Exploring how the design of social platforms could be improved to better support the experiences of queer young men
Human-Computer Interaction PhD research project
LGBTQ+ young people depend heavily on social platforms to find peer support and explore their identities — often in ways that are not possible or safe in the physical realm. However, they're often not considered in the design of such platforms.
As part of my PhD, I used ethnographic and research through design approaches with queer young men to explore how social platforms could be better designed to support them.
When I was 13, I moved back to my hometown of Christchurch, New Zealand. Exactly a month later, a major earthquake hit. While my family was very lucky to survive unharmed, the central city where I was living was cordoned off — there was no way to get home. We moved to another town and for the first three months, the only possessions I had from my previous life were my school uniform, my (Nokia) phone and my iPod Touch.
About that time, I started to figure out that I was queer. Far away from my friends and the support networks I’d once relied upon, the internet helped connect me to other queer young people and explore who I was.
When choosing a topic for my thesis, I wanted to work on something at the intersection of technology design, human connection and social impact. I remembered the enormous impact that connection to others through technology had on me as a lonely queer kid trying to find his place in the world, and it made me want to help others in the LGBTQ+ community.
Social platforms are vital for queer and trans young people
As they were for me, social platforms are often a way for LGBTQ+ young people to find community and explore their identities. Online they can meet people they wouldn't otherwise have access to and learn what it means to be queer or trans. Importantly, they can often do so without having to disclose their identities to those they know in the physical realm.
Although social platform design can also open them up to harm
A growing body of work critiques the design of social platforms and highlights that they are often not designed with the needs of queer and trans people in mind. For example, due to on-going stigma about their identities, social platforms can open queer and trans young people up to harrassment and discrimination, whether direct or observed. And, beyond harm from those outside the community, interactions with other queer and trans people can be problematic.
Exploring how the design of social platforms could be improved to better support the experiences of queer young men
This work addresses gaps in the current understanding of how queer young men use social platforms and uses it as a foundation for co-design work exploring new social platform features.
What do I mean by social platforms, experiences and queer young men?
When I talk about social platforms, I'm referring to social media and dating apps my participants used. They most commonly talked about Instagram, Grindr, Twitter, Facebook, Tinder, TikTok, Snapchat, Tumblr, BeReal and Reddit.
The focus was on exploring their subjective or felt experiences. What are their relationships with the technology? How do they think it has shaped their journey and interactions with the community?
The queer young men I worked with were aged 18-28, identified as gay, bisexual or queer, and included a number of trans men.
Phase 1 — Exploring how social platforms shape current experiences
In order to improve design in a meaningful way, it's essential to start by understanding people's experiences. To do this, I recruited 24 queer and trans young men living in Sydney to take part in a study about their experiences on social platforms.
If I were studying how a group of people use technology at work, I could observe them throughout the work day, take notes, ask questions where appropriate and get a decent understanding of their experiences.
But, our experiences on social platforms can be deeply personal and private. We also use them at all hours of the day. And it's difficult to track someone's use of social platforms, espcially across a range of different apps. And even if that weren't the case, analytics give limited insight into people's experiences with and attitudes to the platforms.
Meanwhile, interviews can be great for getting people to describe their experiences but they can be disconnected from reality and offer a limited window into people's lives.
I needed a way to get a deeper insight into people's experiences beyond the confines of an interview that would respect participants' privacy and be more practical than observation.
The solution — Designing a probe-kit to help participants reflect on their use of social platforms
A kit of five specially designed probes was used with participants to better understand their experiences (see right).
Using probes allowed for insights into participants experiences beyond the confines of an interview by allowing them opportunities to reflect on their use in creative ways. It also allowed for exploring how their use of social platforms varied across accounts and platforms without asking repetitive questions for each platform.
For more visuals and information about the probes including a rationale and design considerations for each, see this dedicated page for the probes.
👋 First interview
Building up rapport, asking general questions and handing over the probe kit.
45-90 minutes
👨🎨 Time with probes
Time for participants to reflect on how they use social platforms and complete the kit on their own.
2-4 weeks
🤝 Second interview
Review the probes together to build a shared understanding of how they use and see social platforms.
60-120 mins
Curating disclosure
Participants concealed being queer or trans to avoid negative experiences, but they also used platforms to assert their identity whether through coming out posts, rainbow emoji or displaying their pronouns.
Wrestling with the pressure to conform to the image of an ideal queer man
Many participants described a "toxic" culture in the queer community that made them feel inadequate and as though they had to fit a narrow and unrealistic definition of what it means to be a queer man. Participants described discrimination, harrassment and negative self-comparison as a result of not fitting these norms.
Curating an attractive image
Even if heavily curated content is seen as a negative, this doesn't stop people from trying to present themselves this way. Especially important on dating apps where many experimented with how to make themselves stand out, often changing how they presented themselves based on whether they were looking for friends, dates or hookups. Dating apps were often used as a way to seek validation and get a confidence boost.
Sharing less idealised presentations
Many described how they shared less curated sides of themselves in places only close friends could see. Often this helped them feel more comfortable in themselves and find support.
Finding and interacting with peers
Overwhelmingly, participants described how beneficial it was to find peers on social platforms who shared similar experiences. Dating apps such as Tinder and Grindr helped many to find their social footing and connections to community. Most used a spectrum of dating apps and were strategic about how they used each. Navigating mistmatched expectations and issues around consent were major issues on dating apps.
Using social platforms in NSFW ways
Many participants shared how they used alt accounts for Not Safe for Work (NSFW) content. Who they shared these accounts with was often complex. For example some shared them with friends, while others tried to keep them secret and some even talked about the ways NSFW content or stories could be shared in non-sexual ways.
Engaging with LGBTQ+ content
Content participants saw online helped them learn about their identities, and connect with LGBTQ+ history and current events.
Phase 2 — Translating findings into new concepts for design
Now I better understood how queer and trans young men were using social platforms, it was time to explore new directions for design. To do this, I ran two co-design workshops with a range of queer UX designers and engineers in San Francisco. I then mocked-up up the resulting concepts using Figma.
Introductions and creative warm-up
To get the workshop off to a good start, I ran a creative warm up designed to help participants connect over shared interests.
Grounding the workshops in findings from Phase 1
Instead of spending an hour presenting findings from the previous phase (and putting everyone to sleep in the process), I made posters for five-key areas of experiences. I walked through them at a high-level and answered questions that came up — but the idea was workshop participants could explore them at their own pace. To help them empathise with participants from Phase 1, I included quotes and probe returns. Below are 3 of the 5 posters:
Ideation and clustering
Next, I ran a short ideation sprint where workshop participants generated ideas for new design concepts that responded to findings in the posters. Each idea had a single post-it and I clustered these on a wall in the workshop space, connecting common ideas and themes.
Fleshing out concepts
Groups of 2-3 participants were then given clusters of ideas to flesh out on concept worksheets. Using a worksheet helped provide a structure for each concept, guiding groups to think through different dimensions of their designs. They also captured their ideas in a form that I could use later.
Final discussion
The workshops ended with a final group discussion about common themes that emerged and reflections on designing for the community.
Clustering concepts and sketching
I started by clustering all of the concepts that came out of the workshops, mapping out the key features and elements of each. I then drew on these to sketch out designs to mockup.
Basing mockups on platforms familiar to participants
Many of the concepts created in the design workshops were based on Instagram and Grindr and these were the platforms participants spoke about most in the interviews. By basing the mockups on these apps, the features could be shown in less abstract ways and in contexts that participants in the evaluation sessions were already familiar with.
Creating mockups using Figma
Using Figma, I turned the designs I'd sketched out into mockups that could be shown to participants. Below are mockups for a concept around giving people more agency over recieving NSFW pics on Grindr.
Phase 3 — Evaluating design concepts
The final phase of this work was to evaluate the new design concepts with end-users. To do this, I ran three group evaluation sessions where I presented the concepts and facilitated discussion about them.
Setting the scene
I started sessions by using a creative warm-up to do introductions before providing context about the purpose of the sessions. Importantly, I made sure participants had license to criticise the concepts, highlighting that they were just initial ideas and any feedback would be welcome.
Presenting the design concepts
Concepts were presented as part of worksheets that participants worked on in small groups. Using physical sheets helped facilitate exploration at particpants' own pace before having a wider discussion. It also meant that they could annotate the concepts and that their thoughts were captured for later analysis.
Leading discussion
After participants were given some time to explore each design concept in their group, I facilitated discussions amongst all of the groups. Differences in opinions between groups were fruitful for surfacing issues or tensions in the designs.
Ranking concepts
The sessions ended by getting participants to rank concepts as a group from most to least desirable. This stimulated discussion at a higher level and surfaced insights into how they percieved each of the concepts.
Providing more opportunities for consent and clarifying expectations
Participants greatly appreciated features that gave them agency over the kinds of interactions they had, particularly on dating apps. The most popular feature was the ability to blur or entirely block NSFW pictures until they'd given consent. Similarly, participants liked the ability to opt-out of being part of a targeted audience (e.g. Instagram Close Friends).
Designing to support variation in desired experiences
A number of the concepts explored how social platforms could be designed in ways that adapted users' experiences situationally. For example, participants appreciated the ability to signal what they were looking for with specific users. Similarly, they wanted to be able to communicate in their dating app profiles what they were looking for in the moment separately to what they are generally. Currently, many platforms are designed in ways that only afford static profiles or user preferences, but participant responses to these concepts suggest that this isn't adequate.
Providing transparency and control over automated, algorithmic and AI features
Features that gave participants the option to tweak algorithmic content feeds or pick the content that they were shown situationally were popular. While there were a number of automated features proposed, many were weary of giving up control to automated systems and liked designs that were transparent about the decisions they were making.
Providing ways to connect with local communities
While some dating apps currently have travel features, these usually focus on finding people in another location. However, there's an opportunity to help people learn about the places they travel to and connect with others through events. The mockups below show a new Local Guide feature designed for Grindr. Beyond travel, many participants wanted to be able to use this concept at home and thought it'd be great for those with little exposure to the local queer community.
Presenting this work to industry
- Presented as a paid speaker as part of Feeld's internal speaker series
- Shared findings in meetings with the UX Research team at Grindr
- Presented findings to Hornet's CEO and VP of Product and created a case study showing how they could incorporate my work around consent into their app [PDF]