Is it Fact or Fake?
A game where users read 10 trending headlines and guess - fact or fake? Can they score 10 out of 10?!
Fact or Fake came about while I was completing the Coursera Interaction Design (IxD) Specialization. You can read more about the whole process on Medium.
Role
UX Student
Course
Coursera Interaction Design (IxD) Specialization
Year
2019
-
My role
UX studentSkills required
UX research
Observation
Online user testing
User testing paper and digital prototypes
Heuristic evaluation
Design critique
Storyboarding
Time planningEnd Result
A new and fun way to introduce people to what ‘news’ might not be so accurate.
The brief: ‘Glance’
There were 3 wide-reaching briefs to choose from. I chose ‘Glance’:
“We are surrounded by information. Some might even call it overload. How might technology show us the essential pieces at a glance, so we can quickly navigate through the noise to get to what we really want?”
Pen to paper
When I settled on an idea I created paper prototypes to test out the rough user journey. Combining the paper prototypes and some of the latest news headlines I tested the ‘Fake News’ game with people. They liked the unambiguous options of ‘True’ or ‘False’ and they loved being right!
Storyboards helped me to consider the context of the user and what kind of experience might work. The app needed to be simple and familiar to keep users attention and keep them clicking on guesses.
“It doesn’t matter how many times I have to click, as long as each click is a mindless, unambiguous choice.” - Steve krug
Early storyboards which focus on the context of the user.
Using paper and sharpies for rapid prototyping
Main game-play interaction
Testing a digital version of the wireframe with users on a device screen, such as a mobile phone, helped me to iterate and refine my idea. You can see this in the examples below. Working through user feedback helped me to understand any complexities or problems with the user experience and fix them before moving into visual design.
Wireframe Iteration 1
The first iteration made it too easy to skip through the headline cards using the arrow buttons as navigation so participants would skip guessing and just read the headlines. I want players to be able to pass if they want to and avoid unwanted frustration - but the aim of the game is to make a guess!
Participants weren’t clear on how many headlines they had to guess. Without knowing how many guesses they had to get I found they got bored before 10 and didn’t complete the prototype.
Wireframe Iteration 2
Removing the arrows and adding stacked ‘cards’ to visually indicate multiple headlines added a little bit of friction to being able to skip headlines. The participants could swipe to skip, or tap pass.
Adding a counter out of 10 made the target of 10 guesses clear. In the second round of testing the participants wanted to keep on guessing after 10 goes and loved getting high scores.
Scoring system
As I entered into more high fidelity wireframing I also tried to create a fun scoring system where the user would be awarded a new character as they levelled up. But this confused participants during testing, so I went back a step and kept the simple 10/10 scoring system.
Now users can level up each time they guess 10 more correct answers. In the future I’d like to add points for streaks and more interesting ways of scoring points.
Character based scoring system.
Simple 'out of 10' scoring system.
Logo and colour
The colour scheme is bright and playful and allow for good contrast and legibility.
The logo is playful and blocky. Using speech bubbles to convey the idea of gossip.
The app header uses a monotone version of the logo for visual consistency.
Prototype
The final prototype was a friendly, clean looking app with a simple but slightly addictive scoring system. Once ‘Fact’ or ‘Fake’ is tapped the user is served a ‘Correct’ or ‘Wrong’ screen and a small explainer about the headline origins. The user has the opportunity to keep guessing or find out more. During user testing users enjoyed the game aspect, felt as if they learned something and wanted to play again to beat their previous score.
Final prototype game screens
Final prototype level up, sources and achievement screens