Designing for critical change
Rachel Farn, Rachel Glasser, and Yoon Young Kim
Spring 2020
January 15, 2020: In-class activities
Framing the problem:
In order to narrow down our problem scope we did a framing the problem activity answering a series of questions to see where in the problem area we really wanted to focus in on.
Top Five (listing out the top five ideas from each member):
To get into ideating right away, we each brainstormed a series of ideas to see how we can tackle the different issues of fake news.
Stakeholders map (draft)
The stakeholders map was initially challenging since our scope was so large. Fake news and social media reaches quite a wide audience so we knew that we had to narrow our project even further. It was then we decided to focus in on Twitter and a young adult audience. Since Twitter is a platform in which news are frequently diffused through, we thought this would be a great territory to explore.
January 21, 2020: Design Briefs
01 Catalyst: Assignment 1
We discovered and reviewed three case studies of social, environmental, or economical to inform our future process.
Click here for our Phase 1 Assignment.
02 Community: Assignment 2
Our design brief for a capstone project on fake news.
Design brief feedback:
We were given initial feedback on our design briefs surrounding our target audience and specification of problem topic.
- Why do the young youth in Pittsburgh care about environmental issues? How do you know that they do? You need to provide studies and resources of information.
- Do the youth really read the Pittsburgh City Paper and/or Pitt News?
- what youth? tweens? teens? young-adults, black, white, rich, poor, middle class, living in rural, urban, etc…all groups likely access news in a different way. Don’t be afraid to narrow down the scale and scope.
- We requested a maximum of 800 words you submitted more than double. You need to be concise and to the point.
- It will be important to find one or two news stories to trace when news changes.” Two people might read the same article and one might believe in it wholeheartedly, while the other might declare it fake news. Deconstructing the assumption that there is a definitive category of fake news will be a large part of our project”.
- What is your hypothesis? Why will your project matter? What type of argument are you making? What will change look like? Group of people with picket signs demanding change? Public service campaign, AI system that starts to flag and wipe fake news. Super interesting topic but watch that you don’t get lost. Great story on NPR this morning on this topic.
- Lookup Public Source
January 22, 2020: In-class Discussion
After reading through feedback on our briefs, we discussed narrowing down on a more specific audience and fake news topics. We wanted to keep the content relevant to local Pittsburgh and also choose an audience that related to the fake news content well.
After talking to professors, we decided to focus on an audience with our demographic — young adult, college students, preprofessional.
We also discussed what our potential “product” or solution would be. We want to create our own fake news brand that would incorporate branding work. We also hope to incorporate a physical product aspect — “vending machine” for news. Some ideas of content included fake news about fake news, positive fake news, awareness of fake news, and fake news events.
January 27, 2020: In-class work day
Over the weekend, we individually brainstormed different possible concepts and visualizations of our idea.
We discussed our ideas and we decided that our project should include two parts. The first part would be us collecting stories from our peers. We wanted to ask our fellow students to give us stories that they had heard that they thought might be fake or only partially true. The second part would be the dissemination of these stories through some sort of product and/or event. We wanted our peers to engage with fake news in order to reflect on it and gain the ability to question information that they receive rather than accepting things at face value.
We talked to Dinah and she suggested that in order to start our project, we should have a better idea of what our audience already thinks about this topic. We should know whether / to what extent people care about this issue in order to shape our project. She also suggested that we might be able to make our project more engaging if we turned it into a sort of game with the input and output of fake news, and an activity where people would have to guess if it was real or fake.
Next, we talked to Kristin who suggested that we create a fake news story and post it around CMU in a way that would get people talking about it.
By the end of class, we created a survey that we sent to people at CMU asking a few questions about their news consumption, and one open-ended question, “What is a news story you heard recently that you think is fake or only partially true?”
Find our survey questions and responses here.
January 29, 2020: Lecture from Molly Gail Mehling and group reflection / work day
After the lecture, we got in our groups to reflect on how Molly’s presentation relates to our individual projects. We talked about how the idea of stability / instability that she brought up related a lot to the news cycle system. Molly pointed out that stability isn’t necessarily a good or bad thing in many ecosystems. In the news, instability is pretty much a given based on the constant influx of new stories, and the large variety of different news sources, many biased. Considering how to work with the instability of our topic will be an integral part of our project.
After we reflected on the lecture, we discussed the survey results. Since Monday, we had each looked at the responses and noticed some patterns that could help us to further our project. We noticed that with the open-ended question, for the most part, people focused on very recent news stories, and occasionally mentioned old news stories that are very well known. Many of the responses about (partially) fake news talked about the coronavirus, which is a very big topic at the moment. In addition to its relevance, we also thought that people might care more about this issue because it has the potential to directly affect them, especially with rumors of there being a case of the virus at CMU (which seems to be false). Based on this, we thought that moving forward we could focus on topics related to health and science because these types of stories could draw people in based on their proximity to the issue.
We talked to Kristin and she said that moving forward, we needed to create a fake news story and distribute it across campus. For the rest of class, we worked on creating two different fake stories. We tried to create stories that would be relatable to CMU students for some reason, but that would not directly harm anyone. We created a fake email and name attached to the poster and created a QR code link to a Tumblr account with a page counter so that we could track how many people followed the link.
The first one, we distributed on Wednesday night. As of Thursday afternoon, our page had been visited by 13 unique users.
The second one, we plan to distribute on Thursday night. On this poster, the QR code leads to a survey which asks people to say whether or not they believed the poster, and what made it credible / not credible.
January 30, 2020: Updated design brief
Read our updated design brief here.
February 5, 2020: Results of our social experiment
As mentioned earlier, we spread out two different fake news flyers all over campus. The flyers were placed on poster boards, tables, and public spaces of CMU. We wanted to test how easily college students fell for fake news headlines.
For our first poster (“We did not consent”) our QR code linked to a tumblr blog with a unique visitor page count. After distributing these flyers, we received over 30 unique visitor views.
For our second poster (“Pittsburgh air as bad as juuling”) our QR code linked to a Google survey revealing that the flyer content is fake. We then asked survey takers if they believed the article and what led them to believe or not believe. Unfortunately, we only received two responses for this flyer with one participant believing the contents. The participant claims the font was a big factor in the flyer’s believability. Branding will definitely be a key factor in the development of this project.
February 9, 2020: Storytelling and Prototyping
In preparation for the next phase of the project, we delve into the looking into three different solutions to help college students battle, identify, and be wary of fake news. Inspired by Dan Lockton’s generative design method talk, we developed several activities and products for our social innovation topic.
Idea 1: Fake News Vending Machine
Although most college students get their news through mobile devices and social media, perhaps a large installation/product of some sort will catch their eye. By placing a large vending machine in CMU areas with a lot of foot traffic, such as the black chairs in the University Center, we imagine college students will approach the machine and be drawn into the fake, catchy, radical headlines. From there, students will have to “vend” out the article from the machine in order to actually receive the truth and see just how twisted fake news can infiltrate the media.
The idea of the vending machine is a physical method to vend out the truthful articles and media content.
Idea 2: Card Game
The card game shows how twisted fake news can get. There are two versions of the game:
V1: the aim of the game is to alter the articles to make them as truthful as possible
V2: the aim of the game is to prevent altering of information.
Players alter articles and pass them along like the game telephone. At the end, they discuss and see how the original articles have been changed.
Idea 3: Fake News Infiltration Workshop
In Dan’s lecture, he mentioned the idea of a workshop and utilizing physical objects and trinkets in order for participants to physically map out their understanding of the cycle. Piggybacking on this idea, we will ask users to use different blocks and shapes to map out their understanding of the news cycle. Once they crafted their prototype, we will then ask them to show how fake news infiltrates this cycle they have created. The objective is to see which points of entry participants believe fake news enters in most. In addition, we see the overall understanding of a college student’s grasp on the news cycle.
February 10, 2020: Silent Crit
In class we did a “silent crit” where our classmates came around to give us some feedback on our three core ideas. Here is a sample of some of our collected critique:
Classmate feedback
General:
- Everything can be potentially connected to one larger system
- Would like to see some of the more nuanced forms of news addressed — rhetorically persuasive news
- Want to see more understanding of the complexity of fake news beyond fact and fiction
- Would be interesting to see if you can combine any of these ideas to see how people of all political backgrounds react
- Such a wide project — feels the need to narrow
- Too many words involved in the participatory activities
Card game
- Not completely clear
- Card game instructions need to be more clear
- Games had confusing narratives — can it be explained simply?
- Doesn’t show secondary research
- Curious about final materiality of the shape game and context for the games
- Card game was a bit long to read through, not the easiest visuals to understand in the group
Vending Machine
- Physical model worked well
- great sketches and prototype especially for the fake news dispenser!
- How does the vending machine work?
Workshop
- Seems unresolved
- The timeline feels more like a research activity
- What is the context of the timeline?
- Timeline activity seems out of place visually + attitude
- Like open-endedness of activity
- Some ideas don’t feel fully understood, such as the object map : concept to object relationship
Feedback from professors
After convening to go over our classmates’ feedback, we spoke with Dinah and Kristin to receive insights on future steps.
We received feedback of a potential use of printing out QR codes or RFID readers in order to link to more information on our project and our topic of fake news. We were also informed to potentially repurpose other output products such as kiosks, lottery ticket dispensers, receipt dispenser, etc.
In addition, we received different possibilities for the different kiosk/vending machine options. We referred to the work of Dash Marshall and his project “A Possible Philadelphia.” He refurbished parking ticket machines as part of one of the products for a community social innovation project.
Our response:
We were pleasantly surprised that the positive feedback and how it aligned to how we predicted and wanted the direction of the project. Moving forward we will continue to develop and improve our concept to tie together a more holistic experience for college students to learn about fake news.
February 12: Exploring different forms + finessing details
During class time we discussed moving forward based on all the critique, insights, and advice on our project deliverables.
Based on the feedback from our classmates and professors, we are trying to figure out how best to blend the two ideas of inputting different fake news stories and the card game. Essentially fleshing out how to create an appropriate input and output final potential solution.
We looked into other inspiration such as the Short Story Machine that is located in the UC Black Chairs. We thought the concept kind of aligned with our intervention ideas in that it is a type of machinery that is located in a high-traffic area on campus and dispenses stories.
Moving forward, we plan on creating a full scale prototype of our vending machine form. In order to better inform our design, we transformed our original prototype into a participatory activity. We hope to gain insights based on what articles people tear and written feedback from users.
Considerations in the design of the physical form include:
- Height
- Number of stories
- Location
Our next steps also include determining the content of the dispenser. Based on in class feedback, we decided to explore incorporating the card game with the vending machine. One idea brainstormed was to dispense different versions of the card game. These versions would follow a timeline of news — similar to our workshop activity.
Potential card game ideas:
- Creating fake news — Mad Libs
- Spreading fake news — What’s the headline?
- Identifying fake news — Real or fake?
February 17: Brainstorming physical machine + making a probe
After discussing the idea of a full scale prototype during our last meeting, we brought sketches of our ideas:
Next, we started looking more in depth on existing printing machines and the mechanics of them. We emailed Short Edition as well as Nick Ryan, the business manager of the English department, to get information on how their machine works and how much it costs.
Probe
To gain more direct insights on people’s understanding of the news cycle and fake news, we wanted to create a physical probe. From the silent critique feedback, we edited out workshop solution and turned it into a probe. The probe has two parts. First the participant is prompted to map out the news cycle. Then, we ask them to indicate parts of the cycle where they think news can be altered or fake news can be involved.
We tested the probe in studio:
February 19: More probes + physical machine research
We heard back from Nick Ryan:
Before moving forward with further design of the physical machine, we are focusing on figuring out the machine system and content of the machine.
Our next steps include continuing to get participants to complete our probe and to storyboard potential interactions with out machine.
February 24 and 26
We came into class after the weekend with different storyboards of how our project could possibly manifest. This was really helpful for us and by the end of class we were able to decide on concrete ideas.
We also made a list of our goals for our project in order to keep our brainstorming grounded, making sure that our ideas would be directly related to our objectives.
Finally, we made a decision on what form our solution will take. There are two parts, the first being a website with an activity where students can write/generate their own fake news while also voting for the most eye catching headliners. The second part is a large physical intervention/product that will test student’s knowledge as to how well they can identify fake news. When students approach the machine, they will be met with three different news headlines around the same topic, only one of which is actually completely true. They will be tasked to identify the true article, and depending on what they choose, a different story will be printed on receipt paper.
After solidifying our ideas, we decided to apply for a grant from The Studio for Creative Inquiry. In the following Google Drive link, we have the information that we used when applying for the grant. Our project description on this page contains a more in depth description of our ideas and how they correlate with our goals.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AW0b9LG4GjAhGbuTHV_8Xuzm2uKghbG2t1GegCiyV8w/edit?usp=sharing
Next Steps
Before spring break, we need to start preparing for the mid semester review. We are going to make a lot of sketches in order to determine the scale and other specifics, and then for the review we are planning to make a full scale cardboard model. We also will start to think about branding.
March 2nd:
Concept refinement
With the the Studio for Creative Inquiry grant application submitted for a potential $500 grant to build out our design system, we are now trying to refine our concept by building out a cohesive design brand in order to tie our 3D product and the website.
Over the weekend, we each sketches different iterations for our vending machine. We considered different height levels and basic forms as to how to connect this game activity and the website.
We then mocked up the dimensions of our full scale prototype in order to see what dimensions we wanted to build out this model.
Business Model Canvas
After receiving a Business Model Canvas lecture from Professor Haglar, we dove into looking at our design system in a pure business perspective. Although it was a bit challenging to identify the different components within each category in the Business Model Canvas, we tried our best in trying to list out the low risk, mid-risk, and high risk components for the players in our system.
March 3
We presented our business model canvas to Prof. Hagler and the main feedback that we got was that while we are focusing on college students for this probe, sort of as a test audience, we should be thinking about where our project could go in the future and how much bigger players, even like Facebook or political parties, could be our customers. We got really focused on our context and audience for this probe, which is aimed at students on campus, but we agree that in the future it could be a tool that progresses in its reach.
Branding Concept
In addition to starting to make our full scale prototype, we started to think about branding. Right now our concept is based on using this watermelon pink as a spot color to draw people in. Since there is so much going on when people are walking around campus, we feel the need to make our exhibit bright and eye catching to the extent that it will get people to stop to look at it and interact for a few minutes. Also, a lot of the time the color red is associated with the concept of fakeness or fake news, so we want to stay within the same color range but also deviate from what would be expected. To contrast this, we will use sort of the general texture of small black text on white paper and black and white photos — which clearly indicate what a typical newspaper looks like — as a background pattern. We are still considering fonts but we narrowed down on the two in the third image for headers.
March 15, 2020
A big component of our project is the implementation of a large-scaled vending machine-like product. In this machine, participants will be able to submit fake news articles and be able to test their knowledge in news literacy.
Below are renderings of our lo-fi iteration of the 3D form.
March 18: First class back from spring break
Before class we were tasked to write personal reflections in order to start any initial brainstorming of how to move forward with our group project. Click any of the following to read our reflections.
- Rachel F.’s reflection
- Rachel G.’s reflection
- Yoon Young’s reflection
In class, we made edits to our team contract given changes to online/remote learning. We also discussed concerns about the large scale prototype intervention and considered moving towards a more digital, feasible approach to this problem.
March 20: Changing our final concept
Our original concept was heavily reliant on physical prototyping and collaboration. Without prototyping resources and the ability to meet in person, we had to alter our final concept. We met as a team to discuss potential pivoting ideas:
- Complete website for fake news inputs and outputs
- Instructables
- Data visualization of fake news
- Online game activity
We each chose one idea to develop further and propose during our midterm presentation.
Midterm Presentation
For our midterm, we organized our process so far into phases:
Catalyst Phase → Community → Explore and Innovate → Participate → Future Steps
We also included our developed pivot ideas:
- Participatory website — our original idea translated into a website, eliminates large scale physical prototype
- DIY instructables with game app — free online instruction kits for participants to create their own small products, associated with an app game to increase news literacy
- Online game activities — online card game, single/multiplayer, directly pulls news content from online user
- Fake news data visualizations — could gather data through digital game, incorporated into other ideas
Initial feedback
Our initial feedback from guests centered around the affordances and reach of potential final concepts:
- Data visualization — has a larger audience and reach, less impactful and engaging, a lot of people have done visualization related to fake news
- Game — less audience because it takes time to learn how it works and take part in it, more impactful and has more opportunities for aha moments
We were also given examples of existing fake news related projects to check out:
March 24: Reviewing feedback and finalizing our concept
Here’s some highlights of the feedback we received from fellow students:
I’m curious if your work could interact with the platforms you had initially researched, like Twitter? It’s a prevalent channel for misinformation as it becomes a massive game of telephone (in addition to bad actors) that you could benefit from.
I like how interactive the “vending machine” was. I think having a website might not get out to enough people (there are far too many websites already trying to express fake news). I think the data visualization and the game are the most unique and exciting solutions.
How feasible are some of these new interventions? Building a digital game takes a long time!
Moving forward, I think the participatory design idea seems interesting. I like the idea of giving people something fun to do and interact with during a time where we feel like we’re out of things to do. Plus I’d like to see how you can physicalize that post-COVID-19. In general, I’m more drawn to your ideas that feature something that still incites interaction and more human involvement.
I like both the game and data visualization ideas. It will be interesting to find ways to integrate both ideas
I think the insight as to students not being interested in news and you guys taking the action of making it more gamified was an odd, but novel, approach. I wonder how you would provide educational feedback to the players, and how you translate that in the game.
I think there are a lot of opportunities to take this to a digital platform. The game idea is really interesting and for some reason, my mind immediately goes to that ingrained biases psychology project (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html). It could be a source of inspiration!
I think this is a very relevant topic to the current world pandemic situation because people often struggle to distinguish between the real and fake news.
In summary, majority students were in support of the online game direction and incorporating more interactive approaches. However, they had worries as to the feasibility of creating a fully developed game given the remaining amount of time. They also felt that fake news was a very relevant topic, especially with the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Finalizing concept
Before finalizing a new direction, we decided to discuss our midterm concepts and feedback with Kristin and Dina. After discussing, we decided to continue developing and refining our original “vending machine” concept as something to be implemented post COVID-19 pandemic. Since we no longer have physical resources and cannot collaborate in person, we decided our physical prototype would be refined through digital renders. Our project would also focus more on illustrating the concept through a video sketch and website.
Weekend of March 28
To continue developing our final, we divided work into three sections: design of the website, physical machine/kiosk, and concept video. We will continue collaborating to develop and refine each part of our final.
Kiosk
Finalized interactions of the machine:
Further iterations on the physical form:
Website
The website explains the mission and purpose of the machine. It also includes the generating news activity to give users the option to contribute to machine content online.
Wireframe of website layout:
Explorations of color and font pairings:
Week of March 30
We met with Kristin and Dina on Monday and they gave us feedback on our most recent work. The main takeaway which applies to everything that we are doing is that we should make very purposeful decisions when designing form and other visuals, so that it enforces our idea of fake news literacy. Moving forward we will continue to iterate on color and machine form, as well as start working on how these aspects will come together in a video.
Website
For branding, we finalized our font pairings and continued to explore more colors:
As we continue to refine branding of the website, we are also working on the UI of the kiosk activities.
Wireframes of the screens:
Week of April 6
Scheduling
In order to move forward with only 4 weeks left of school, we put together a monthly schedule to outline our project goals that we would like to achieve in order to prepare for our final deliverable.
This new calendar will allow us to meet certain guidelines and deadlines that will contribute to the holistic project.
Since the project is now more open-ended, we also discussed how we would want to present the final presentation.
Kiosk
Further iterations on physical design:
Video
We discussed creating a concept video through still frames and simple animations.
Frame illustration exploration:
Week of April 13:
This week we are finalizing our website and kiosk design.
Website
The website text has been filled in and the branding has been finalized.
The last step to finishing the website, is the visual graphics and illustrations. We previously discussed the idea of incorporating 3D illustrations.
Sketches of illustration content:
Video
The script is being written.
Kiosk
Incorporating branding into the physical design:
April 15: Meeting with Eric Anderson
During our meeting with Eric, we focused on the kiosk form design. Our takeaways included the need for more specific primary and secondary criteria to guide the design of the form.
Criteria discussed included:
- Standing out/grabbing users attention from a distance
- Clearly explaining content of kiosk
- Game-like, friendly (add fun factor to seriousness of news)
- Carrying over branding and styles of digital website
- Accessibility
Website
Testing out 3D illustrations on icons:
Kiosk
Week of April 20:
This week we finished the design of the website and kiosk
Website Prototype
Booklet content:
