Designing a Solution to Information Overload for young millienials
Did you know that every day, we as a species publish 500 million tweets, send 294 billion emails, upload 95 million Instagram posts, and post 82 years worth of YouTube videos. *
The amount of data we generated in the year 2000 is estimated to be the amount of data that we consume every 9 minutes in the year 2025.
*Your Head is a Houseboat, 2021
Ironhack Tech School
Final Project
If you do not wish to read through the whole case study and only want to see my final presentation of the app, click here
Challenge
If it's known that the use of social media for 3 or more hours a day can lead to worse mental health*, how then can I be on the good side of history and help turn this ship in the right direction, even if only just a little? And with 4.12 billion people using social media**, this is a problem.
*2019 survey by Jama Psychiatry
**Statista
Solution
While I may not have the solution that cures all anxiety in the world right now, I think a good place to start is to survey my friends and their friends about their social media use.
With that in my mind, in 2021 I created a survey and titled it "Good Vibes Only," hoping that it could eventually lead to an entire new social media app. The differentiating point of my new social media app would be that it would only show you content that you are interested in by having more control over your feed. Essentially Instagram, but more YOU.
This idea was there SEED. Keep reading to find out how this seed grows.
Inspiration
One Sec App
My inspiration for this idea started with app called One Sec, which utizlies the IOS shortcuts to open a pop-up every time you open an app (say, Instagram for example).
The video to the left comes directly from their website.
Another app I was inspired by is How We Feel, an emotion tracking app. Here is a screenshot from How We Feel.
Think Twice
An app to help you form a more intentional relationship with social media apps
Onboarding
Step 1: Screen time
Connect screen time to see your usage of different social media app
Step 2: Intention Setting
Set intentions for why you use each social media app
Step 3: Content evaluation
Evauluate the content of each app
Decide how each app makes you feel
Drawing inspiration from How We Feel's interface, users have 4 choices of feelings: high energy negative, high energy positive, low energy negative, and low energy positive
Step 4: Tying it all together
A built-in calculator takes the data you just entered to calculate each app's stress level
Seeing your stress levels
After the user views their stress breakdown, the primary button directs them to access a free trial of the app
Pop up
just like One Sec's popup, Think Twice's pop-up utilizes the IOS shortcuts and brings up a check in every time a user closes a social media app
Inside the rest of the app
The individuals I spoke with expressed a desire for content that counteracts the negativity found in their news intake. This led to the addition of a "motivation" tab in the navigation bar.
And I didn't want to lose the simple time-tracking ability that many social media blocking apps had, which is why the homepage has this chart.
Final Project Video *Ojo* It's in Spanish
If you'd like to watch me present my project, click below :) The audio is in Spanish, though.
Next Steps
The next steps for this app would be to
have a notification pop up when you've used an app for a set amount of time
Expand the functionalities of the app to newsletter and podcasts (it's all information)
Write blogs about information overload, since not many people are researching this subject
Lessons Learned
This project taught me that I'm capable of great things as long as I stick with my thoughts long enough. Keep asking why, keep digging deeper, and stay focussed
on the real root problem. I also learned what incredibly awesome things I can make when I am intrinsically motivated.