Timeline: 8 weeks
Type: Team project with 1 other designer, 4 web developers, 1 sound designer, and 1 social media coordinator
My Role: Research, UI/UX Design, Game Design, Illustration, Screenwriting, Project Management
Tools: Figma, Photoshop, Illustrator, Procreate
The Antibody to the Pandemic of “Fake News”
Educating the youth on media literacy
Design Opportunity
Online media runs rampant with misinformation. Growing youth will have to navigate this increasingly complex environment with the proper tools and knowledge. Traditional media literacy education in schools are thoroughly didactic but fail to engage students in exciting ways.
Response
Unlike traditional media literacy education, "The Antibody to the Pandemic of Fake News" gamifies the dangers of misinformation through a playful story about four friends navigating misinformation about pigeons. The relatable characters and storyline helps audiences identify different types of misinformation and learn the tools to protect themselves and others.
Will the Kids Be Alright?
The theme of this year's Seattle Design Festival is "About Time". We designed this game in light of the pandemic, during which people were largely at home and inundated with media misinformation. Misinformation is much like a pandemic: “fake news” spreads faster than the truth. Thus, it is important for the friends and families in our lives to work with us to unpack the information that filters through our online experiences. It's about time to become the antibody to the pandemic of “fake news”.
Media literacy is often not taught explicitly in schools, leaving us to learn such skills for ourselves at varying paces. And in a media landscape riddled with false information, we are all vulnerable. When taught, media literacy education comes in forms of dry and brief textual information that doesn't evoke curiosity. This instructive approach may not always disseminate information effectively to students.
The Flow of Information
Misinformation inundates our everyday life. It comes in many forms and with many intentions. As it travels through different screens, papers, and voices, it evolves and mutates like a virus.
62% of adults in the United States get news from social media.
On average, people come across information that they believe is false once a week.
Some research indicates that falsehoods are 70% more likely to be reposted than the truth.
46% of media consumers can’t identify media disinformation.
Misinformation is often conflated with the truth, making it hard to detect false information. Current events today harbor a great deal of fear and anger that is amplified by uncredited and unreliable sources.
And no matter the experience, knowledge, or education we have, we are all vulnerable.
Our Key Insights
Beyond intensive desk research, we interviewed 15 people, including journalism professionals, professors in media studies, researchers in information disorder, and general media consumers from teenagers to adults, to learn about their experience with misinformation. We found that:
1. Misinformation is much more complicated than "Fake News". It comes in many forms due to the fact that journalistic motives have been impacted by the flow of money. These behaviors have mutated into unethical practices that bleed into many other forms of information-sharing spaces.
2. People need tools to be responsible for the news they consume: General consumers are vulnerable to media misinformation. Asking them to be responsible for the news and media that they consume is ignorant of the social and economic inequalities that keep them from doing so. Instead we should empower them with tools to become media literate.
3. Audiences love affirmation: Lots of people live in their own echo chamber and it’s hard to change how they think.
4. Media literacy has never been more important than now: Media literacy education has been lacking in schools and the society. Most available resources about media literacy is very didactic.
5. Intellectual modesty and honesty are more important than being right: Peer pressure makes both children and adults think they have to take a stand on a topic and be right. It’s important to tell people that it’s okay to say “I don’t know” and be wrong about something, as long as they continue to seek for the truth.
"Fake news is like a pandemic: It spreads faster than truth."
- From an interview we had with Jaime FlorCruz, CNN
Synthesis
Considering our research insights and the audience of the Seattle Design Festival, we identified our target audience as youth and young adults in Seattle who are baffled with misinformation in their everyday lives.
Given the nature of the design festival this year being online, we wanted to engage our audience differently than the usual pedagogical approach in traditional media literacy education. We decided to design a fun and interactive game that introduces different types of misinformation and important media literacy tools to fight fake news. A key goal for us was to also emphasize the core theme of intellectual modesty, requiring us to focus on the narrative strength of the game.
How might we create an online game to illustrate the danger of misinformation and introduce media literacy education in an exciting way?
Games as Our Medium
Game Structure
Our ideation began with exploring the basic game structure that would best suit our goal of telling a story while teaching about misinformation. We considered a game with three challenges for the player to overcome, with each challenge allowing the player to learn about misinformation and media literacy and test what they have learned in a conflict about fake news.
Game Narrative
I continued ideating the different narratives and story plots that would carry the information through to the player. Each concept informs the context of the information to be taught through an engaging story and the overall flow of the game.
Narrative Development
I then refined the flow of the story, figuring out key points of the journey during which the player would achieve a certain goal to dismantle misinformation and the effects of its spread. I likened this process to the effects of a pandemic in different phases.
The Story We Want to Tell
Storyboarding
To understand how the player would interact with the game, I storyboarded a scenario that follows a character who encounters misinformation on his phone. The storyboard provided insight to opportunities for the player to interact with information while following along with the story.
The feedback I received helped me refine the storyboard to include more choices for the player to deliberate upon. Beyond exploring the exposition of the game, we needed to figure out in what ways the player could encounter a form of misinformation, understand what kind of misinformation it is, and use learned skills to decide how to handle the detriment of its spread. To do so, I introduced more characters with distinct personalities that could provide different routes to explore.
Character Motivations
Storyboarding revealed the importance of developing character motivations. Doing so would allow us to explain the different types of misinformation in each route. By assigning more specific personalities and unique challenges to each character, we could better develop what type of misinformation to give examples of and the corresponding media literacy tool that the player could use to combat the misinformation.
Finalized Game Flow
After defining character motivations, we finalized the route of the game. Instead of being able to select a single type of character to play as, the final game flow has the player being able to make particular choices and experience interactions that would advance into more complex situations regarding misinformation.
Final Design
Script
Our final script was built off of the scaffolding of the finalized game flow. The conflict in our story was light and humorous with misinformation about pigeons being the source of trouble for the player and the characters in the game. Every single line was assigned specific visual assets and audio cues for our developers to use when building up the game.
Character Assets
I illustrated all of the character assets and environments for the developers to use for the interface. All characters were drawn with consideration of the script to ensure the flow of the story was smooth both in narrative and visuals.
Visual System
Conversation Interface
We iterated different versions of the layout of the conversation interfaces. With the help of our developers, we were able to prototype and test rapidly with the whole team to find out what looks best on web.
Crash Course
When designing the game and conversation, we were able to smoothly implement two types of misinformation into the story. However, there are many more out there that people should know. In order to give our audience the access to more media literacy education, we created an in-game crash course that covers six types of misinformation and corresponding media literacy tools.
