Product Design
Below are case studies from two of our product designs. More will be added to this page as they’re built out and incorporated into Wick Communications’ tech stack.
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As the VLP team shifted focus from research to product design, user pain points were identified by the team, then distilled into two main problem statements:
1. “People trust themselves to determine what’s true and false online based on gut feelings.”
2. “People doubt the credibility of the sources news organizations cite in their journalism, and have low trust in the information they see online from those organizations.”
Using these prompts, each member of the team independently created low-fidelity sketches. Sketches were voted on by the team and the winning designs were built into high-fidelity prototypes by our student product designers.
News consumption history browser extension
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This prototype was made to help users understand their own browsing history and trends in how they spend time online looking at news.
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Statistics Screen (3 features)
1. Tracks the user’s Screen Time on news sites
2. Shows the types of news sources a user looks at on a daily and weekly basis
3. Shows the user’s most searched topics on a weekly basis (based on news category)
Search Screen: Fact Check through Copy-and-Paste
A search bar for user to copy and paste text from online
Generates results found from Google Fact Check Tools
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This browser extension was designed from a holistic approach. It is intended to show the user their online news consumption habits while also offering a fast-and-easy integrated tool so users can check their sources, if they choose to do so.
We don’t aim to attack, undermine, or even directly influence the user’s personal digital media literacy — we want to give them the opportunity to understand themselves and their own biases.
—Designed by Maria Manaog, Product Designer
Reporting Process text block
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Many people cannot pinpoint why they trust a piece of information online, only that they “trust their gut.” This prototype was made to show a few sentences about the reporting process and how the information was gathered to increase trust in the information.
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On the article page:
The reporting process that went into the news article is listed in a box at the top of the page
Reporters will explain in these boxes how they found the information and sources that were used in the article.
On social media and search engines:
The same reporting process box is included with the off-platform link preview.
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The idea behind this design was to provide readers with sufficient information on the sources that went into the creation of a news article.
The reporting process box is placed at the top of the screen to attract readers attention, the box will reflect source information directly with the article thus providing transparency.
Reporters fill out this information through their content management system, just as they would a headline or photo caption. This summary would be tied to the “backstory” meta field articulated in schema.org. This feature builds on the existing work of the Trust Project and Trusting News.
—Designed by Abhijith Ajith, Product Designer