Role
Product Design
Duration
24 hours
Methods
Design Sprint, Visual Design, User Interviews, User Flows, Prototyping
Teammates
Sweena Kalamkar
Spark
Spark is a social media platform that allows you to explore various political perspectives on trending news. You can connect with others by posting your perspective and spark conversations with other members. Lastly, you can also educate yourself on new topics and create a sense of empathy in our community.
Context
My teammate and I competed in the Winfo Hackathon. We were challenged to design a high-fidelity prototype in 24 hours. There were over 40 teams from all from the University of Washington. As finalists, we were also responsible for presenting in front of designers from companies like Adobe, Deloitte, PWC, and more. Our team ended up placing in 3rd place.
Design an app that brings people and technology together for the betterment of the community
Research
Since our prompt was so open-ended we wanted to make our app relevant to today’s community. The design challenge occurred around the same time as the presidential election, and the takedown of the app Parler. My teammate and I both are immigrants and part of POC but share a very diverse background and family, but to see a country so polarized and vocal, we were motivated to create an app that could address the polarization.
Surveys
Politics is extremely controversial, and even though we had an extremely tight timeline, we wanted to ensure that we spoke to a lot of possible users of all ranges. We were able to get 95 responses in a few hours and wanted to ideate possible app ideas after we had more information.
How old are you?
Do you engage in political discourse?
Are you more comfortable speaking in a group setting or one on one setting?
Are you likely to go out and hear different political perspectives?
Do you feel heard when you talk to people about controversial or political topics?
Would you be encouraged to speak about your beliefs if a safe platform was created?
Interviews
Since the polarization of the community was our main focus, we wanted to dive deeper and understand each side’s perspective when it came to political discourse. We were only able to interview 2 people, one that was more left-leaning, and one that was more right-leaning, both students in college.
Competitive Analysis
Key Findings
Only about half our survey participants were willing to engage in political discourse, and a third was a maybe
Only a quarter of the participants were willing to have a group discussion on politics, most were more comfortable in a one on one setting
Listening really matters to everyone, but only a third truly felt heard but most didn’t know if there were heard or felt as if they were not heard at all
Resources matter a lot, and more people are willing to speak up with the factual conversation
In a one on one setting, there is more opportunity to have a fully engaged conversation, while in a group there is a sense of fear of “ganging up”
Overall, people are scared to speak up because they are worried that they might get slandered
Over half were more willing to speak up if there was a safe space or a platform to speak up on about topics in the news
Ideation
Who are our users?
Individuals who are politically outspoken, want to be more politically outspoken/woke and are willing to engage in political discourse.
Motivations
This person wants to understand the people around them and open up to other perspectives and conversations in a better way
Be more educated and learn more
Broaden the perspective in a globalized community
Needs
Spark conversations with new people (engage in conversation)
Find people in the community (form connections) in a safe place
Advance in society with newer and open-minded perspectives
Pain Points
Current social media platforms might not be considered platforms for engaging in conversation
Though freedom of speech is great verbally attacking/harassing someone on the internet is not
Conversations tend to be confrontational but they should be more conversational
Rapid Brainstorming
User Flow
Key Features
01 On-Boarding
The onboarding process is intentionally short and sweet and we encourage our users to include a short description of themselves to show a more humanistic side to profiles. This way people are not as apprehensive to talk to strangers or bots online.
02 Sparking
Users are given 3 different types of prompts:
Topics that are curated based on their onboarding responses
Topics that are currently trending in the news
Topics that exposes and encourages the user to explore new areas in a way to educate them
After choosing and answering a prompt, users can interact with other people in their community that has also answered the same prompt, through like, dislike, and sparking conversations.
03 Messaging
The messaging screen allows you to filter the people you interact with by letting the user first accept the message before sparking a conversation.
If the content sent has rash language or inappropriate content, the message is tagged, and the user is given the option to delete it.
04 Weekly Rewinds
The weekly rewinds are a way to provide statistics of the different perspectives the user has sparked with.
To create an even bigger impact users are given the opporuntity to educate themselves in topics they have agreed with or disagreed with, as well as donate.
The resources page was super important to us as research showed that people value conversations that are factual based and that polarization is apparent because there is a lack of empathy
By enabling their users to educate themselves on the opposing perspective, Spark fosters a more empathetic community
Interact with the live prototype!
Reflecting & Looking to the Future
When going through the process of ideating for this app, we got divided feedback, while half the judges loved the idea and wanted us to develop this further, others believed that this kind of app just simply could not work in this industry. Spark as an app definitely has a long way to go, and we as a community and country need to be more willing to listen and speak to each other without being scared.
If given the time to develop this app more, I would love to incorporate even more features that help our community be more empathetic. Fostering ways to listen to the other side and to truly understand is more of a moral obligation from person to person but using technology to bring people together is something I am passionate about and would love an app-like Spark to flourish in our communities.