Project Proposal
Social media and its associated mental health effects is a major topic of concern and discussion at the moment. Especially among the age group of younger adults, people are worried that they spend too much time using social media. Both studies and individual reports have shown that extended use may lead to feelings of loneliness and depression, the exact feelings that connecting with others should reduce. The project proposed in this document aims to explore this problem space and will detail the problem which exists and the design opportunity which may be taken advantage of. An outline will be made of initial concepts could be explored, and how these could be looked at over the second half of DECO3500.
By the end of the semester, our team aims to have gained a strong understanding of the problem of social media overuse and associated mental health effects. We also hope to have developed a working and presentable prototype which demonstrates a solution for helping young adults deal with being overwhelmed by social media. This could come in the form of a web/mobile application, or follow some other interaction paradigm such as tangible or persuasive computing.
The domain we will be looking into is reducing the negative effects on emotion and well-being that are created from the use of social media.
From the initial research conducted, it has been shown that use of social networks such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat can lead to reductions in well-being related to lowered self-confidence and life satisfaction, feelings of exclusion, anxiety, lowered self-awareness, depression and loneliness. [7][11][14][16] It is commonly understood that these effects arise from users comparing themselves with others, leading to social media platforms becoming a 'competition' for beauty and self-image. [12][15]
With an estimated number of 3.2 billion social network users worldwide, there is no doubt that this is a big problem affecting the people of our society.[1] Social media has a reach of 42% of the global population and is growing in impact at a year-on-year rate of 13%. [6] Among young adults, research has found that 90% of college students have used Facebook and that 97% of them check it daily with an average browsing time of 1 hour and 40 minutes.[4]
While social network users tend to be more well connected, greater social connectedness also doesn't necessarily translate into meaningful and authentic friendships in reality. [8] Social network use has also been shown to reduce numbers and lower quality of face-to-face interactions overall. [5]
On the other hand, prior research conducted before the beginning of the project also showed that there are undeniably 'good' aspects to the use of social media. These are features that contribute positively to well-being, and include:
- Sharing feelings and stories [11]
- Learning and understanding the self through writing and self-expression [9]
- Finding out about real-life events, leading to 'traditional' social interaction [11]
- Building friendships [7]
- Learning about the surrounding world for young adolescents [7]
Further research has also shown that between those who use Facebook and those who do not, Facebook users have higher values of social support, life satisfaction and subjective happiness while non-users have significantly higher values of depression symptoms. [13]
Overall, social networks may be looked at as a double-edged sword for teens and young adults. Among other things, they are a source of anxiety and concern for self-image, but also a method through which they can build friendships, express themselves and learn.
Thanks to social media, anyone, from any age, can use social media platforms, with just the simple click of a button. However, for our project, we are aiming to narrow down our target audience to teenagers, and young adults between the ages of 15 - 25 years old. The reason we have chosen to focus on this age group is that teenager and people in their early 20's are just beginning to find out who they are and what type of person they want to be. Nowadays, with the social media being the main platform of how people share and show their lives, it has been apparent that sharing everything online doesn't always have a positive feedback. With our project, we aim to reduce the negative aspects associated with online sharing, to help let young adults and adolescents enjoy more of their youth.
As our project proposal is heavily based online, we have decided to make our project non-discriminatory when it comes to gender. We have also decided to target our audience toward people around the middle to upper-middle class demographic. We believe that this is a very common ground, which we can use to our advantage when studying, surveying and interviewing people for our project. The audience we aim to attract in regards to our project are people with a Senior Secondary Certificate of Education (SSCE) or higher ( with the exception of those currently studying for their SSCE).
In regards to location, because of the way people use social media in different countries, we have decided to keep the product quite local. However, we will be expanding across Australia and New Zealand. Once we find the product successful, we aim to branch out and expand across to other countries including America, Canada and others English speaking countries.
The main existing solutions towards the negative effects of well-being by social media are in education and campaigns which spread awareness.
In attempting to find existing solutions, many articles were found on popular websites detailing how and why users should detach their lives from social media. Some of these are linked below:
- 5 Reasons Why You Should Start Deleting Facebook Friends | MakeUseOf
- Can Deleting Facebook Friends Improve Your Life? | Psychology Today
- Unfollowing all my Facebook friends | Damián Le Nouaille, Medium
- Smartphones are driving us to distraction. Here’s help. | ComputerWorld
Here, the third article detailing how readers should unfollow all of their Facebook friends along with groups, organizations and public figures appeared to be the most interesting. The end goal to the method provided was to completely clear the Facebook feed, and while this was thought to be drastic, its advantage would be that users would still be connected will all of their Facebook friends. Unfriending may be seen by others as hostile, and unfollowing achieves the same result, without the negative impact on how others see the user.
The main problem with each of these educational articles, however, is that while readers may understand why they should reduce their footprint on social media after reading them, they don't enforce readers to take action or change the habits that they already have.
The Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) from the UK has a social media campaign for raising awareness about social media called #StatusOfMind, which is backed by a report and many articles detailing their discovered adverse effects of social media. More recently, they have also been running a ScrollFreeSeptember campaign, which encourages youth to turn off social media over the month of September.
The impact of these campaigns is difficult to judge. As they have been centred around the UK, the level of awareness reached by these campaigns isn't apparent in Australia. One identified advantage of the RSPH initiatives, however, is that the ScrollFreeSeptember campaign encourages viewers to take action over a full month. Those that participate would then be able to see the advantages of stopping social media use, potentially adjust their habits afterwards. Another advantage is that the #StatusOfMind campaign emphasizes that some social networks have more positive impacts than others. YouTube is promoted as the healthiest social network to use while Instagram is promoted as being the worst.
The disadvantage here is that again, drastic measures are taken. By asking participants to stop the use of social media, ScrollFreeSeptember takes away from participants both the positive and negative effects afforded by social media. Similarly, in encouraging users to spend more time on Youtube than Instagram in the #StatusOfMind campaign, the RSPH have missed that those two platforms help users in different ways. "Social networking" on YouTube is one largely one-sided, and almost all users spend much more time consuming that contributing content.
In products (either software or physical) addressing the problem space, very little was found. The only solution found was DistractaGone, a box which can lock smartphones for a set amount of time. This solution not only stops users from accessing social media but all other features which are available on their smartphones. It is believed that while the district has gone can eliminate smartphone distractions over short periods of time, it isn't a long-term solution to overuse of social media. Where its users don't feel that their full attention is required somewhere else, they may fall back to old habits and continue their regular use of social media and experience that same changes in well-being that usually result.
The existing solutions found all take an all or nothing approach to social media. Users are encouraged to delete a large number of friends, unfollow everyone, stop social media usage entirely, or physically restrict themselves from using their phones. What should be recognised is that by doing this, users would close themselves off from the legitimate benefits which social networks can bring. It is likely for this reason that the methods found are not in widespread use. As stated in the section below, the prototypes developed in this project will aim to be softer in still allowing social media, but optimising it for maximum benefit.
The design opportunity of this project is to enhance the quality of time on social media for young adults by encouraging activities which provide a boost in well-being while discouraging activities which are known to be negative. More specifically, we want to encourage aspects of social media such as direct communication with peers, building close friendships, expression of self and discovery of real-life events while discouraging comparison of self with others and concerns about self-image.
As no existing solutions to the problem space were found which used technology to warn and persuade users, this will be an interesting design opportunity to explore. The final presented solution may come in the form of a mobile application, web application or tangible computing device and may use persuasive computing ideas to change behaviour.
Some initial concepts that we want to explore are outlined below:
This is a mobile application which intends to sit on users smartphones alongside Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. The idea will be to monitor a user's interaction with others on each social network and determine the 'friends' a user has which they haven't interacted with for a while. This could be done through monitoring of the smartphone, or by taking data from the APIs of each social media platform. If a friend hasn't been interacting with the user for a long time, the user will be alerted (e.g. notification). After some elapsed period, the user will be alerted again. If there continues to be no interaction between the two people, the application will unfriend or unfollow that person.
By providing users with alerts, the application encourages interaction between friends who haven't communicated in a long time. As friends which don't communicate at all will automatically be removed from the user's social networks, users of the application will tend to follow fewer people, and only receive updates on their feed about people that they know well.
This is a tangible computing solution which is a colour changing orb that may sit somewhere in a user's home or be taken around with them. The orb should show either positive (green, blue, yellow) or negative (red, orange, black) colours based on the monitored social media habits of the user. The orb aims to subtly remind users whether they are spending too much time browsing through others' profiles and whether they may be spending too little time directly communicating with others. A web application may also accompany the orb, which can provide a more detailed breakdown of how the user can adjust their behaviour to maximise well-being.
An idea similar to the orb is a social media "score", which aggregates factors such as time spent scrolling feeds, types of the content looked at, the frequency of direct conversations and intimacy of conversations to summarise whether a user's behaviours may be contributing positively or negatively to their well-being. This qualifies the process of changing habits on social media towards more healthy ones and rewards users for it. This score could be presented in a variety of forms, including a mobile app, web application, or a tangible 'scoreboard' which the user might take with them. The score is not shown to others as the comparison is not the goal.
One way to help prevent social networking users from polluting their feeds with posts that make them feel jealous or annoyed would be to help them make decisions on whether they should follow a person or not. This could be done by creating a tool which analyses how often a person posts and the general content of those posts. The user can then be provided with some rating. This tool could also be used on people that the user is already following to help them optimise their Facebook or Instagram feed.
Another way to encourage strong direct contact between people on social media networks is to provide a service which lets users promise each other to 'stay in touch'. While this is a commonly used phrase which is most of the time well-intentioned, people often forget to stay in contact after months or years and lose close contact. In order to use the service, both sides would need to agree to keep the promise. After a random time of no communication (months or years), the service would alert both users of the promise they had made earlier. Both users should be made aware that the opposite side has been alerted. Over time, the objective of this service is to have social network users staying in touch with more and more friends. This direct communication could then become a healthier and more engaging alternative to browsing social media. This service could be a web application, a tangible device or integrated into messaging services already in use.
A further idea which stemmed from 'Stay in touch' is a simple reminder service which can remind users to respond to messages which they may have been too busy to respond to earlier. This can help further conversation and communication, but keep users more engaged with what their friends are saying.
Each phase of design will in general adhere to the following guidelines.
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Understanding the scope and domain of the phase
- This process has been started with domain research in this proposal document. As a team, everyone should have a clear idea of what is happening and what to do next.
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Developing prototypes
- Work should be split up, and team members should ask each other for feedback as designs progress
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Collecting data
- This process of research can be broken down into 2 parts including primary research and secondary research. Part of the research has been done in this proposal document such as Domain research and existing solutions which covers part of the secondary research. Primary research includes qualitative research and quantitative research.
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Data analysing and prototype evaluation
- With the data collected from both primary research and secondary research, we can then move onto analysing them and get insights on how the prototypes have fared.
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Team Planning
- In this phase of the plan, we have to sit down as a team to have a meeting to brainstorm ideas and break down the next part of the plan of work into a Gantt chart. Reflection should be done on how the team is performing, and whether changes in how we work may be made to help.
The first phase of design may be started by completing some 'fieldwork' to determine the general attitudes that people might have towards a technology that will change their social media habits. This will likely involve interviews with a variety of people between the ages of 15-25 to gain an understanding of how they perceive their own use of social media. Surveys may also be given to these people, asking them to evaluate their own social media usage over the previous week/month.
To gain a broad statistical view of how teens and young adults view the impact of social media on themselves, an online survey may also be run. Questions in this survey will need to be worded carefully to avoid biasing of results.
It is after the collection of data that we will revisit the concepts in the previous section, and decide on 3 concepts that we shall bring to the next phase of design. From the information collected, it may be necessary to change some of the concepts or to form new ones entirely.
Some clear requirements should be defined for each concept based on the information about teens and young adults collected. These requirements include
General Requirements:
- Purpose of the concept
- Problems that the concept aims to solve
- Functionality of concept
- Concept features
- Goals of prototype
- Usability system requirements
Technical Requirements:
- The platform of the choice
- Database/Server/backend technologies needed
- Maintenance needs and support for the concept
- Main milestones of development
The main purpose of deciding these requirements will be to cement the ideas that will be pursued over the rest of the course. For the technical requirements, consideration should be made for the time available also be justifiable by the domain research or data collected.
Low fidelity prototypes should be created for each of the three chosen concepts from the previous phase. These prototypes should demonstrate the core idea of the concept, and estimate how the goal of the concept may be achieved using the chosen platform.
Each prototype should then be discussed with a variety of people within the target audience to evaluate whether it may be a feasible solution to the problem. Majors questions at this point may be:
- Would the target audience be willing to try out the prototype?
- Is the prototype a concept that the target audience can integrate into their daily lives? Why or why not?
- What is the usability of the prototype?
- Are there any major identifiable issues?
In terms of usability, the following should also be done.
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Testing: An evaluation protocol needs to be developed to test the medium fidelity prototype. Not only does this protocol evaluate our initial concept and system requirements but it also gathers basic information about testers to ensure they represent our target audience.
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Gather data: Gathering UX and conceptual model feedback
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Data analysis: Compare User feedback on UX with UX Goals and refining the conceptual model.
At the end of this phase, one of the chosen concepts should be picked to progress onto the next phase. This may be based on the success of the low fidelity prototype during interviews and testing or the concept which the team would be most interested in pursuing.
Time permitting, development should be started on the concept of choice.
The goal of this phase will be to create an initial working version of the chosen concept from the previous phase. The technical requirements of Phase 1 should be revised based on any new information. This medium to high fidelity prototype should be based on the low fidelity prototype from Phase 2, incorporate any changes required learned from showing the prototype to the target audience.
Details of how this phase should be carried out will depend on the concept chosen.
Once the application has gotten to a point where it largely fulfils the goals of the concept, a heuristic evaluation should be completed to identify any usability problems that should be resolved for the final prototype.
"Experts" will be chosen to analyse and assess the prototype with respect to a set of criteria for the concept. It determined whether the prototype meets a minimum standard of usability. Experts will be expected to evaluate the application using 10 or 11 heuristics distilled from an empirical analysis of 249 classes of usability problems.
Time should be spent in this phase on refining the initial version devloped in the previous phase. This should be based on the heuristic evaluation completed, and may also include the addition of extra features time permitting.
The prototype should be polished to a level where it may be brought to the showcase.
Concurrently, to evaluate the effectiveness of the solution created, a version of the prototype from early in this phase should be given to users to try out. Users should be given a week or more to try out the prototype. To track feedback on the prototype as this happens, they will be asked to report back on what has happened each day. At the end of the testing period, interviews should be conducted to gather information on how users responded to the prototype.
phoebebishop11@gmail.com
Bachelor of Multimedia Design
nicholasquek92@outlook.com
Bachelor of Information Technology (Software Design)
d.fu@uq.net.au
Bachelor of Engineering (Software) / Science (Mathematics)
zhiheng.tan@uqconnect.edu.au
Bachelor of Information Technology (Information Technology & User Experience)
As our group comprises of mainly front-end developers, our strengths lie primarily in the user interface and user experience design, coupled with strong research skills.
Our homogeneity in skill sets could be a potential weakness, especially if we encounter challenges in other areas such as back-end development.
Apart from that, we could face difficulties amalgamating our ideas and reaching a consensus on the final product.
We aspire to develop a functional prototype which serves as a potential solution for the problem space we have identified.
SCORE is used for quick assessment of strategy and tactics. The aim of SCORE it to assess both before and after activities such as the support for continuous improvement. [17]
Strengths
- Helping people to keep in touch with long-lost friends
- Proposal document is ready for the next step of the project
- Team members have great skills on User Experience, Design and willing to take the challenge to work on new things.
- If it is going to be a mobile app, tools are ready (InvisionApp) and most of the members have experienced it.
Support
- Lecturer and tutors are our main resources for help and support in order for us to stay on the right path of the project.
Challenges
- To be as original as it is (Many could have come across this problem and has solutions for it.
- How we use existing solutions and come up with a better one is a greater challenge.
- Most of us are designers, so it is a challenge for us to do development and to program an app.
Constraints
- The time to complete the full project is not sufficient as we are students and other courses are awaiting us to complete, nevertheless, we will split up the work as a team to finish what we could and get the best out of it. Capabilities needed
- Although some of us has been learning and doing basic programming, if it is a different language, it might take time for us to develop the new skill.
Options
- Opportunity to improve communication worldwide
- The trade-off between modelling everything and getting things done
Responses
- A probable new solution
- New knowledge from the whole project whether it is a success or failure, going through the process of it can be meaningful.
Effectiveness
- Efficient: In order make it efficient, we will have to fully utilise the resources we have either it is online or offline and not waste a single bit of it.
- Reliable: Consistently working on the project as a team will lead us to success by correcting each other’s mistakes and predict what will go wrong and prevent it from happening.
- Elegant: Key factors to this is to keep it simple with consistency to it.
- Appropriate: The functionality of the application or set-up has to suit the purpose of the domain and the course itself.
- Integrated: Having a basic support at the start but maximise the synergy across all systems when it gets bigger.
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[15] L. Qiu, H. Lin, and A. K. Leung, “How Does Facebook Browsing Affect Self-awareness and Social Well-being: The Role of Narcissism,” in Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology, New York, NY, USA, 2010, pp. 100–101.
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