Product Designer | Design Researcher
TIMELY
Major Project | Royal College of Art & Imperial College London
January - May 2021
ABOUT THIS PROJECT
Timely is a digital shepherd that manages the user's social media usage and engagement time by providing a curated meaningful feed from their social media accounts in a timely manner, based on their phone & social media usage in their phone operating system.
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Ultimately, Timely aims to minimise the time user spends on mindless social media usage by maximising their meaningful social media experiences, allowing users to regain their time.
KEYWORDS: Social Media, Meaningfulness, Smartphone, Social Media Usage, Engagement Time
SKILLS: Primary & Secondary Research, Stakeholder Engagement, UI/UX Design (Figma), Video Production (Adobe Premiere Pro & After Effects), Algorithm Design
Background & Motivation
In 2018, Facebook announced an algorithm change to its news feed, prioritising meaningful content from users’ friends and family to reduce “engagement-bait” content. However, this still measures success based on the engagement metric, to maximise engagement time from their users.
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Based on the identified issue, how might we reimagine social media where the success metric is based on meaningfulness rather than user engagement?
A Multi-Objective Optimisation Problem
As social media companies are incentivised to maximise users’ time and attention spent on their platforms at the expense of exploiting users’ data, subjectivities, and time; the objective of this project is to create...
A digital intervention in users' smartphones that maximises meaningful social media experiences while minimising mindless engagement time by optimising their social media experiences. Ultimately allowing users to regain their time.
Process & Methodology
After establishing the design brief, I followed the double-diamond design process to create Timely. I began with a literature review, differentiating meaningful and non-meaningful smartphone and social media use through hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. This informed the initial Timely algorithm. I then conducted stakeholder interviews, investigating user journeys and definitions of meaningful/non-meaningful social media interactions. Consolidating the research and feedback led to the creation of Timely.
Designing Timely
From the initial algorithm designs consisting of post-its, which informed the Timely native app on the iOS, to the final Timely algoritm design that combined the findings from literature review and stakeholder interviews; this algorithm is designed to address the multi-objective optimisation problem of maximising meaningful social media experiences and minimising user’s meaningless engagement time.
Timely as an Algorithm
Timely algorithm exists within the user’s phone operating system, e.g. Apple’s iOS.
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There are 2 inputs:
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User’s phone usage (e.g. screen events, location features, phone status, etc.)
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User’s social media accounts, accessed through the respective social media’s API endpoints
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This results in 2 outputs:
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Predicting the user’s next usage (e.g. type of usage, duration, and potential interactions)
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A curated meaningful feed based on those predictions & pulling content from user’s social media accounts
Implementing Timely
Apple’s iOS is chosen as the foundation for the Timely as their approach to data privacy aligns with my motivation of the project, hence is the more appropriate smartphone operating system for the project to be implemented. Timely could be implemented into the iOS on iPhones as (1) a native iOS application, and (2) an algorithm that is fed to Siri suggestions to assist users with their social media usage.
Interacting with Timely
Timely allows users to interact and engage with the meaningful social media feed curated through the algorithm. It also allows users to configure settings such as their social timely limit and muting contents that users think are meaningless, which can better inform the algorithm over time.
Timely at the RCA Satellite Event
As part of the Royal College of Art (RCA) Graduate Show 2021, Timely was also displayed at the RCA satellite event following strict safety guidelines and protocols in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
