The Connection to my Journey to UX Design

I've always felt the most satiated when learning about the ways in which individuals interact with technology user interfaces -- even when the primary focus of my studies was within the Psychology field!

I have the opportunity of translating my social science background in ways that apply empathy and grounding design decisions in evidence when possible.

Project Background

Our study observed the effects of emoji congruence and social status on comprehending a tweet by exposing our participants to one of four different Tweets.

Being aware of the multiple meanings behind emojis can aid emoji users with selecting emojis that pair with their intended message (Derks, Bos, & von Grumbkow, 2008). Users of technology can thus use emojis to their advantage by providing an emoji to strengthen the virtual expression of emotion.

Oftentimes, the overall message itself is not the sole influence on understandability. Other factors such as recognition of a topic, person, or quantified support (displayed as likes, comments, or retweets) may affect the ease to which an individual perceives they understand. Social status may shape an individual’s trust of a message and its source while affecting the comprehensibility of the message. Lin, Spence, and Lachlan (2016) suggested that once a weak perception is made about a source’s competence and trustworthiness, it inhibits a person’s ability to think about a source’s intentions about the message.

What We Expected

We predicted that tweets with congruent emojis (happy emoji + happy message) were more comprehensible than those with incongruent emojis (sad emoji + happy message), and that tweets from a source which denoted higher social status, the University President, would be more comprehensible than the student’s due to participants envisioning higher authority cues leading to higher perceived competence making the tweet more comprehensible.

Process Outline

• Synthesized previous research to formulate research questions and key artifacts to lead a group of 4 other student researchers. 
• Conduct research activities using established research methods and analyzed data using IBM SPSS. 
  
• Communicated research insights and recommendations to convey storytelling through a presentation and a report.
  

Methods

4 Conditions

The tweet, “Monday is looking pretty good so far”, was used across all conditions.

Experimenters added either a positive or sad emoji to the tweet and manipulated the source of the tweet which was either a University President or student (see image below).

Conducting the Studies

Participants were asked to complete a questionnaire that assessed their comprehensibility of the tweet. Researchers used block randomization to assign a version of the tweet to participants.

Researchers instructed participants to examine the tweet inside the folder for 15 seconds. After the stopwatch sounded, participants were not allowed to refer back to the Tweet while answering the questionnaire.

Both consent forms and debriefing were taken/performed.

Crucial Outcomes

As hypothesized, congruent emojis paired with a written message increased scores of comprehensibility. Contrary to our other prediction, tweets from a low social status individual was rated higher in comprehensibility than a tweeter with high social status, thus participants’ understanding of the tweets were not affected by social status.

‍For more detailed findings and learnings, please reference the report or email knwu@ucsc.edu. Thanks!

What this Might Mean for our Society

By observing how emoji congruence and social status interact with a users ability to understand a message, social media users might be want to be mindful of how their use of emojis affect the comprehension of their posts. Incongruent emojis to a message may create ambiguity, making the message unclear and difficult to understand.  

By increasing ways that make a user seem more trustworthy, such as having a large following or making their high social status public, other users may give more weight to that user's online posts. This may be particularly crucial to be aware of and leverage for important or urgent social media posts (e.g., involving public health, abductions, donating to important causes, etc...).

My Takeaways

Navigating Unforeseen Circumstances in the Year of 2020...

An even greater challenge was halfway through the project’s development, the pandemic began and our team had to continue our project remotely. I learned to use electronic communication to routinely check in with the group and with the professor to prevent communication issues from arising rather than after a misunderstanding would occur.

Learning to Collaborate and Plan within a Larger Group

I enjoyed working with my four other group members but like any project, we experienced a few bumps in the road. The group size was on the larger side, which not only made coordinating times for group meetings more challenging, but more importantly it was critical to ensure each member shared the same understanding and knowledge.

It was my role as the principal investigator to encourage a respectful and open-minded culture where everyone’s opinions and questions were viewed as valuable. This ensured project decisions were made by the team as a whole rather than a few select people who understood the process or guidelines.

To achieve having a common understanding, periodically I stayed after group meetings to help certain team members fully comprehend each aspect of our project when they reached out for my help.

As a result of the group’s culture I actively fostered as well as the personalities and will of the other team members, our team was responsive to each other’s needs and we met project deadlines and were proud of our accomplishments.