DEAR DIGITAL EQUITY

My Role:

Visual Designer & Researcher

Background

Within the Interactive Media Design program, I was enrolled in IMD 351 & 481 for Fall 2022. These classes were combined to teach our cohort how to utilize various research methods and design practices, to ultimately employ a digital equity website project titled Dear Digital Equity.

We created this project to showcase explore & explain digital equity resources through blog posts, infographics, and profiles of digital equity advocates within Washington State. The project was overlooked by two stakeholders, who would aid in providing advocate information & advice for our deliverables.

As a result, we were able to create a platform for resources and information to help reduce the digital divide in Washington.

The cohort was divided into five different groups based on their strengths & weaknesses.

Students were given the opportunity to select a group, so I chose to work on the social media aspect of the project. As a member of the social media team, my role consisted of conducting research on social media strategies, optimal platforms to utilize, and deliverables.

Along with the team project, students were also tasked with two individual tasks as well.

• Create an “explainer” that brings awareness or information about a digital equity topic. (blog post, video, infographic, etc)

• Reach out and interview a digital equity advocate in Washington state, then create a profile to upload on the website.

With three main projects in mind, I identified the main prompts for my work.

Social Media:

• Optimize the number of views & interactions on our social media.

• Cater the type of content we would post to a target audience.

• Identify the most optimal social media platforms for our target audience.

Advocate:

• Find a digital equity advocate to interview.

• Transcribe and summarize the interview into a profile.

Explainer:

• Research a Washington state digital equity issue.

• Design an infographic to upload on the website & social media.

After understanding my goals for these assignments, I decided to move into a research phase.

First, I worked with my social media team to conduct research on our target audience.

We consulted the two digital equity stakeholders that were recommended by our professors. Through an in-person meeting, I asked for advice regarding optimal social media platforms, and the type of content we should post.

These stakeholders recommended Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and TikTok, giving pros & cons for each platform. These were all great options, but we decided to only select three because of our time constraints. To gain a further understanding of our target users, we conducted a social media interest survey.

Utilizing Google Forms, our team sent a survey to our cohort.

To give context, our cohort consists of 28 people. The age range is 18-27, with the average being ~21. From the results of these two questions, we were able to understand that most young adults prefer to use Instagram over other social media. This gave us a clear option for our primary social media platform. To also ensure that our brand would maintain a professional look, we decided to utilize LinkedIn as well because of its high “Professional Use” in the survey.

This final question gave us the confidence to select Twitter as the third option for a social media platform.

Facebook is already integrated with Instagram, so we decided that this would not be a necessary option.

We decided that TikTok would not be a good option either.

View the full survey report here.

After identifying our main platforms, I began researching popular digital equity social media content.

From conducting hashtag searches on Twitter & Instagram, I was able to discover that the majority of highly liked posts were concise and minimalistic infographics.

I presented these findings to the content & branding team so that they could create a style guide with a similar aesthetic.

With all of this in mind, we were able to identify that our target user would be young adults who use Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Advocate Profile & Explainer

After a quick discussion with the project’s stakeholders, I was referred to a digital equity advocate that worked with BIPOC communities. I was able to gain insight into the digital equity limitations within these communities and discovered new resources to help combat this. The advocate’s profile can be viewed here.

I decided to design my “explainer” to provide digital equity demographic information in Washington state. I discovered a 2018 study from Pacific Market Research and utilized the demographic information as evidence for my infographic.

After establishing a style guide from the content & branding team, we were ready to draft templates for our social media posts. Utilizing the logo, typography, and color palette provided by the content & branding team, we produced wireframes for the advocate profile posts.

Then I created my “explainer” infographic with the style guide provided.

Because of the simplicity of the design, I skipped creating a template and went right into creating the final edition. Since our project’s entire motivation is based on digital equity, I ensured that my infographic would be accessible. With clear swiping directions, contrasting text & colors, the infographic was able to accomplish all of the goals of an “explainer”.

Reflection

Dear Digital Equity,

Through extensive work and effort, we produced a comprehensive website featuring a wealth of digital equity content, including advocate profiles, infographics, videos, blog posts, and additional resources in Washington State. Although I had prior experience in managing social media accounts and graphic design, the research aspect of this project was a new challenge. I'm grateful for the opportunity to have participated. Ultimately, I contributed to the research and implementation of our social media platforms and created a concise infographic on digital equity.

This project profoundly taught me the importance of purposeful design. Collaborating with numerous digital equity advocates has shifted my design approach to be much more accessibility-focused.

Best,

RJ Mao