FYE

Misinformation in the past decade has become a prevalent subject, affecting elections, public policy, and even how we think about others.

Older adults make up a significant portion of the population affected and participate in the spread of misinformation online. While we often believe that this is a generational mindset that is struggling to adapt in the changing media landscape, we kept in mind that their circumstances are not exclusive to a generation and set out to learn to what could benefit not just older adults across generations, but perhaps everyone as well.

| Team members: Jenn Jiang, Purva Takkar, Wilson Wu
| Role: design research and synthesis, solution ideation, user experience
| Time frame: 8 weeks

Problem summary:
Intervening the cycle needs to happen early

To ideate means of tackling misinformation, we set out to discover and map the experience and thought process of how older adults encounter and discern information.

As we gain insights from older adults' interaction and thought processes, we determined that exposure to certain content will form their worldview. Any further encounter with similar content, either through behavior or platform algorithms, will validate their beliefs. We determined that the most effective space for intervention comes early on before the cycle takes place.

Interview with older adults

We talked to six older adults of our demographic through a series of questions and topics around their behavior.

We asked them about their daily habits of news and media consumption, their thought process and how they view and evaluate information they come across, and how they share/forward to whom.
We also created and ran a card sorting exercise while with the same questions to pick their thought process.

We also reached out to two experts to understand the nuances of the topics. Gretchen Addi (left), a design consultant at IDEO taught us about ageism and the perspective of older adults. Barry Katz (below), a design historian, helped us with the history of media through the eyes of his generation.

Broad themes we encountered

Overwhelmed

so many platforms, so many sources...

Peer pressure

To be in a platform that your loved ones are

Easiness to trust or distrust

More trusting of family and friends over media

Offline is better

Older adults prefer face-to-face or physical meets

Reluctant to being true self

They are being associated to content they interact with, hesitating to sharing their views

Ageism

Older adults are misunderstood as everyone above 60 years is the same

Frameworks based on findings

Online Consumption Pattern

We identified a timeline pattern of how older adults' various touch points (device, media ,etc), how they encounter and their thought process and how they act upon it. This encounter, evaluation, and action forms a mindset in which reinforces the information they encounter in the future.

How bubbles form mindset

One person's mindset and preferences may also form their circle's mindset as they share and communicate their opinions and preferences.

Insights

Older Adults don't necessarily go out of their way to find out what is the truth but instead rely on their own experience to believe whatever seems right.

Older Adults have trouble the differentiating between true and fake media websites as they didn't develop the digital street smarts with time.

Older Adults are overwhelmed by numerous the new platforms and sources, therefore they tend to choose legacy media houses as credible sources.

Older Adults love for friends and family gets them on different platforms helping them to stay connected with the world.

Solution space:
Providing feedback at the earliest opportunity before encounters affects notion

Through exercises and insights with our interviewers, we identified that correcting notions is best done at the moment of encounter. This practice is a challenge as the nature of how we consume content means deviating from that flow to perform research and assessment after the encounter. We also kept in mind that whatever we ideated needs to fit how older adults use their respective social network / messaging platforms.

which led us to ask:

How might we provide a succinct experience to make Older Adults digitally street smart?

Why succinct?

Succinct because older adults already have enough platforms and touch points to maintain. We want to meet them where they are, right when they encounter information, as that is the greatest impact we can make.

Why digitally street smart?

Older adults have a lifetime of real world experience. This may or may not have converted digitally, but they do want to learn. We want to do this so that they could continually grow digitally too.

Design principles

Build trust with facts

Aim to build trust by using validated information only

Acknowledge the whole picture

Seeing the bigger picture takes time, and we want enable our audience by showing all sides

Begin with quick and sharp content

For ease of consump-tion, content should be in everyday language

Meet them where they are

Reach older adults where they already are, by leveraging the platform or tool that they are already using

Concept

Identificator

A plug-in that acts as an overall scanner of any article that you are on to help you see which facts are true and which are not.

Curator

Curators helps you get a balanced news information diet straight to your inbox. This helps you break your bubble and widen your perspective.

Chatbot

Fact checker for all your forwards, on whichever platform that you are. Helps you fact check and provides other relevant content and trends.

Leveraging social network platforms

As many older adults are on a diverse range of social media / communication platform. FYE should meet them where they are.

Users can add FYE chatbot as they would add a person on their preferred social media / messaging platform(s).

During user sign on, users can input their social media / messaging account and FYE will send an invite for you to add as friend.

Ask FYE like you would ask a friend

Wherever the user receive links, they can ask FYE as they would ask a friend. FYE will reply with a summary of facts and corrections and sources that they can forward back if they wish. We believe that succinct also means not having to switch applications to asses what is true / not.

Presenting information

FYE presents assessments by breaking down the article into:
What is true relating in the current topic (and any overlaps in written / shown in the article) and what is falsely reported in the current topic.

FYE also provides a fact sheet of articles and official publications as a reference to the assessment and to provide users with further reading of the related topic.

Enter Shirley...

Shirley, an older adult, is overwhelmed by covid-19 news and their factuality

Her friend, Wilson recommends her to a chatbot which you could add within social messaging services i.e Whatsapp

Shirley encountered a shared article regarding a certain prominent person infected by the virus. She forwards it to the chatbot and it quickly determined its factuality and supporting media that validates the result.

Shirley received a news link from her friend Tom regarding a questionable treatment. The chatbot identified the news as fake immediately, and warned Shirley with actual relevant official information.

FYE also provides top trends of misinformation, along with tricks and tips on how to identify questionable website and information to help Shirley for next time.

With the help from her chatbot- FYE, Shirley slowly understands the telltale signs of true, fake, and questionable information sources, thus helping her be digitally street smart.

What's next?
What could've been better?

This is just the tip of the iceberg

What we ideated and prototyped is merely the interface of system / machine learning box that is capable of breaking down and comparing accuracy of written / verbally expressed article.
FYE's presentation of assessment is based on what we think its users' want to see. The reality of machine learning presentation might've been different and its an area we would've liked to explore given more time and resources.

Being careful in counter-arguments

The older adults we interviewed and studied were very introspective and open to our suggestions, exercises and other world views. While that might be the case for potential users who are undecided, what can we do to help those who's world view remain unchanged?
Our next challenge would be to craft communication patterns that would takes into account these people and be a thoughtful voice rather than a perceived offense to their world view.

Understanding older adults means understanding generational context.

On one side, the challenges older adults face through today's digital/social media landscape reflect their specific experience of the changing times. On the other side, as most of us become older adults ourselves we will likely face similar challenges to them as we try to discern truth and authenticity in the digital/social media in the future.

Special thanks to:
The best teammates: Jenn Jiang, Purva Takkar, and Wilson Wu
Our subject experts: Barry Katz, Gretchen Addi
and our interviewees whom we learned so much from!

Additional resources used:
Blush.design

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For Your Education

a versatile fact checker to help discern information factuality and bias