On average 4.66 billion people use the internet globally, which is 60% of the worldwide population. People rely on the internet for learning, education, news, and human connection and associate more with brands that thrive on the principles of trust, transparency, and credibility. UX design for the truth era websites should be a reliable source of knowledge and stand as an epitome of empowerment, and truth.
Over the past year, online education websites have become a stimulant for confidence, and fulfillment, and a source of knowledge, and future career prospects.
News outlets are reimagining a future of the internet centered around trust, transparency, equality, and innovation.
Non-profit organizations (NPOs) are actively contributing positively, from reducing inequalities, driving economic growth, and boosting health outcomes.
The future of these websites and apps lies in systemic innovation and providing honest content to leave a meaningful digital legacy through UX design. In this blog, we explore some strategic UX design solutions to the challenges posed by digital misinformation that can deter people's perception about online education, news outlets, and NPOs.
Online Education
Online education has changed the face of traditional learning, making higher education a more digitally accessible source of optimism through e-learning and various courses. As people are looking for new ways to learn and more importantly learn from home, platforms such as edX, FutureLearn and Coursera have seen a surge in demand for their massive open online courses. Institutions such as Harvard and MIT also running courses on everything from marketing, business, and data science.
Online education is turning architectural education inside out, the options are increasing and more people calling for a change in the way education is consumed online, we foresee more changes in the process of learning and the need to engage with people by creating trust and transparency through some of the UX design features.
- Chat Forums — Faculty members, teachers, and initiators will have to adopt a change management mindset to move beyond intelligence and tap the right emotions in favor of knowing the students through the right communication channels. UX design features such as chat forums, discussion boards, and groups/communities tapped into education websites and apps could serve the GenZ, GenX, and Millenials with the same connection that pulls them to the social media channels.
- Interactive Support Systems— To re-create the interactive playful aura of schools at home content program features like popsicle's virtual recess can be built and designed for educational websites and apps for a well-deserved break or recess periods. This could also help to engage students and also the entire family to support the home learning ecosystem.
- Accessibility Experience for the Students with Attention Issues or Disabilities— Traditional teaching methods are fading away and for real academic success and online effectiveness designers will have to work on accessible UX design features to help teachers teach students with attention issues or disabilities.
News Outlets
Social networking platforms have become a tool for people's growth and passionate debates. They have become a space for entertainment, education, news, and human stories but have also resulted in mistrust and skepticism among people. The mistrust and skepticism due to misinformation had resulted in the reputation of news outlets under scrutiny and fundamental to people's choice.
The general concern is around the contamination of the news and most people stop consuming news from sources of questionable reputation. UX design features can help news outlets regain trust and maintain the authenticity of the news.
- Red Flags — UX design features such as red flag, dislike, not interested, and mute buttons could help people to specify and raise questions around their concerns and at the same time allow their active participation and contribution to the app or website. It will also help the news outlet to recommend and filter stories that fit the people's actual preferences.
- User Communities — Design features such as the community of practice incorporated in news apps and websites can encourage people to have real discussions around global news. This feature can enable human connection and set the core for transparency between the core members and regular visitors while also increasing traffic at the same time.
- Simple and Clear Headlines — Ux writing is a part of a wholesome user experience, a headline accounts for 50% of a news's effectiveness. The goal of content created for news channels should be simple and clear. This could also become a solution for the users to not worry about the authenticity of the news.
Non Profit Organisations
NPOs have a powerful influence on societies and culture. The impact of their good deeds can be felt across all generations, from Alphas and GenZs to Millennials, GenX, and Boomers. NPOs are purpose-driven and personal involvement in their activities can heighten the sense of service, mutual aid, and ethical values for the users. This makes designers responsible for ethical practices, transparency, and truth across their website design.
An NPO website should evoke compassionate emotions and ensure messaging that focuses on being community-driven. The UX features for these websites should be inclined towards understanding users' pain points to build solutions accordingly.
- Purposeful Content— Content is not words alone. Designers can include photographs or images for good visual storytelling. Images are a strong way to convey the mission and show the impact of an organization's work on communities and people. Infographics, interactive charts, fundraising details can also be used in an appealing way to drive the content in a purposeful way to create a deeper emotional connection with the website visitors.
- Impactful Buttons— To ensure consistent donations, volunteers and event sign-ups the call to action buttons require seamless navigation flow, clear visibility, and informative messaging.
- Easy to fill Forms— User-friendly forms are an essential design for NPOs. Designers can contribute here by focusing on reducing the number the fields and creating a responsive form design that fits the screen of all devices.
Conclusion
Some UX design strategies are common to all websites and apps. A design with consistent use of color themes creates a unified voice that the users' can recognize and resonate with in the future. The user experience of websites aiming to sustain in the fair internet era should be clutter-free with seamless navigation.
Distractions can be avoided by limiting the number of items on each page. Steer clear from using any unnecessary text, images, or ads. To avoid misinterpretation write scannable content for the web, stick to simple language, condensed copy, and spaced out sentences with easy-to-understand fonts and font sizes with simple headers and footers.
These UX design strategies make the website welcoming, approachable, and reliable. They evoke a sense of compassion and create a stress/hustle/grind-free culture.
The battle between what's real and what's not in today's world is becoming more pronounced, with misleading information becoming a concern for corporations to run, function, and establish themselves. Through the right UX design features, we can contribute to our share in designing solutions for the level of trust we need to create with today's users. We need to think about design in context to develop a methodology of understanding the needs of the people at the moment.
We need to understand when designs are created for trust, transparency, and truth who does it benefit? It benefits everyone, each one of us.