The Challenge
This is a project me and my brother took on to complete Acumen Academy's Introduction to Human Centered Design course. The design question we chose to focus on was "How can we empower the Turkish broadcast media audience to be proactive about evaluating their media consumption?" We collaborated over video and scheduled weekly sessions to work on completing this project over the span of 8 weeks.
Research and Results
Learn from People
When we spoke with High School students and parents, we found that public High Schools in Turkey lack the resources and the teaching capacity to educate students on media literacy and critical thinking. Most of our participants reported that they don’t make an active decision of what to watch and parents aren’t proactive about the type of media their kids are exposed to.
Learn from Experts
We asked the experts what age they thought was appropriate to teach about the effects of media consumption on their thoughts and feelings. We learned that children are susceptible to media and its content throughout their development, starting at age 2. The experts suggested that the appropriate age to learn about the cognitive and emotional effects of media on the self was 15 and above. We were reminded that while kids used to be dependent on their parents to curb their curiosity, they can now Google most of their questions when their parents aren’t receptive.
Immerse Yourself In the Context
The process of finding trustable information can vary depending on age, education and geographical location. We observed our participants during that process and they were more likely to use only the internet to gather information if they were younger and more likely to read longer forms of printed media like books if they were older. We hypothesized that this is due to the expected duration to reach trusted information, with older generations being more patient in their research.
Seek Analogous Inspiration
We though of other situations where something undesirable was being taught to kids for future benefit. We also wanted to look into a process that resulted in a new habit. So, we observed and inquired about teaching kids the habit of toothbrushing. Kids are unaware of potential implications if they fail to form the habit and thus unwilling to cooperate. However, we found that by simply making them aware of those implications e.g. by having them observe a dentist at work, they become much more susceptible to learn about the benefits of forming a habit and how to avoid the negative impacts of not doing so.
Insights from the Research
INSIGHTS
- Consumers want to retrieve information from a dependable neutral source about who produced, what type of media and why, but they don’t necessarily have the time or drive to research each writer/producer’s past work.
- TV channels don’t produce content for social impact anymore, but rather for profit and ratings. They show the society content that doesn’t reflect its cultural truth and identity, causing self-conflict.
- Students don’t receive critical thinking skills at school including philosophy classes. Kids are able to practice those skills through talking and discussing with their friends and family.
DESIGN QUESTIONS
- Warn consumers about inaccuracies of information in media and its effects on their thoughts and feelings?
- Ensure content producers and writers are in touch with their audience?
- Encourage kids to facilitate discussions about their media consumption with family and friends?
The Final Prototype
Our final prototype was launching a new website that will help kids all over Turkey learn about their media consumption. We would show the components of the media content in a list of ingredients; 10% historical inaccuracy, 15% domestic violence, 4% ideological propaganda etc. We would also display more information on what each component is and explain why they are seen in media with similar examples.
The main idea behind the ingredient list is so kids and their families can create "media diets". Such a product would help kids develop critical thinking skills and decide what type of content they wish to expose themselves to. We chose to leverage a food allegory because it helps introduce this new concept more using people's familiarity with "good and bad diets". We also wanted to create a feedback channel between the consumers and the producers, directors and writers by allowing users to leave comments specifically to those people. Our goal in creating this channel is to shape what gets produced through feedback rather than finances.
