Facebook 2.0

Revolutionize privacy on Facebook. Try the powerpoint prototype here.
This group project for my Human Computer Interaction course aimed to address several issues my group discovered about privacy on Facebook. After conducting interviews with Facebook users, most prominent issues they had were finding where and how to edit privacy settings, editing setting for individual photos or statuses, knowing what the user's profile looked like to groups with different privacy settings, and keeping track of the user's privacy settings. Our group sought to find a solution to let users edit all aspects of their profile through one interface.

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01

Complete control over viewable content

Individually edit privacy settings on ALL information, posts, and photos on your profile. Your profile, as it appears to Facebook friends or the public, is on the top of the split screen and all content on your profile's is on the bottom. Hover over the markers to see if you can edit that information!
This can be hidden! You can hide this too! You guessed it, this can be hidden too!
01

Complete control over viewable content

Unlike the current privacy settings, all options for editing privacy settings are consolidated to one interface. In this case the user wants to edit his/her status update to the public.
The split screen allows users to view their profile as others on the top and edit their profile on the bottom. All elements of the user's profile are editable. The user can start changing privacy settings by clicking on what they want to hide.
01

Complete control over viewable content

In this case, once a user clicks on any part of his/her profile, the user has the option of hiding only that particular status or hiding all status updates.
Tags (status, photo, video, etc) from Facebook friends can be edited also have the option "hide all tags from [Friend's name]".
01

Complete control over viewable content

Setting changes are updated immediately and the user can clearly see what the change looks like on his/her profile.
How the user's profile appears after the setting have been changed. What is hidden is greyed out and can be made public by clicking it again.
01

Seamless integration of lists

Customize privacy settings for each list of Facebook friends. In this case the user is trying to add a tab for his family list.
This add function is accessed by the plus button on the tab menu. Users can create a tab for pre-existing lists of friends. Users can also make a tab for individual friends.
01

Seamless integration of lists

The user is now in editing mode for the "Family" list. All changes made will be reflected only for members in that list.
The user has successfully added a tab for his/her family. The profile is outlined in color to indicate which list's privacy settings are being edited.

About this project

My group went through these steps to reach our design:

Each member of the team interviewed Facebook users to gain insight on difficulties and frustrations they had. One of the findings from the interview is listed below:
Who:
  • 20-year old female
  • No Facebook account
  • Deleted profile she had in High School before she came to college

Why:
  • Representative of a negative persona
  • Against having her own account
  • Observe problems with creating an account and using Facebook for the first time

Summary:
  • Deleted it because she wanted a fresh start in college
  • Didn't have people she wanted to keep in touch with through Facebook
  • Concerned that having an account would be a distraction
  • Not particularly interested in catching up on people's lives through Facebook

Fake account:
  • She took too long to enter a passcode and had to start over
  • Once her account was set up, she did not know what to do, primarily because there was nothing on Facebook that she wished to find out on her own
  • Took her some time to find where to search for my profile and send me a friend request
  • Did not know where the newsfeed was supposed to appear since she was automatically redirected to her profile
  • Did not see the notifications for a while and did not realize what its purpose was until I started inviting her to events
  • Did not like getting so many emails and her email address being displayed publicly
  • Thought it was creepy how the status update asked for her location and people who she could tag
  • The concept that people could see and know things about her without actually being with her was unsettling for her
Developed four major personas (primary, negative, etc) to base our designs for. One persona I created was our negative persona:
About Joanna:
  • Works in the Human Resources department of a major international corporation
  • Lives in NYC and meets and stays in touch with small tight-knit groups
  • Keeps her work and private life separate
  • Keeps her relationships between coworkers professional and rarely spends time with them in her free time
  • Concerned with who views her personal information on her Facebook account and deleted her Facebook account
  • Disturbed by the idea of someone from work viewing her photos since she does not want to compromise her relationships
Goals:
  • Keep personal information private
  • Personal information encompasses how she interactions with her friends, her photos, current location, and contact information
  • Stay in touch and connect with new personal friends and not the typical "Facebook friend"
  • Focus on her personal life and not be distracted by social media
Created storyboards of how users encounter and try to fix issues they have with Facebook. Sample storyboard detailing some issues that we found:
storyboard
Brainstormed ideas on how to solve issues users had with privacy settings
brainstorming sessionbrainstorming session
Each member created a paper prototype based on the brainstorming session and tested it with our interviewees. Based on user test feedback, we combined the best aspects of each prototype into our group paper prototype.
Using our paper prototype, we drew storyboards to illustrate how our interface could be used and discover potential difficulties.
Based on feedback, we developed a medium fidelity prototype for our interface using PowerPoint. The PowerPoint prototype can be accessed here.
We conducted a final round of interviews to investigate effectiveness of our interface and further improvements we could make. The user we interviewed at the beginning of the process gave the following feedback:
  • Can be confusing for a first time user how the split screen works
  • For her it was more intuitive to make changes on the top half of the screen rather than the bottom
  • Rather than content that she posts herself, she is more concerned about tags from others
  • Liked how our interface allowed more flexibility where users can truly hide content from some while not eliminating it from their profile
  • Since the user's profile already changed after clicking "hide photo", she did not think to select "save changes"
  • It would be useful if she could save her changes after making multiple changes to her privacy settings
  • While our interface has a learning curve, once the user initially sees how they edit their privacy settings it is very easy to use
  • After the first task she was able to complete the tasks quickly without any hesitation or confusion
  • Navigating through groups was very easy and intuitive because they are clearly visible at the top