#Friends_Not_Rivals

OVERVIEW

CLIENT:

This project was a part of my broad capstone research, where our potential client was the Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia (CREECA) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

CREECA’s mission is “to support research, teaching, and outreach on Russia, Eastern and Central Europe, and Central Asia.” Our social media application “Friends, Not Rivals“ was intended to support their campaign of demonstrating the influence of the media and politicians on the American-Russian relationship. The application had to look friendly and inspiring to encourage people to participate in the campaign, change biased attitudes towards each other, and resolve tensions between Americans and Russians that are created by political controversies.

CREECA would later analyze user activity in the application for their research. It would help them address the problem of social homelessness that many Eastern European immigrants experience in the United States.

ROLE:

Our team included 2 people. Both of us equally contributed to the majority of the activities including research, interviews, user testing, prototypes, etc.

TOOLS:

Sketch, Balsamiq, Illustrator, Photoshop, Premiere

DURATION:

4 months

AGILE METHODOLOGY

I used a double diamond technique. This iterative approach helped me revise the earlier stages of the project as I learned more about user needs. This process helped me better understand our customers, figure out their pain points, empathize with them, and develop a solution that would solve their problems.

CONTEXT

This began as a project for a User Experience Design class at the University of Wisconsin–

Madison. The brief required a team of two students to develop a design thinking process that would solve a problem for people who experience Social Homelessness on campus or beyond. These people would belong to the groups or communities that are discriminated against, isolated, underestimated, left out, and might have difficulties communicating with other members of society.

My partner and I decided to start with the Russian community on campus. However, the more research we did the wider our audience became. Many people got interested in our project, so we ended up including participants from off-campus, such as members of the Madison Russian Community, members of the Balalaika and Domra Association of America, and others.

OBJECTIVE

For many decades, the American-Russian relationship has been negatively affected by politicians and the media. This causes confusion in attitudes between the two nations, leading some Russian-speaking people in the United States to feel socially separated from Americans. This separation may lead to loneliness, depression, anxiety, and a feeling of otherness. Our goal was to develop an application that would solve the problem of social homelessness for Eastern European immigrants in the USA, and break the pattern of biased attitudes between the two nations in order to normalize relations.

We realized that this type of project would take a form of a campaign. The Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia (CREECA) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison would encourage people to participate in the campaign by downloading the app. It would be a social media app where people could take selfies with funny #friends_not_rivals filters. These selfies could be posted to multiple social media platforms, including a campaign gallery. Participants would be able to comment and share. The goal of the app would be to highlight the problem of political influence on the American-Russian relationship and influence people to start a conversation.

IMMERSION EXPERIENCE

Since I am a foreign-born Russian-speaking immigrant I personally experienced some social homelessness in the Madison, and on campus in particular. My personal insecurity was based on a feeling of “otherness,” so I felt a personal attachment to this project. The feeling of being strongly related to this problem helped me fully empathize with the people I interviewed and completely understand their pain.

I know people from a wide range of different social groups, including Russians, Americans, and members of other communities. In my experience, language is the strongest factor that unites people into communities. Another important factor is having common interests. Even people of different languages can be united into groups if they share a common interest or are dedicated to the same idea. But there is no obvious factor along these lines that unites American and Russian people by itself. And, of course, our project is not enough to solve that problem. However, hearing about “Russian hackers,” “Russian aggressors” and so on made me feel personally attached to the particular group of people that are so negatively described by media. It caused me to feel insecure and made me wonder if my background could be a factor that would make me be unwelcome in society. Some people told me that they conceal their “Russianness” and pretend to be from other Eastern European countries such as Ukraine or Moldova. When I ask them why they do that, they usually refer to the tense political relationship between Russia and the USA and they simply don’t want to be associated with that tension.

These experiences made me wonder about the level of psychological pressure Russian-speaking immigrants can experience, and what consequences it can cause. I started this project as a way to explore this issue more.

PRIMARY RESEARCH

STATISTICS OF THE RUSSIAN NATIVE SPEAKERS IN THE UNITED STATES:

• There are almost 6 million official Russian speakers in the United States.

• Every year between 1500 and 2000 people immigrate from Russia to the United States. However, the number of Russian-Speaking immigrants is much larger because it includes people from Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, South Ossetia, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, Uzbekistan, and other countries.

• The median age of the foreign-born Russian-speaking population is 35.

• The median income is $50,000.

• More than 50% of the Russian-speaking population has a bachelor’s degree or higher.

• The majority of Russian-speaking immigrants are at least bilingual.

(ameredia.com/resources/demographics/russian.html)

The tense political relationship between the USA and Russia dates back to the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, which escalated after World War II. Despite being allies against the Nazi regime, their political and economical regimes contradicted each other (Communism vs. Capitalism). The power of the Soviet Union after World War II was enormous. The threat that it would expand to more European countries was taken seriously by the USA. As a dictator, Stalin was famous for his unpredictable actions, so nobody knew what to expect. This uncertainty between the powers of great nations made the Cold War inevitable. Later that century, the Cold War was complicated by the atomic bomb and the space race. Even though the Cold War was officially over when the Soviet Union fell in 1991, strained relations between the countries remained. Recently, the strain was intensified during the 2016 Presidential Election in the USA.

(history.com/topics/cold-war/cold-war-history).

SOME EXAMPLES OF THE UNITED STATES MEDIA'S NEGATIVE REPRESENTATION OF RUSSIA:

In 2020, SNL created a humorous sketch representing the Russian city Sochi as a dark gray town with a lot of homeless people in it. The sketch also characterized Russian people as hostile to the LGBT community (youtube.com/watch?v=K68MO5d5tZw).

In 2018, BBC News reported that Russia used all possible social media for propagandizing and influencing the US election, including YouTube, Tumblr, Instagram, PayPal, Facebook, and Twitter (bbc.com/news/technology-46590890).

In 2017, The Washington Post reported about Russian intervention into American Election that showed that the fraud was conducted by Vladimir Putin. It was the most active and direct action of a foreign impact ON American democracy (apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/national/read-the-declassified-report-on-russian-interference-in-the-us-election/2433/).

SOME EXAMPLES OF THE RUSSIAN MEDIA'S NEGATIVE REPRESENTATION OF THE USA:

In 2019, SputnikNews asserted that the United States created an informational war against Russia. The article fully rejected the American accusations against Russia for interference in the American election (ee.sputniknews.ru/politics/20191226/18853441/usa-informacionnaja-vojna-russia.html).

In 2018, Ilya Polonsky predicted that a new war could be started between the United States and Russia, but at this time it will be more violent than the Cold War (topwar.ru/162414-ssha-vs-rossija-kak-budut-voevat-dve-velikie-strany.html).

In 2018, Ruslan Hubiev said that the United States acts as an aggressor. His article is full of criticism against United States politics, education, and history (regnum.ru/news/polit/2468825.html).

SECONDARY RESEARCH

Having completed Primary Research, we decided to analyze a target market of people who would be interested in our application. We started with scholars and students, but when we searched for Russian students at the UW–Madison we found out that there were not very many of them. Therefore, we expanded our target market beyond the university. We also contacted people from the Madison Russian community, the Russian Educational Association, and the Balalaika and Domra Association of America. We took into account different aspects of people’s lives, including employment, marital relationships, friendships, and being in the situation of raising children in a foreign country.

This step allowed us to finalize the main question of our research: does the media affect people’s relationships?

FACEBOOK GROUP

After finalizing the target market, we created a Facebook group called “Friends_Not_Rivals” (facebook.com/groups/289564638545513/). We invited both Americans and Russians to join it and encouraged them to share their stories about their relationships with people from the opposite nation. The total number of participants was 44.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• After the primary and secondary research, survey, and interviews, we figured out that the majority of people (both Russian and American) agree that media creates unnecessary aggression between Russians and Americans in the USA. However, people are genially open to friendship and communication. We characterized this situation as an “elephant in a room,” as these people interact with each other very frequently but there is tension in the air.

• People want to be friends, but the media constantly reminds them about the disagreements between their counties.

• Some Russian-speaking immigrants experience sadness, confusion, and a feeling of otherness. They are afraid of being associated with Russian hackers, and the Russian accent makes some of them feel insecure when they speak.

• Some Russian-speaking students at UW-Madison experience social separation.

• Some people avoid speaking to people from the opposite nation because they constantly hear about the controversies between their countries.

• People agreed that skills and education matter more than a place of origin. Once employed, relationships at workplaces are usually positive. But we noticed that Russian immigrants experience a sense of insecurity when they apply for jobs because of their Russian background.

• People are willing to participate in the campaign. Some of them felt so excited about it that they said, “Thank you for doing it!”

• People are willing to use the application for the purpose of the campaign. They would use it on a regular basis with funny filters, similar to Snapchat and MSQRD apps.

USER PERSONA

After the interviews I developed 2 personas: American and Russian users.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

How can we eliminate the negative influence of politics and the media on the American-Russian relationship and prevent first-generation Russian-speaking immigrants from feeling socially separated?

To create the Problem Statement, I decided to use the FIVE “W” TECHNIQUE: Who, What, When, Where, and Why.

Who does the problem affect?

The problem affects first-generation Russian-speaking immigrants and visitors of the United States. Some of them feel socially separated due to political disputes between the Russian and American governments.

Our primary users are the first-generation Russian-speaking immigrants and visitors, as well as Americans who are unbiased towards Russians and are interested in communicating with people from different nationality.

Our secondary users will be friends and family members of our primary users.

What does the end goal look like?

We plan to reach two goals:

• People from opposite nations will start conversations with each other.

• Participation in the campaign will provide data for CREECA.

Our application will help address the tensions between Russians and Americans. This will be a social experiment that can help change the situation, at least for our users. We are not trying to change the course of history, but we want to offer an alternative approach to the situation.

When does the problem occur?

Our research showed that the tense relationship between the Russian and American governments has existed since the Cold War, which dates between the end of World War II (1945) and the fall of the Soviet Union (1991). However, political tensions exist in the present day, and they escalated during the 2016 American presidential election.

Where is the problem occurring?

The Issue is occurring in Russia and the USA because the media of both countries engage in negative portrayals of the other country. However, our research is based in the United States due to the large population of first-generation Russian-speaking immigrants and visitors who are experiencing social isolation. Though we ended up having people from different states involved in our project, the center of our research was Madison city in Wisconsin.

Why is it important that we fix the problem?

If we don’t fix this problem, tensions between Russians and Americans will continue to grow. People of both nations may lose intellectual, professional, and social opportunities, and first-generation immigrants will continue to feel socially isolated and depressed.

DESIGN PRINCIPLES:

Welcoming:

Users should feel confident that they are welcomed here. They should feel like they are vising their best friend’s home. The experience can’t be overwhelming, intimidating, or confusing.

Joy:

The platform should look friendly and inspiring. Users should have fun with the application.

Minimal:

The design should be simple and cheerful. People should have a chance to easily interact with the application. Less complexity. Zero effort.

Familiar:

The design should be similar to other social media platforms, so users can have a familiar experience that wouldn’t require new skills to develop.

Social/Community:

Users should feel like they are part of a community. The goal is to eliminate the feeling of loneliness, so the app should be all about community, friendship, and unity.

SCENARIO MAPPING

After developing our personas and their stories, I worked on Scenario Mapping to identify how our users would use the application. I predicated the steps they would take, from seeing an invitation to download the application (or an invitation to support the campaign) to posting their selfies to the app gallery.

Scenario Mapping helped me understand and eliminate the barriers that might block people from reaching two goals:

1) developing communication with people from a different nation to break the pattern of negative attitude;

2) contributing to the campaign.

Colored post-its helped me a lot in this process. I visually mapped out pain points and possible solutions.

USER FLOW DIAGRAM

After the Site Map, I worked on a User Flow Diagram that graphically illustrates the user experience with the application. It shows how a user will interact with the main features that are presented in the Site Map.

SKETCHES

Being skilled at drawing, I let my fantasy run free and created detailed sketches of the screens. This allowed me to better understand the functionality of the application and reconsider the user flow. For example, this is how I realized that the Home button has to be linked to the Friendship Gallery screen where other people will post their photos.

I added arrows to connect the screens to show a workflow. This was a good exercise to complete before proceeding to wireframing.

WIREFRAMES

I developed wireframes with Balsamiq software to identify pain points in the app and eliminate them before proceeding to high-fidelity prototypes.

MID-FI PROTOTYPES AND USER TESTING

After the wireframes, I developed mid-fi prototypes in Sketch. I asked some of our potential clients to use them as if they were using the actual application. They reviewed the mid-fi prototypes in a review mode in Sketch. I asked them to express their feelings and emotions at every step of their experience with the app, so I could write them down.

BRAND DEVELOPMENT

#Friends_Not_Rivals is a short brand name that doesn’t mention Russia or America, so no one will view it as favoring one country or another. This campaign is focused on both sides of the situation, so leaving out the countries’ names was important for keeping the title neutral. The combination mark focuses more explicitly on the two countries involved.

Helvetica Neue typeface was chosen because it is a very flexible modern typeface and, most importantly, it is legible on smaller screens.

FULL ANIMATION

USER TESTING

After I developed the hi-fi prototype, I invited a few people for user testing. Introducing Andrew and Julia, two potential users of our application. Andrew is an American. Julia is the 1st generation Russian-speaking immigrant. After they used the application I interviewed them with the following questions:

NEXT STEPS

• This is a complex project, and it would require more work to be completed.

• First, the project would have to be iterated: we would have to do more interviews and research. We would have to interview our major potential client, CREECA to find out if their goals coincide with the users’ goals. Everything we learn would be incorporated into an updated version of the application.

• Also, we would have to learn about the financial aspect of the project. This part was missing in the school project requirement, but ideally, we would have to know how much the project would cost to be developed, launched, and maintained.

• Along with that, we would have to develop more screens and animations for the hi-fi prototype to demonstrate the possibilities of the app. That way, the client could have a better idea of the final product.

• More user testing. More communication with potential users would help us create a product that solves their problems.

WHAT WE LEARNT

It is very important to do repeated user testing. The user testing we've done allowed us to realize that the application needed messaging and notification features that users really wanted.

Also, we have to be focused on the value proposition to the users rather than focusing solely on satisfying the client’s requirements. In our case, the “client” wanted to make a social and political difference. But we had to do research to make sure that people would be motivated enough to use this product. My research suggested this app would become viral for a few days due to American-Russian relationships being a hot topic. However, public interest might soon decline to a lower level. At the same time, the example of The Peace Factory (the Israel-Iran campaign) shows that it can stay relevant. Even though the topic is no longer viral, Ronny Edry created a whole new philosophy out of it. His campaign grew into a big company that serves social, educational, and humanitarian purposes. Their credo is still viral: WE Connect To Each Other; WE Make Peace Viral.

In the event of working with a small budget, this project can be turned into a filter app only (iterating back to the original idea). We could've created #Friends_Not_Rivals filters and offer them on Snapchat. However, in The Peace Factory campaign we noticed that people wanted to talk to each other regarding this topic, so they started multiple conversations on Facebook. That made us believe that if Ronny created an application similar to ours, it would've enhanced the value of the campaign.

An application’s design should be compatible. Analyzing other social media platforms was very useful for me. I noticed that all of them have similar features: messages, notifications, profiles, pictures, comments etc. This analysis helped us drastically improve the app.

What we did absolutely well is empathizing with our users! We applied our personal experience to the project and it became very personal for us.

P.S. GUERILLA PROJECTION

Here’s a guerrilla projection on a UW–Madison building to support the campaign. We took a high-quality projector and applied this message to the Humanities building on campus. Some people who walked by took photographs.

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