Filter Face-Off

Gamifying AR to encourage open self expression on social media.

OVERVIEW

Current development of AR (augmented reality) is most concentrated not in gaming but rather in the exploration of face filters on social media platforms like Instagram. How might this mass experiment of filter usage amidst the rise of selfie culture show how technology changes the way we form our identities, represent ourselves, and relate to others? 

To promote healthy online behaviors in young adults, our team designed an interactive, gamified experience using embedded persuasive design techniques.

TIMELINE

14 weeks
Aug – Dec 2021

MY ROLE

Interaction Designer
AR Developer
Motion Designer

TEAM

Nicole Araya
Likhitha Chintareddy
Sidra Manzoor
Sree Mahit Munakala
Nandini Nair

SKILLS

Interaction Design
Motion Design
User Interviews
User Testing
AR Development

THE PROBLEM

Filter use on social media adversely affects self-esteem.

Recent Meta reports revealed that more than 30% of teen girls who 'felt bad about their bodies' said Instagram made it worse. The reports indicate that much of this negative self perception can be contributed to the widespread acceptance of beauty filter usage throughout social platforms.
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As we begin to understand how beauty filters are changing the way young adults see themselves, how might we reduce the negative effects caused by the discrepancies between a social media users’ idealized self versus their actual self?

THE SOLUTION

Improving self-perception on social media platforms through a social filter that gamifies the selfie-taking experience and reframes it as a fun activity for creative self-expression

Through a gamified experience, we shift the motivation behind filter and selfie use from negative reasons like adherence to a beauty standard to more positive reasons like creativity and open self-expression. 
Our understanding of self presentation is based upon “Self-Discrepancy Theory,” which posits that every individual holds several points of views towards oneself including actual self, ideal self, and ought self, we found that users have preconceived notions about their actual self as well as their idealized self.
Relevant literature shows that people with higher self-discrepancy between actual self and ideal self are more prone to participating in social comparison, which can lead to negative emotions and adversely impact self-esteem.

We found that this discrepancy can be created and increased through online social comparison and through the need to adhere to an idealized beauty standard. Our persuasive goal is to reduce the negative effects caused by the discrepancies between idealized and actual self.

☝ Increase calmness, contentment, and acceptance
👇 Reduce effects such as unhappiness, dejection, lower self-esteem, anxiety

Persuasive Psychology Techniques

For our solution, we took on an embedded design approach which entails making use of implicit or concealed techniques to subtly persuade users towards a course of action. We avoided the usage of an explicit intervention since it could trigger unpleasant emotions if users feel they are being forced into an action. Three embedded design techniques informed our overall persuasive strategy:

Intermixing

Requires the use of “on-topic” and “off-topic” materials to make the overall content less-threatening and easier to engage with. 

Social Proof

Motivates users to carry out behaviors based on the actions of other people. In our context, if one’s friends took creative selfies using filters, they would also be inclined to do the same.

Obfuscation

Entails concealing the true persuasive intent of an intervention through distractions in order to make the content more approachable.

Introducing... The Bad Selfie Game!

Making use of these strategies, we planned to design a social selfie game that could gamify the selfie-taking experience and reframe it as a fun activity for creative self-expression. We started off by looking for similar interventions in this problem space to understand how we could make improvements using our project. Currently, Instagram offers a wide range of filter options and also allows users to create their own filters.

The availability of a wide range of filters and the option to customize them can indeed encourage creativity; however, the main problem here is that the mere availability of these filters does not actively encourage people to use them. While interviewing users we found that even though filters are available on Instagram, people don’t use them because they don’t have any motivation to try them out. Through this insight, we knew we wanted to create a game that was in a group setting so that we could make use of the concept of “social-proof” which motivates users to carry out behaviors based on the actions of other people. In our context, if a person’s friends took creative selfies using filters, they would also be inclined to do the same. 

How It Works...

Using the insights that we had gathered through research, we ended up with our persuasive intervention: “The Bad Selfie Game.” We envisioned this game to be played among a group of friends in which for each round, the players would be given a prompt which they need to answer through taking selfies and using filters on Instagram. We decided to give limited time for each round so that players would not spend too much time trying to make their selfies look perfect but instead would only focus on answering the prompts. Finally, we wanted to include a voting component at the end of each round in which all the players would share their selfies with each other and collectively choose the most accurate or funny selfie. The player with the best voted selfie would get a point for the round. With this general idea, we started the prototyping phase of our project.

THE PROCESS

Throughout the 14-week project, I contributed to the initial research, concept ideation, and led the final design implementation and motion design for the pitch video.

Generative Research

Findings from 19 literature reviews and 11 expert and user interviews reversed our team’s initial assumption that filter use on social media adversely affects self-esteem. Instead, we synthesized the following findings:

• Filters are not inherently bad
• It’s natural for humans to want to control self-presentation
• Editing the body can be a form of self-reflection and healing
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Ideation

As we synthesized research and began ideating, we aimed to create a gamified experience that implicitly motivated players towards creative self expression that made use of group dynamic to persuade a group to be more open while playing the game.

Primarily, there were three fundamental considerations that guided our design were that the game needed to be... 
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• Social
• Fun + Engaging
• Implicitly motivate its players to freely express themselves while taking selfies

PROTOTYPE 1

Testing the Waters

Over the course of three iterations, we hammered out the gameplay, the prompts, and the social dynamics. Through user testing and parallel prototyping, we were able to work efficiently to create an engaging and exciting experience.

We started off with a slide deck to test the waters and see if the idea had any merit. While participants liked the idea, the game was too complex, and the prompts were not engaging enough. By focusing on content fidelity over other aspects like visual or interaction fidelity, our team was able to distill the important properties of the game, and validate that our persuasive techniques were properly applied.

PROTOTYPE 2

Digital or Physical?

We then ventured into the realm of physical card games with printed prompts. When tested with a group of friends, the group dynamic that was created within the shared space was incredibly important for the game to be fun and to encourage players to post their selfies online.

PROTOTYPE 3

Playing Made Easier

Finally, embedding the game within Instagram proved crucial to making it as low-effort for the user as possible and simplified the gameplay by a huge margin. The ability to choose from a preset number of filters helped reduce decision paralysis for the user, which, in turn, reduces the stress of having to choose under a time limit.

FINAL
ITERATION

The Culmination of Parallel Prototyping

Taking some of the insights that we gathered through testing, we also thought about what persuasive techniques we could use to implicitly motivate our players to be more open to freely expressing themselves while taking selfies for the game. 

To subtly nudge our players, we decided to have timed rounds, include a social voting system, and have a chance for bonus points. The short time would distract the players from making their photos look perfect and instead focus on answering the prompts. We also found that a group setting and incorporating a points system was helpful in encouraging people to be more creative with their selfies because people wanted to win the game and were also motivated to take more risky photos if their friends did the same.

At the end of the day, the adjustments that we made in the game through testing allowed us to come up with a fun game that helps people increase their scope of self-presentation and move them towards open self-expression.

Design Implementation

We used Meta's Spark AR software to fully build out an Instagram filter that could be directly accessed on the social media platform. This was mostly to reduce the friction for our intended audience to provide easy access to the platform versus an independent card game or app.

Future Implementation

Currently the filter is prototyped as an individual filter on Instagram. To facilitate group play, in the future we will move the filter from an individual to group filter to be played during Instagram calls. The functionality and technical infrastructure for multiplayer Instagram filter games is in its early stages of development in Spark AR, with features such as group voting already available.

The future version of Filter Faceoff will allow users to take photos in response to the same prompt, then allow each user to rank the other participants based on the best selfie. The votes will be recorded in the game and tallied up over the rounds. Finally, we would like to explore methods of making group play easier, exploring both synchronous and asynchronous interactions.

REFLECTION

Overall, “Filter Face-off” was meant to be a simple yet impactful experience to help young adults increase their scope of self-presentation and move them towards open self-expression in a low-effort and low-stakes manner. Much of the challenges I encountered through designing this experience involved reframing Instagram user’s existing mindsets and reasonings for sharing and perceiving images of themselves. Thus, much of the design decisions I made throughout involved creating approachable and engaging experiences through interaction design in filters and identity branding of game design and motion. 
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