Sleuth

A video prototype for a fact-checking app and web extension, no more fake news.

△ Project Type: Video Prototype

△ My Role: Filming, Video Editing, UI/UX Prototyping

△ Status: Done

View final video prototype below.

PROBLEM SPACE

Inaccurate information is everywhere in our media. It's disturbing how readily population accepts it, leading to misinformation becoming the norm. My team members and I were equally into the idea of envisioning a product that could combat fake news and help users know the truth. This led to brainstorming what kind of physical product we would come up with to display in a video prototype. Through it's multiple iterations, Sleuth was born.

QUESTION

Within the problem space of combating false information in the media, what kind of product or app could realistically help people fact-check the news? How can our product or app bridge the grey area between falsehoods, misinformation, and truth?

SOLUTION PROPOSAL

Our solution came to be called Sleuth. Within the video prototype, it's shown to be an app and web extension that scans news articles, checks veracity, generates a list of sources that show the authenticity (or lack of) of said article, and produces a shareable report for users. Sleuth is more than a simple fact-checking app in that it provides unbiased information and presents it neatly to the user, it helps users make informed choices about what they want to do with their information.

INSPIRATIONS AND RESEARCH

Design inspiration for the final look of Sleuth, as seen in the video prototype, came from wanting to have a unified color and icon scheme. The palette consists of shades of purple because purple is perceived as a calming color. My team mates and I thought that blue was over-used by a number of popular social media apps, and colors like red or green had too many connotations regularly associated with them. The icon of the magnifying glass was used to evoke a the sleuth, the figure that searches for clues and ultimately the truth.

While researching for our concept, two major topics became very important. Sensationalism in the news and strong confirmation bias among the population are big factors in how falsehoods are spread in media. Sensationalism in news headlines seems to be more apparent in sources that are known for their lack of credibility (think National Enquirer), however, even respected news sites play up their headlines and stories with sensational claims. Sleuth would be able to check credibility and give users more reliable info. The tendency of people to hold confirmation bias is another big topic that we researched. It's the tendency to read and believe information that aligns with one's already held views. This can lead to not only heavy bias, but also the spread of misinformation that aligns with a particular agenda. With Sleuth, we envision that news sources will be checked against other readily available media to detect the level subjectivity that is being presented as fact.

IDEATION AND ITERATION

When we first started brainstorming for our prototype, we toyed with ideas of wearables and glasses akin to Google Glass. We loved the idea of frames that a user wears that can readily scan and come up with credibility reports for news and images.

Illustration: Oliver Lechuga

However, we ran into the problem of accessibility. Not everyone wears glasses and it would be unrealistic to expect users to go out and buy this specialty pair of glasses, or any other kind of wearable, to perform the fact-checking tasks. Thus, we moved away from wearables and focused on apps and digital helpers like web extensions. In the video storyboard, we explored the next version of how we wanted Sleuth to look.

Sleuth's final form, as seen in the video prototype, includes these screens.

REFLECTION

Working on Sleuth was challenging and rewarding. I am glad that I helped to create something that addresses and issue that's important to me personally, and also important to the current day and age. It was a challenging process since it was formatted to be a video prototype. With the medium of video, the sky's the limit. The true feasibility aspects of Sleuth and the more in depth user experience is something to be explored in the future. Moving forward, I would like to revisit the concepts presented with Sleuth to create a veracity-checking app that could really help a wide variety of users be more credible and knowledgeable.