Designing CAUSE: Social Media Design from Conception to Mock-ups
The Vision: The Challenges of an Atypical Social Media Design
CAUSE is, in many ways, a unique kind of social network. Where Facebook, Instagram and Twitter serve a variety of interests, CAUSE centres itself around activism alone. Because CAUSE has a discrete focus on activism, many of the features and much of the functionality common to more traditional platforms would be inappropriate.
For example, a core tenet of CAUSE is data privacy. We achieve high levels of data protection and privacy by minimising the amount of data we ask from the user during onboarding. Sensitive data, like your password, is then encrypted beyond the possibility of internal access. During onboarding, CAUSE only requires a username, display name and password. We do not ask for identifying information like your email or even name.
CAUSE subverts traditional understandings of how a social network can operate. This presents certain challenges in the social media design process. Certain pre-conceived ideas needed to be thrown out, in favour of features and functionality that benefit activists. Our vision for CAUSE rests on three principles: data security, modernised community building, and physical safety through visibility. Each of these principles subvert the traditional Facebook model of a generalist social media platform. Where Facebook maximises its collection of data points on users, we minimise and encrypt; where Instagram is centred around the power of the individual user, CAUSE is centred around the power of Actions (real events calling for change in the real world) rather than users themselves; where Twitter does nothing to protect the physical safety of its activist users, CAUSE provides mechanisms that ensure every activist is afforded a baseline of visibility and confidence.
Conception: High-Level Network Map
We worked with an award-winning Ukrainian design agency to produce CAUSE’s wireframes. While cognisant of the key differences in features and functionality between CAUSE and more generalist social networks, one of our chief aims is to make using CAUSE a familiar experience. We want it to be as easy as possible to get involved with change-making: that’s why ease-of-use, familiarity and accessibility are front and centre of our design efforts.
The initial design process starts at a high-level: painting, with broad brush strokes, key elements of user experience. Gradually the details are shaded in as the process pivots towards user interface design. The process started with a high-level map of CAUSE. This map demonstrates, in broad terms, the features and entities in the Network. Notably, it begins to flesh out how these entities might interact with each other. Importantly, some of these details have changes. For example, we have removed the name, surname, country and city fields in the “Edit Profile” section.
The Feel: User Experience
One of the objectives of this high-level map was to identify many of the features and individual entities that would need to be designed and, eventually, implemented. From here, we graduated to the ‘UX’ component of CAUSE’s design process. User Experience (UX) design determines the way features and entities interact with each other. It is a crucial step towards developing a usable platform: a good UX design will translate to a comfortable, familiar and intuitive experience on the app.
The objective of CAUSE’s UX design was the production of simple wireframes. These wireframes dictate the flow of the platform: from one screen to another, and from one feature to the next. The wireframes themselves begin to resemble pages of an app but, quite intentionally, they are absent of any sense of individuality. The real purpose of the wireframes is not to demonstrate beautiful design. Rather, the wireframes wrap CAUSE’s functionality neatly together to demonstrate how a user can cleanly and easily navigate through the platform’s features.
Mock-ups: User Interface
Once CAUSE’s user experience design had undergone a number of iterations, converting the bare UX wireframes into beautiful high-fidelity mock-ups was all that remained. It was at this stage that CAUSE started to come together as an app. With wireframes complete all the now remains is building the platform in code.
We are working hard to bring you the first iteration of CAUSE. We’re calling it the “Demonstration Product”. Its purpose is to stress-test some of the core features and functionality. Although this Demo Product won’t be a live release, it’ll be an opportunity for you to voice your opinions and alter the course of development. If you’re an activist and interested in CAUSE, we want to talk to you! By joining the platform’s waitlist, you’ll be one of the first to try out CAUSE for yourself.
