LGBTQ+ Writes

origin

LGBTQ+ Writes is an expansion of data collected during Georgia Tech's LGBTQ+Rise Up. LGBTQ+Rise Up was a long-term diary study investigating experiences of strength, coping, and resilience of LGBTQ+ people in the Southeast during the Covid-19 pandemic.

We worked with LGBTQ+Rise Up Researchers to determine three key ways that our project can expand on the data that they collected.

Continued data collection

Continued collection of stories of strength, coping, and resilience.

Sharing stories with the community

Create a community-facing display of LGBTQ+ stories.

Young adult buy in

LGBTQ+Rise Up lacked participation from younger adults, so our project needed to encourage their participation.

desk research

We started by familiarizing ourselves with the project space and the existing data collected from LGBTQ+Rise Up. We also explored different existing approaches to interactive experiences, including physical installations.

Rise-Up Resources

Public facing diary entries

Researchers’ affinity mapping and analysis

Physical Installation Experiences

Exploring physical interactive installations

Exploring digital components of interactive exhibits

cultural probe

After desk research, we designed and conducted a cultural probe to learn more about LGBTQ+ college students' cultural context and framework. In addition, this activity served as a ground-zero prototype to investigate interactive storytelling activities.

The probe was run remotely and consisted of three self-reflection prompts followed by group discussion and a collaborative mind-mapping activity. We had 6 total participants from our target audience.

our users

Our cultural probe demonstrated that LGBTQ+ college students share similar approaches to storytelling:

1. Self exploration. Students often reflect on isolating experiences as moments of positive change, self-growth, and introspection relating to their queer identity.
2. Connections to others. Students often reference their queer friends, support networks, and online spaces. Community is crucial for overcoming adversity, and students want to give back.
3. Flexible Expression. Students want multimedia options for self-expression. They often rely on humor (such as memes) to share relatable stories. They require a safe setting to share in.

Using these findings, we drafted some initial user needs and characteristics:

user needs

1. Balance of lighthearted and serious stories
2. Flexibility in self-expression
3. Connect through shared experiences

user characteristics

1. Funny and tapped into online humor
2. Understand and embrace queer identity
3. Caring and connected to community

pivoting mediums

Earlier in the project, we were set on designing a physical, interactive installation for storytelling. However, we decided to focus on developing a digital solution due to ongoing Covid-19 concerns and timeline constraints.

ideation & low-fidelity sketches

feedback

Next, we needed to evaluate these concepts. We used a survey to gather concept feedback from 16 LGBTQ+ Atlanta college students, and conducted 4 interviews with separate stakeholders including:

1. a LGBTQ+Rise Up Principal Investigator
2. a Georgia Tech LGBTQIA Resource Center Coordinator
3. 2 PhD students specializing in queer online communities

We evaluated our feedback data using affinity maps, and used our findings to further define design requirements:

Need to have

Safety
Anonymity
Digital
Added benefit
Low barrier of entry

Want to have

Collaborative community building
Different levels of engagement
Intersectionality
Identify shared experiences

Nice to have

Invite creativity
Memes and humorous content
Quick, easy interactions

Personas & journey maps

At this point, we had a much better understanding of our users than we did after our initial cultural probe. We stopped to draft personas and journey maps for two key user groups:

1. Community Newcomers. These are students that are new to the Georgia Tech community and their queer identity. They are interested in learning more about the community and expressing themselves safely.
2. Experienced Community Members. These students have an established close-knit group of peers and are confident in their identity. They want a quick, easy touchpoint for lighthearted content.

Concept revisions

Our findings so far indicated that while students actively wanted to engage in collaborative story sharing, they needed to do so in a way that didn't require hours of story-crafting expertise. Students enjoyed the flexibility of the zine idea, but not the effort required. They enjoyed the humor and prompts of the LGBTQ+ Memes concept, but would prefer to share memes using their existing social platforms.

‍We now had to think of a new concept, and ask ourselves what can we do to create a meaningful, fun, and engaging experience with low barrier of entry that provides added benefit over existing social media?

Usability testing

To evaluate our system, we conducted a series of think-aloud interviews followed by Likert and SUS questions. We had a total of 8 participants, including 6 LGBTQ+ Georgia Tech students, and 2 LGBTQ+ students from other Georgia schools. We expanded our population to test whether LGBTQ+ Writes would be useful for a broader audience. Our findings included:

positive feedback

1. High interest
2. Enjoyed sorting by mood
3. Multimedia content options

mixed feedback

1. Aesthetics
2. School email sign-on
3. Reception varied by school

negative feedback

1. Not enough guidance
2. UI consistency
3. Too little profile customization

lessons learned

1. Design into what makes your population unique (for us, the balance of humor, being chronically online, and heartfelt connection)
2. It can be challenging to balance creativity and novelty with familiarity. It's important to utilize existing design paradigms when possible for usability's sake, and explore new design approaches when supported by unique research findings and user needs.