TruLens

TruLens

Prototype Link

What is TruLens About? To be human is to create. This is TruLens, a place to connect on a personal, deeper level and to help spread your authentic thoughts. We can stay human by sharing our prompts, and pictures which help bring authenticity to life and make social media a better form of engagement in the world of AI. The negative environment around social media nowadays is caused by a lack of human content, fact-checking, and addiction by design. So we created an app that encourages users to spread authentic and positive messages. We have built-in AI and fact-checkers to foster an environment where people interact with real people on the other side of the screen and leave the app feeling content.

Research and Findings The impact of misinformation can be destructive to various aspects of our lives from public health, politics, mental health, economic issues, and many more.

To gather reliable secondary and primary research for our project, my team and I conducted a literature review and survey to gather insights on what drives social media addiction, the spread of AI generated content and misinformation and how it leads to a lack of human connection, as well as data on what/how current social media users interact with the apps on their phones.

Social media is used by 80% of the world’s population. The short video format quickly became the most popular type of media format on social media. This made people spend much more time on social media than ever before and constantly compare themselves to others. The impact of misinformation can be destructive to various aspects of our lives from public health, politics, mental health, economic issues, and many more. In social media, escapism is the main motivator for short-term videos that contribute to the flow that social media creates for users. Reward-based learning, flow, and dopamine escapism, are the main culprits for addiction to social media and shorter attention spans.

More than 70 of the surveyed teens have experienced deceptive visual content, causing people to distrust social media content and over-examining it to see if it is real or AI. Because of the AI-generated content, Studies show that teens already have low trust in any news outlet, whether political or not. 73% of teens want content generated by AI to be labeled or watermarked to show the source it came from. Due to the AI-generated content, there is barely any deeper connection between people.

Social media tends to have a negative atmosphere, especially in the comment section. Usually the comment section is a place where people share their opinions about a specific topic. However, there are many comments where people are verbally abused as well as people use this as an advantage to dox people. This causes dangers such as stalking and potential threats to the person. In our survey results, about 42% of people use social media towards the night time and about 56% of people have a screen time range between 3-5 hours. Many people use it as a source to get rid of boredom or for entertainment purposes. But after they use social media for a while, they feel unproductive or drained.

All of our survey results and sources are linked in this research document: Research Doc

Design Decisions Because our sole purpose was to make the app a non-addictive app where people have a human-to-human connection, we went with a design based on a 2000s theme. We chose an off-white background with contrasting colors of teal and brown to help people access the app without straining their eyes. Bright colors contribute to high dopamine levels on social media, leading to addiction to scrolling, which we are working against.

One of the main features that is intentionally missing from our app are short form videos. Studies have shown the highly addictive nature of short videos on social media apps, and how they negatively contribute to people’s attention spans and overall mood once they are done using the app. To create the non-addictive, authentic, and positive environment we want on TruLens, we made sure to intentionally exclude short videos.

One of the ways we made the environment on TruLens more positive, is by having daily prompts about self-reflection, gratitude, a question about hobbies and interests, and many more. We separate seeing your real life friends' responses and an explore page with others responses so you can choose to focus on your real circle first and foremost. The algorithm that pushes prompt responses or “Lens” is completely random. This promotes uniqueness and randomness in our app because it does not allow a “viral moment” by following a certain pattern or trend. This further contributes to not forming an addiction as it omits the gamification element of posting on social media. It also increases human to human connection because you have an equal chance of seeing every user’s response.

The chatrooms allow users to discuss their interests and connect with other people on a level in which they can have easy flowing discussion. The topics of these discussions can have a very wide range as they are created by the users themselves (and regulated by the app to avoid AI generated texts and harmful content). Being able to create conversation with strangers is one of the simple pleasures of life, which is why we included it on TruLens, to increase human-to-human connection.

Built With

• figma