Truth Fairy
UX Design + Research, Technical Research, Copy + Report Writing - 2018
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Truth Fairy is a browser plugin that utilizes a community of verified journalists to rate the trustworthiness of national and international news sources. Readers are given objective information- such as publishing, editing, and funding details- as well as a cumulative rating from 0-100 to help them determine the credibility of any given source.
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At the end of this project, my classmates and I pitched our concept to a UX and Lead UX Designer at Grand Studio, a design firm in Chicago, which was a phenomenal opportunity.
The Process
My Digital Product Design + Planning class worked in groups to work through the stages of product design and development. My group worked on a concept called Truth Fairy, where we worked to design a product for news consumers that would help them determine the credibility of news sources and combat "fake news".
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I was responsible for doing deep research on machine learning and general research on news consumption across different demographics. I made some wireframes based on subject matter expert interviews that we conducted with product design and UX professionals as well as a journalist.
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Below are some lower-fidelity wireframes for the concept, where we aimed to create a news aggregator that would spit back information about each source. The estimated percentages (that measure trustworthiness) are based on a Pew Research study from around that time.
The product shifted toward a web browser plugin based on user interviews, noting the appeal of not having to seek out this information via a website or having to create a profile. A journalism student expressed that it would make their work easier to have that information readily available. An SME- who is an established journalist from Missouri- said that journalists would pay to use this in their daily work since they have to do so much research.
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The image at the top of this page shows what the browser extension would look like. Below is a look at our landing page that a member of our group used to test. While the conversion rate was lower than we would have hoped, we certainly learned a lot.
Next Steps
Truth Fairy is in the process of rebranding to be called "re: Source" and have a more serious tone. This new name will play off of the product being a resource for readers and that the given information is regarding news sources.