EmpowerReport+
UCRE Case Study
Team: Jessica Cromp, Ashley Lin, Tiange Zhou, Felicia Li
My role: UX Researcher, UX Designer
Executive Summary:
When an Instagram user comes across a stereotypical or biased ad or post, the majority of people will decide to scroll past it because they feel that reporting will do nothing. This leaves the user with a negative experience and a lack of agency. Therefore, the team feels that giving the user feedback and showing the progress of where their report is in the reporting process will help the user feel empowered and motivated to report stereotypical and biased content. This will help to improve the Instagram community and create a more positive Instagram experience.
Hence, we are proposing a new reporting function, which is called EmpowerReport+.
Overview
"Have you experienced stereotypical and biased content on Instagram?"
Even though you reported it, similar content will pop up in your feed repeatedly. We will present our solution for a new report system to help users empower their Instagram feed.
As an user experience designer and researcher,
How might we motivate users to report stereotypical content in ads more on Instagram?
Gender Bias
An ad about yoga targeted only toward female users (only female models are used in the ad)
Body Shape Bias
An ad about 14-Day face yoga is showing a stereotypical 3D modeling to promote
Content Stereotype
An ad about UPenn Bootcamp, and data analysis certificate course when user searched relative information
Research
Methods
Think Aloud Protocols
Surveys
Interview
Walk the wall
Affinity diagram
Speed dating
Paper prototype
What I have done and learned:
At the beginning of the project, I have done some background research on people's attitudes toward Instagram reporting functions. I have helped and learned how to design research studies, develop research questions, and identify appropriate research methodologies for different scenarios. As a team, we conducted interviews to gather data and insights from users. I have designed the structure for the survey, questions for an interview, and storyboards for speed dating.
Survey Design
With the brainstorming with my team, I have come up with some good ideas about questions to be asked during our interviews. Then we did the structure together based on the "yes" and "no" to the answer.
We also refined our survey after our pilot test. I suggested using images to show a biased/stereotypical ad instead of just saying "biased/stereotypical ad. And this suggestion came out pretty good.
Reflect on the Survey
What I have learned from this experience is interesting. I have learned about users' previous experience in reporting and hiding ads might impact their behavior in our research. Some of them might be aggressive on one platform while peaceful on the other platform, and the reason is that they have preferred language, which makes them more sensitive to the information received. I have also learned about how people are seeing things differently. because during our research, some of our participants feel some contents which are not labeled as biased content by the team was biased or offensive. This situation let me realize that some of the content may cause discomfort to people due to the experience people had previously.
It is kind of hard to identify if the content is uncomfortable and hard to identify the reason why the content makes the user uncomfortable. The feeling of uncomfortable may also cause discomfort on Instagram.
Speed Dating Storyboard Design
User need:
Enhance user browsing experience by letting Instagram learn users’ preference
Leading Question:
Do you feel Instagram is learning your preference?
Discussion question:
Do you think it is a privacy issue that Instagram learning your personal preference?
Do you want your preference to be seen by your friend and the public?
How do you feel about Instagram algorithm system?
Scenario A ----
Scenario B ----
Scenario C ----
Reflect on the Speed Dating
What I have learned from this experience is cool. I love drawing storyboards. But this time the storyboard is kind of challenging because it is a storyboard about a product. We interviewed 4 participants, consisting of undergraduate and graduate students. Our goal was to test different solutions for improving the Instagram reporting process and the overall user experience by allowing users to give feedback on storyboards. There are two interesting insights:
1. I originally thought that users might pay attention to the information in sponsored content but they pay more attention to if it is an ad. And they will skip it as long as it’s an ad.
2. The team originally thought that sending a direct message, notifying the users that the reported content is being taken care of, will encourage users to report more. But it turns out that users don’t like that at all, mainly because it’s unnecessary and could spam their inboxes.
So, some solid ideas came to my mind to enhance the reporting experience. Maybe we can make it not mandatory to choose a reason for reporting/hiding. This way users do not need to worry about the reason for reporting. If they see anything that makes them uncomfortable, they can just go ahead and report it.
Speed Dating Results
Leading Question:
1. Do you feel Instagram is learning your preference?
-
Yes. Because I searched for this so my browsing history lead to this kind of content
-
Sometimes I search for something g is not because I am interested in it and after researching I realized that this thing does not fit me. Like I clicked the video but I don’t want to see and I have seen it a lot of times in a short period of time
-
if the report system helps with decreasing the relevant content because of something I have already brought. I bought the product but the platform still recommends the product to me. It's annoying. I don’t need it anymore
Discussion question:
1, Do you think it is a privacy issue that Instagram is learning your personal preference?
-
Maybe a little bit uncomfortable
-
I don’t want to let everyone, including Instagram know my preference. Especially it is a combination of what I like and dislike
-
If I don’t allow others to see my preference and they know it, I would feel offended
2. Do you want your preference to be seen by your friend and the public?
-
Maybe. If my friend and I had the same opinion it would be fine. What if my friend like this product but it shows I don’t like it, it is embarrassing, if my friend doesn’t care it would be fine but I am afraid of influencing their choice
-
If all my friends could see or only my close friend could see
-
It should be fine if they are my close friends, it would be fine if they are not my close friends, if it is just a topic in a conversation.
-
if I can know my action would be seen by the public, i would be more careful when I commenting
3. How do you feel about the Instagram algorithm system?
-
If it is because you don’t like this post and Instagram will automatically decrease the ad push to you and your friends because of your similarity it would be acceptable
Comment:
-
Long press is convenient. How do you feel about the action? I am not sure if I could find an actual reason for hiding/not being interested.
-
Need to specify the difference between hide and not interested (e.g. not interested will decrease the amount of relevant content while hide will only do hiding action)
-
I feel the two are kind of duplicates because one is attitude one is action
-
if the ad disappears I might feel better. If the ad is too annoying I prefer not to see them. And if this function really hides the ads and I won’t see them in a short time I would be super appreciative
-
After hiding I don’t want them to come back I don’t want to see them
-
If I have a strong feeling I would comment otherwise I won’t, such I have tried this product and it is good/bad, or any strong emotion
Prototype
Designing a tutorial for new function
I am in charge of designing the tutorial.
I want to let users know how to use the newest reporting function through this leading tutorial.
As a big gamer, I got inspired by a lot of mobile games. Their tutorial is clear and simple. With the dark background and relatively highlighted part, I made the tutorial really easy to understand for any type of audience. At least easy to let users see the important parts.
Since some of our participants think that Instagram's current reporting progress is lack feedback, we want to have a reporting progress just like the uber eats deliver progress bar.
Long Press
Press and hold on the post to check the new reporting function
1
3
Feedback
A feedback about reported successfully will show up
Message
5
A brief message about the reporting progress will be shown here. User could click detail for more information
2
Select Reason
Select the reason for reporting or not interested
4
Notification
Check the notification to see the status of the reporting progress
