UX of Credible Content

Chair: Amy X. Zhang

Members: Annette Greiner, George Linzer, Humphrey Obuobi, Cedar Milazzo, Dilrukshi Gamage

Past Members: Makaela Stephens, Bill Skeet

Mission Statement

The CredCo UX of Credible Content working group aims to develop design prototypes, design guidelines, and empirical research that explore the landscape of ways to signal the credibility of information to everyday users that promote fact-based information consumption and sharing.

Scope and Deliverables

The main objective of this working group is to consider the presentation of credibility indicators to everyday users, in light of the source of the indicator information (human vs. machine learned), the types of indicators used (content vs. context), the type of content being annotated (article, aggregator, social), the location of the indicator information (browser, feed, page embed), the intended impact of the indicators (media literacy education, intervention), and UX design decisions like time of intervention (point of dissemination, reading time) or intrusiveness (short term vs. long term impact).

The topics we will focus on may include:

• Collecting data on which indicators resonate with everyday users
• Mapping the places where a user could encounter credibility information while accessing the web
• Explorations of existing machine learning models that lend themselves to transparent, explainable credibility presentations
• Identifying existing interfaces for presenting credibility and placing them on a general landscape of UX designs
• A series of design mockups exploring points in the general landscape of UX designs
• Empirical user studies comparing different UX treatments that test them for behavior change, comprehensibility, and improved literacy
• Longitudinal user studies comparing UX treatments over time to measure long term usage
• An example of an end-to-end system for credibility (from annotation, to model development, to presentation) that centers transparency, explainability, decentralization, and user control

Deliverables will include:

Phase One (2 months)

1. A series of blog posts laying out existing work, our framework/landscape definition
2. A series of design prototypes exploring points in the landscape
3. A workshop and presentation at CredCon

Phase Two (4+ months)

4. A computer prototype for the public to play with or view
5. User studies to test prototypes
6. Blog post summarizing research results and/or a submission of our work to a research journal or conference****
7. Publication of design guidelines or design principles arising from empirical research conducted in the form of a white paper.

Duration

This working group is currently scheduled to meet for a 6 month time period: from Oct, 2018 until April, 2019; review of scope and extension to timeline will be reviewed in Feb-Mar 2019.

Success Criteria

Timely delivery of the products mentioned above, participation in working groups, positively contributing to working group discussions and actively sharing findings with the broader CredCo community are indicators of success.

Milestones

1. Submission of charter document and agreement on individual deliverables

Initial Exploration

2. Background research and development of design landscape towards 1-3 blog posts laying out our research direction
3. Collection of user research into indicators to inform design + write-up of results

Development and Research

4. Selection of several points on the landscape to then develop design mockups
5. Development of 1 or more computer prototypes of design mockups
6. User studies of computer prototypes and/or design mockups + write-up of results
7. Development and deployment of end-to-end working prototype from one of the computer prototypes

Confidentiality

All of our working documents will be publicly accessible via our shared Google Drive folder for the 6 month duration of this working group, though not actively publicized. You should be okay with public attribution of your work in the form of blog posts or publications.

Communication Mechanisms

The UX of Credible Content Working Group will be holding weekly meetings at the same time. Notes will be taken from each meeting. We also have a Slack channel for regular communications, research brainstorming and sharing of relevant resources.

Participation

Any interested new participants can join the group at any time. The purpose and research agenda of the group is defined by this document and will only be changed with the approval of all group members.

How to Join the Working Group

Anyone can join the working group after reviewing and consenting to the working group charter. Any interested new participants can email someone already involved for more information.