’s ongoing economic crisis, recent bill introduction, or even popular culture topics such as a new movie release.

This would relate to a “community” aspect of the application that would need to be user-tested in order to determine whether it should be a stand-alone section, a partition of the home page, or even an “events” section consolidated with the “teams” section.

In summary, by considering the full spectrum of users for a debate application, several factors were adjusted to allow for a bilateral approach, unbiased dialogue, and a low-stress atmosphere for the goal of higher social involvement and long term application usage.

Stephen Sandlin

Written by

UX/Product Designer at Spottr

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