DigiKomp: Digital Competence Platform

A-DigiKomp

Background

The project was focused on developing a concept of a browser plugin (called DigiKomp) aimed at providing information regarding digital competencies in adolescents and young adults. The browser plugin would detect potential risks on a certain webpage and inform the user about its existence, details and some of the possible mitigation strategies and steps.

The research was part of my master's thesis which I did with my supervisors from Saarland University as well as from imc AG.

The problem

During the literature review of my thesis, I found out that some studies showed that although age group of 16-24 years old (adolescents and young adults) were proficient at using technologies and they feel confident about using them, at the same time, they take more risks and indulge in risky activities online that could get them in trouble.

Constraint: The design solution is to be provided packaged as a browser plugin (Chromium-based web browsers)

Timeframe

The duration of my master's thesis was from the month of March 2020 till January 2021. however, the project still continued to be refined even after my thesis submission.

Research

The entire research was divided into two phases (Phase-I and Phase-II). After both the phases are completed and one concept was chosen, the final designs were started to be made and then, later on, sent for development. Both the phases are described as follows:

Phase-I

The first phase was mostly dedicated to understand the perception of internet risks in the target audience.

The Research question asked was "RQ1: What is the perception of the internet risks among adolescents and young adults?"

Due to high internet usage in recent years, it could be argued that the participant's high exposure to online threats due to increased internet usage could be a reason. Loss of personal data, identity theft and financial loss were primary concerns from the participants and were seen as major internet risks.

Similar responses were found when explicitly asked about risk tolerance later in the interview regarding the theft of personal data and financial losses.

The results for one of the questions showed most people were using YouTube than any other social media platform. See a word cloud generated below.

Phase-II

In the next phase, different solutions to show information regarding internet risks were given as concepts. The four alternative solutions to deliver risk information were packaged in four different design patterns. These were:

• MOOC Style – Massive open online course style where information is delivered as smaller nuggets/units in an online course style. Experience prototype

• Centre stage popup – These popups are placed at the centre of the user's screen to break the usage of flow the website and take their attention to show information on potential risks. Experience prototype

• Contextual popups – The smaller popups were shown near the element of high-risk on the webpage showing information alongside the content of the webpage. Experience Prototype

• Sidebar – The information is shown in a vertically aligned sidebar which is placed at the right edge of the screen and can be collapsed and expanded at will. Experience Prototype

The four design patterns were accompanied by one pre-test and one post-test to measure differences between their effectiveness. These test questions were taken to measure the effectiveness of knowledge transfer.

Along with the pre and post-test, there was also a UEQ (User Experience Questionnaire) at the end (for each participant) to quantify the UX of the four solutions and concepts.

The phase two process is visualised in the diagram below:

Validation

The four design solutions were tested by having four clickable prototypes made entirely on Figma. The exact process and workflow of each participant can be seen in the following diagram. The participants were hired through the platform - Amazon Mechanical Turk.

Results

The results for Phase-II were measured for the tests (Pre/post-test and UEQ).

For pre and post-test, in terms of the effectiveness of knowledge transfer the following design patterns were effective (decreasing order of effectiveness):

• Contextual Popup
• Sidebar
• Centerstage popup
• MOOC

And for the user experience questionnaire, the results of six parameters (mentioned along the X-axis) for all the design patterns are shown below.

Implications

As shown above, out of the four design patterns Contextual popups were more effective for knowledge transfer and the sidebar pattern was most effective as far as user experience was concerned. And in terms of user experience, the sidebar pattern was turned out to be the most preferred option.

Due to constraints from the implementation side and because there was already a sidebar pattern in existence at the time so it would reduce the development effort the design pattern SIDEBAR was chosen but due to its. effectiveness.

Prototypes

Prototype 1

The designs were then iterated to go forward with the selected Sidebar design pattern. The following concept was created first. A preview is shown below. Full prototype here

Critique

• The design is not a sidebar and consisted of a chatbot style pattern.
• The number of available risks that could be shown is limited.
• Although it was aesthetically pleasing, the designs could not be integrated into the imc's native software - Process guide (basically a technical constraint.)

Prototype 2

A preview is shown below. Full prototype here

This design was more matured in terms of its ability to be integrated with the native imc software.

• The sidebar pattern was evident.
• More number of options were available and can be seen to the user.

Further development

There were a few more iterations before it was finally approved by stakeholders and then the designs were finally submitted to the development. It is now (at the time of writing - July 2021) under development and feedback are being given from my side to improve the implementation of it.

PS : If you have read it till here and have some questions or would want to discuss it even more in detail, please reach out to s8hihima@stud.uni-saarland.de. Thank you for your time and attention.