Rebelle Social App
Overview
Rebelle Social app is a platform designed to help women and marginalized identities build safer, harassment free relationships within the gaming community.
Challenge
Although nearly half of all gamers are women, more than 77% experience harassment while playing online. Studies have shown that women have a harder time building connections and finding teams to play with because of this harassment. While men play for stress relief and competitive success, studies have shown that women often play to challenge themselves and build social relationships.
In a community that is often gender discriminatory, and exclusive, it can be hard for women to build meaningful connections with those in the community. My project aims to alleviate this issue by creating a platform that allows women and other marginalized identities to create safe and inclusive communities within the gaming community.
50% of gamers worldwide are women yet
77% of them experience online harassment.
Background Research
After establishing the problem I wanted to solve, I started doing more research on the issue. One work that heavily informed my project was Kaitlyn Williams’ “When Gaming Goes Bad: An Exploration of Videogame Harassment Towards Female Gamers.” Another source that helped me better understand the issue was Google’s Change the Game initiative.
Key Findings
Many platforms such as Xbox Live are hesitant to take a stance on the issue and refuse to address sexism in their code of conducts allowing abuse to run rampant on their platforms.
Female players tend to create micro-communities through platforms such as Telegram
and Discord to more tightly moderate their interactions
and prevent harassment.
Despite making up half of the community, companies often treat women as afterthoughts, and cater platforms and games to men perpetuating hyper-masculinity within the gaming community and industry.
User Research
After completing the background research, I completed two user interviews to better understand my target audience. From their statements I created personas and empathy maps.
Key insights from this exercise
Reporting inappropriate behavior is difficult when platforms deem violations safe, specifically during streams.
Gamers should be able prevent other players from spamming them with vulgar messages on streams, chat, or DMs.
Players need a way to vet other players before gaming with them outside of chats.
Sitemap
Moving out of the research and discovery phase, I moved into defining the ux structure and creating user flows. By defining the basic UX Structure I was able to outline the overall information architecture of the site and each sections content and sub sections.
Wireframes
Once the main structure and flows were mapped out I worked on creating wireframes before refining them and moving to higher fidelity designs.
Iterations
During this phase I refined many of the screens and features to create a more cohesive visual style. One of the interesting things I focused on during this process was whether to create the platform in darkmode or light mode. Given that most gaming platforms are presented in dark mode I opted for something lighter. Since the former can be heavy and dark, I wanted something that would reinforce the idea of positivity and light and align with the brand and platform’s goals.
Style Guide
Throughout the design process I wanted to create a visual language that was fun, feminine (without being overly girly), yet still relevant to gaming. To do this I used a bright neon palette that featured colors that were on the cooler side. To create the logo I borrowed a letter from the Pilowlava font that featured an “r” that had handles that referenced the handles of a gaming controller. I also used this mark to create textures and gradients that could be used throughout the platform to bring more color and spark to the platform.
Features
After completing the wireframes and visual design of the platform, I began working on the interface design of the features. The integral features of the app included a groups section, suggested mutuals section, and teams section to help users find others to play with. Building off of these features I also created safeguard features to help users easily report those engaging in bullying or harassment of other members.
Groups
One of the key findings of the research phase was the fact that many women play to socialize, but becasue of harassment they often choose to build friendships on platforms such as Discord and Telegram. To address this and one of the pain points of the personas, I created a group forum section that would allow users to join groups based on their interests. In this section users can create posts in groups they are apart of.
Suggested Mutuals
One of the main features is the suggested mutuals section. Found on the play screen, this feature matches users together based on mutual friends and gaming interests. After scrolling through the list users can select a match that looks like a great fit and decide whether to request to be friends or send a gaming invite for their preferred game. From there users can make plans to play together on the preferred platform.
Referencing the personas this feature allows users to take control of who they play with and facilitates fostering connections that aren’t random.
Teams
To encourage new connections one of the main features of the platform is the Teams feature. Through this section of the app found on the play screen, users can request to join a team or create a posting to find users they would like to play specific games with. Through these postings users can request to join teams that they meet the requirements of. They can also sort and filter results based on game type, competitive or casual games, communication style, age, time zone, and platform.
Auto Mute
Based on Williams’ essay, one of the suggested safety measures that would be easy to implement was the idea of auto mute. Auto mute is activated when users are reported at least two times during a live stream. When this happens users will be notified that they have been auto muted for 10 minutes and can no longer comment or actively participate within a stream. Once the 10 minutes are up they will then be allowed to actively participate. However, if reported a third time they will be ejected from the stream.
Auto Mute in Messages
Auto mute can also be found in the messages section. If the platform deems a sender’s messages to another player are vulgar or sexually explicit they will be auto muted if the receiving user doesn’t respond to at least three messages. This can also be enabled by the receiving user through the (mute, report, and block options).
If messages are auto muted by the platform they will receive a notification that they can only message people they are already friends with, excluding the offended party if they were already acquainted. They will also lose aura points which helps other users know what to expect when interacting with a player.
Commends & Badges
One of the challenges with creating a platform that prioritizes positive gaming interactions, was ensuring that users actively choose not to harass others. While separate studies done by Stanford and the University of Chicago mentioned that player behavior couldn’t be entirely influenced by incentives (i.e. badges, ratings, etc.) they did highlight that careful “...selection and implementation can help trigger internal motivation to act a certain way and maintain this behavior among users.”
I aimed to incentivize internal motivation for healthy interactions through the creation of the rebelle pledge, community ratings based on interactions with other players, and badges that reward users that interact with others and engage with the various sections for the app.
