The thesis examined how the ease of access to other people’s opinions has made us less inquisitive when it comes to forming our own. For the game, I wanted the idea of scrolling through different online platforms on a phone to feel familiar and so kept each transitional and directional page within the iOS format and recreated each media platform asset for asset. The user has to go through an iPhone homepage to get to each new piece of information, and that was something that had to feel natural and that mimicked the reality of the way we gain new information in the digital realm.

In terms of content, I wanted the details of the election to be purposefully vague to avoid any users going in with preconceived biases. I removed names from both candidates and political parties and came up with three core issues which are not outside the realm of possibility, but are also not necessarily the most current political topics: the right to be forgotten, reaching zero emissions and the expansion of facial recognition into the judicial system.

The Coronavirus pandemic hit half way through the making of this prototype and was, as a result, refreshed to include a similar scenario within the game and maintain its political relevance. It aimed to illustrate the importance of how the news is framed in today’s world and the different approaches to reporting on the virus was a perfect example.

This project was the result of a year and a half of extensive research and many rounds of user testing the prototype.