Ironhack Bootcamp Week 1 — Wicked Problems
Creating a tool to protect people from the spreading of fake news
In our first week at the Ironhack UX/UI Bootcamp, we faced a Wicked Problem to solve using the Design Thinking Method. In groups, we could choose between 4 different problems that are in evidence due to the pandemic that the world is experiencing. My colleagues and me decide to come up with a tool to fight the rise of fake news and the damages and consequences that this problem can create.
On top of this, our design solution should be able to answer this question:
How Might We help protect people from the fake news that have been assailing our society nowadays?
To start the Empathize phase, we created a Lean Canvas to better understand how the survey should be. The idea was to discover what our possible user reads, and how they share content. Besides that it was very important to find which problems they are facing. We found that some of the results were quite interesting. For example, social media is the most used tool to get information, but also the less trustable source. We also find out that the research behind the article, the channel and the author are the three signs of reliability that readers look for. After this, we did a script to conduct personal interviews to understand the numbers that we previously had in the survey. We interviewed six possible users, and find out that some valuable insights: people worry about the spread of fake news, people accidentally share fake news, there is too much information, and people change their routine because of what they saw on the news.
Now, it was time to Define the problem, and to synthesize our findings and create a point of view based on our user needs and insight, we made an Affinity Map. We took all the data that we had from the survey and the interviews and grouped in different sections, to better visualize the possible design opportunities.
Then we voted and created a list of How Might We. This was the one that we understood that better synthesize our problem statement:
How Might We make social media as reliable as newspaper?
Gathering all the information, we created two user Personas. Anna and Alex are quite different, but they have two things in common — they use social media and they dislike the spreading of fake news.
Then we used other tool to better understand our user. The Empathy Map was valuable to perceive the habits of our Persona, and be prepare to create solutions that would fit their needs.
Third step of the Design Thinking process: Ideate. In thirty minutes, we did a Brainstorm session to come up with all the possible ideas to create a service that would help our Personas to solve their problems.
Moving to the Prototype phase, we created two concepts:
After deciding for the Social Media Specialized in news, we created a User Journey Map based on Alex, to visualize how our tool would impact in his life.
After refining our concept, we finally had a solution
CONFIRMD, a social media that has nothing more than credible news. A place to share only verified content, through a massive research of reliable sources made by a team of journalists.
We believe that with this tool, we are able to solve the major problems that Anna and Alex were facing: a misinformed society, by creating a community that fights fake news; reduce the time to fact check, since all the information is one place; shrink the risk of sharing fake news, since all the content inside the platform is verified.
Once CONFIRMD was created, we did the Service Blueprint, that not only describes the user journey, but also make it possible to understand how the whole process works.
Takeaways
Design Thinking is an amazing process, but requires a lot of practice to be able to take full advantage of this method. One thing the caught me during the Define and Ideate phase was “I should have asked this in the survey/interview”. I think it is important to really understand what do you want to learn from the Empathize phase.
In the presentation, I believe that we could have created a better storytelling, to make people understand the situation that our Personas were facing and why our tool was important to solve this.
Anyway, it was an incredible first week, and I’m looking forward to learn more and improve.
Want to learn more?
If you’d like to become an expert in UX Design, Design Thinking, UI Design, or another related design topic, then consider to take an online UX course from the Interaction Design Foundation. For example, Design Thinking, Become a UX Designer from Scratch, Conducting Usability Testing or User Research — Methods and Best Practices. Good luck on your learning journey!
Thanks for reading :)
