For this project, my team and I focused on the hostility that often accompanies political discussion on social media. By conducting research and talking to potential users, we found that most people tend to not engage in political interaction online in order to avoid arguments and hostile conversations, and many responders said that they prefer one-on-one conversations. Most people said that they want to be politically informed, and some want to engage in political discussion, but the majority had problems with doing so through social media.
I worked with Nate Winskunas, Dylan Bryant, and Rochell Roman. My main contributions were concept development and refinement and layout/UX design.
Using what we learned from our research, we moved forward with the concept of a platform where users can debate one-on-one or watch others debate. This provides a place for people to have constructive, civil discussions as well as become informed on both sides of issues by viewing debates and reacting to them or challenging points. Debaters are encouraged to find evidence to support their points from the News section of the platform and drag it into their debate when formulating responses.
