A4 Peer Review 3: Julie Meng

08 Oct 2022

Hey Julie, I’m Ally~ Welcome to one of your peer reviews! ^-^

Starting off, I loved how you started off your informative pitch – it really reeled me in; you cleverly address the issue of clutter and endless scrolls on Twitter – it got me excited to explore your concepts addressing these issues! Focusing on: trust, want, and need. Bet.

A compliment, about Tags. I think that your Fritter’s Tags concept effectively addresses the issues of clutter and endless (and sometimes mindless) scrolls on Twitter! Off the bat, users will be able to know what topics a Freet would cover before diving into it or its comments! I really enjoy the synchronization between Fritter’s Tags and Filtered Feeds, as incorporating topic-based Tags is another intuitive way to simplify and organize how a user spends time on Fritter – allowing users to be mindful of what they’ll be looking at within their Feeds; nothing would catch them off-guard! There’s a lot of times that my mind would go blank because I’d see a very serious post on Instagram, followed by a comedic one – the algorithm would really play with my feelings and leave me on a rollercoaster of emotions; not only do the scattered posts mess with my feelings, but I also think it also makes my memory worse – I’m less likely to remember a set of miscellaneous posts, but I’m more likely to remember consistent posts. I’m very interested in your Fritter’s organized feeds by Tags and looking forward to your implementation :) (Concept efficacy + synchronization)

A criticism, about Flags. I think that the classifications with your Flags concept have great potential for building trust and providing what users need (going back to your pitch). But, as mentioned in your tradeoffs, I do foresee users abusing this concept (as likely use cases) to get their Freets prioritized, or even using the classification of “fact-checked” by providing sources that may not have relevant or accurate information to prove the Freet’s content. To counteract this, I see that you mentioned that you would place “enough restrictions on the users and Freets themselves that can use the Flag,” so that “the potential benefits from boosting time-sensitive Freets are worth the occasional risk of a fake Freet” – what would these restrictions on users and Freets look like? Would they involve a case-by-case check? If only a select few users are allowed to use Flags, how do users earn the ability to? I’m curious to learn more about the specificities on how Flag verification and allowance would work, as this allocation would determine a lot of what and whose Freets are considered as urgent and accurate on the platform. I think having and specifying clear verification processes would boost concept efficacy! (Concept efficacy)

A speculation, about Filtered Feeds. As mentioned above in my review of Tags, the synchronization between that concept, Fritter Feeds, as well as Users is amazing. I like that you have an overall filter with “Following,” as it is very efficient. I wonder if allowing the user to create custom filters would contribute to efficacy when browsing Fritter Feeds – so that they would not have to select tags or users one-by-one if they wanted to see a select few every time. Clearing tags allows for efficiency in removing them; but I think allowing users to save filters, duplicate them, and customize them would also help in allowing users to skip the step of re-selecting specific tags and users that they may want to browse and scroll through – similar to Twitter’s Lists, but better due to your allowance of Tags! (Concept efficacy)

An extra speculation on Tags: I was wondering if users will be able to customize Tags? Or is there already a set of types of Tags that users would be able to use?

Thanks so much for a lovely Fritter Converge, Julie! I especially enjoyed how aesthetically pleasing your Fritter UI is (are those lil’ biscuits as your Fritter logo? cute!), and also agree with disallowing for editing Freets in preventing misleading Fritter users – especially if they already interacted with the Freet by liking, commenting, and reFreeting. Lots of food for thought! 🍊

I also had a similar concept of having users cite their own sources to fight the spread of misinformation through a concept called “Citations,” if you wanted to check it out and provide any feedback~

For reference, here is Julie’s A3: Fritter Converge