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Design+Code by Adeeb '22

In a nutshell -
The problem Consuming news through online sources traps people inside their own personal echo chambers, or 'filter bubbles' and separates them from ideas that disagree with their viewpoints.
The design opportunity How might we create a safe space for consuming news online, so we make it easier for people to consider ideas that are different from their own?
The solution binary is a mobile application that displays two sides to curated debates - making it easier for people to consider ideas that are different from their own.

It encourages people to expose themselves to opposing ideas and participate in creating a space for thought diversity.
Responsibilities Research (Primary & Secondary), Ideation, Prototyping
Duration 16 weeks part-time / Oct ‘18 - Jan ‘19
Tools Sketch, Figma, Principle

What are filter bubbles?

The concept of filter (or reinforcement) bubbles was first identified by Eli Pariser, who defines them as personal ecosystems of information that insulate us from any sort of cognitive dissonance by limiting what we see.

We find ourselves in reinforcement bubbles any time we’re only surrounded by views and opinions we agree with, while being sheltered from opposing perspectives.

These bubbles distort our understanding of the world and hamper our ability to make balanced decisions.

Why do they exist?

While we are partly to blame for our highly curated feeds, it’s not all our fault. Reinforcement bubbles have two primary contributing factors:

We manually curate our own bubble

We have a natural tendency to surround ourselves with like-minded people.

Illustration by Rose Wong, for NBC News

Social media algorithms filter out reality

Social media giants including Google, Facebook and Twitter use algorithms that are ever-changing and top secret, which ultimately create these bubbles.

“Your screen is a kind of one-way mirror, that reflects your own interests while algorithmic observers watch what you click”. - Eli Pariser

Illustration by Ed Nacional, for NYTimes

What makes them dangerous?

Dr. Lisa Strohman (Founder of Digital Citizen Academy), and Don Vaughn (Neuroscientist @ UCLA) highlight three rather scary implications of allowing these bubbles to exist.

1. We overestimate our perspective

Reinforcement bubbles can lead us to mistakenly believe that more people support our world view than is reality.

2. Our empathy for others decreases

Ultimately, reinforcing our own beliefs hardens us against others, making it ‘us’ vs. ‘them’.

3. They inhibit authentic dialogue

Openly discussing, and more importantly, hearing each other on hot button issues is more likely to foster ideas and solutions that improve our world.

I wondered if I could design a way to burst these bubbles, or perhaps even a way to let people in - a sort of safe space for consuming varied opinions, thoughts, ideas, etc.

In order to do that, I figured I should first understand how people consume news in the first place.

Gathering data

I began by identifying a group of people to serve as research candidates as well as the eventual target audience for the designed solution.

I picked the ex-student body of my Alma Mater because it was a sizeable group of people that I could access easily

I sent out a conditional survey on our platform to parse how ~300 people aged 23-30 consumed news online.

The first section of this survey was aimed at gathering some metrics about online news sources and awareness of reinforcement bubbles.
The second section of the survey was aimed at gathering insights into the kind of news they consume (content), and the circumstances within which they do this (context).
Mind-map highlighting the kind of content consumed, and within what context.
Finally, I identified 3 participants and reached out to them to understand more about their daily routines. I captured these routines in the form of user stories.

Takeaways

A majority of the candidates consume news via social media and are unaware of reinforcement bubbles; many candidates strengthen their bubbles unknowingly and are in danger of intellectual isolation.

All of the candidates consume news in a variety of contexts; some candidates prefer to read the news, others like to view it and many opt to listen to it.

A sizeable number of these candidates dedicate time daily to seek out the news; many candidates spend a considerable amount of time catching up on the news.

Product Goals

Unfiltered Content

The solution should allow users to consume content in a way that inhibits the formation of reinforcement bubbles.

Adaptive Formats

The solution should allow users to consume content in formats that are conducive to their situations.

Scheduled Delivery

The solution should allow users to consume content at designated times of the day.

Design Opportunity
How might we create a safe space for consuming news online, so we make it easier for people to consider ideas that are different from their own?

Unfiltering - A hypothesis

One of the things I started doing ever since I learned about reinforcement bubbles is exposing myself to opposing ideologies. I began actively seeking out opinions that I didn’t necessarily agree with, just to understand the grounds on which these opinions stand.

Admittedly, out of the many opposing perspectives that I encountered, none really compelled me to revise my own perspective.

What I did find, however, is that I became less defensive about my own opinions. I was more willing to hear what other people had to say without dismissing it outright.

Maybe one way to resist reinforcement bubbles is to expose oneself deliberately to opposing ideologies.

I felt I was on to something here, and tried finding research to back this hypothesis.

Unfiltering - An approach

Research shows that mere exposure to opposing ideologies is in fact a potent method of limiting ideological polarisation.

Participation in cross-cutting exchanges forms the basis of deliberative democracy - where discourse and deliberation is central to decision making.

Reinforcement bubbles foster communities of like-minded individuals, which not only increases an individual’s exposure to pro-attitudinal messages – it actively decreases their exposure to counter-attitudinal information as well.
Based on my own experience, and all of the research I was able to study, I began crafting design concepts focused on one thing -

Increasing exposure to opposing ideologies.

Crafting the concepts

1. Smart Chatbot

The first exploration is a search engine disguised as a chatbot UI. The user asks for content and the machine offers answers.

Eventually the bot starts to learn the users habits and proposes appropriate content on its own, along with suggestions of opposing perspectives.

2. News Delivery

The second concept directly addresses the personas that had dedicated times in the day to catch up on the news.

Starting with an alarm view, users can set a series of content deliveries across the week. The app will push content at recurring times and suggest content from opposing perspectives.

3. Choice Cards

The third exploration was a more traditional approach. The idea was to present the user with two opposing perspectives to curated debates, all at one glance.

The user here is exposed to an opposing view by default; whether he/she chooses to engage with it is upto the user.

4. Gamification: Cast your vote

The fourth exploration was essentially an evolution of the third concept. In addition to reading articles that share/oppose the user’s worldview, what if users could vote on whether they agree or disagree with a given debate topic?

The votes would be tallied and displayed at different times of the day. This way, users can gauge the overall public opinion on certain issues and understand where they fit in with respect to the people around them.

I presented all of these concepts to select candidates that participated in the survey. While all of them were positively received, there was clear consensus that gamifying news consumption by letting people vote for their perspectives anonymously would be a very interesting way to encourage thought diversity.

Hero story

I used insights from the focus group session to define the product’s hero story:

Onboarding
While signing up, users are asked to share their names and select a few categories to view debates from.

The big debates
Every morning, users are presented with debates within the categories they have selected.

News articles
Users have the entire day to read articles on both sides of a debate they choose to follow.

Casting the vote
Before the end of the day, users can choose to vote either for or against a specific debate. The only catch is that they can’t cast a vote without having consumed at least 1 article on either side.

User flows

Once I had my hero story in place, I started piecing together the rest of the application architecture, accounting for all the supplementary user actions that would need to be facilitated
Low fidelity wireframe flow
High fidelity wireframe flow

Branding & Visual Guidelines

I started calling the solution ‘binary’ quite early into the project. I liked the way it represented duality - duality of thought, duality of opinion ... duality of perspective.

That’s what binary is all about. It is a platform with a simple agenda - encouraging thought diversity. The visual style for the app aims to capture that simplicity.

Binary

binary is a news app that displays two sides to curated debates - making it easier to consider ideas that are different from one’s own.

It encourages users to expose themselves to opposing ideas and participate in creating a space for thought diversity.
Safe space for thought diversity binary is all about the debates - you dive right into them as you interact with the app
The big debates binary curates debates from a variety of topics for you to follow and encourages you to develop a balanced perspective
Open your mind binary displays two sides to all debates, encouraging you to consider ideas that are different from your own
Get involved binary encourages you to participate in community level voting to see how similar or dissimilar your views are with respect to the people around you
Format that suits you Depending on where you are, you can consume a perspective like a news article, a radio bulletin or a video report
Stay informed binary lets you to know how many people share or oppose your view on all of the debates you have engaged with
What you want, when you want it With binary, users can also choose to have stories from debates delivered to them at specific times of the day