Creating Compassion in Design

In order for a reported photo to be removed from our social networking site, it has to violate one of our policies. In most cases images don’t violate our policies and can’t be removed, resulting in frustrated users. It was a really poor user experience that we feared may be causing conflict between two users (the photo owner and the person reporting the photo) that could be carried over into the real world.

It seemed like an easy fix. Redesign the tool and process so that a user who is upset about a photo asks the person who posted it to remove it (the photo owner is the only person who always has the right to remove a photo from the site). The challenge was getting the design and content right. If we did this wrong, we could potentially have a negative impact on users’ real world relationships.

For the first time, we reached out to the academic community. By partnering with social scientists who are experts in real-world conflict resolution, we were able to get the guidance needed to develop a strong design and clear messaging. We specifically approached both the design and content with a goal to create a framework that would encourage compassion and empathy between users, something we’d never considered on the site before. Following a U.S. release, we slowly started rolling out changes globally (which had it’s own set of challenges in each market).

Overall, quantitative findings show less reports being filed, photo reporters completing the flow, and photo owners responding to requests of photo reporters. Qualitative findings show users are pleased with the new design and after completing it, don't have negative feelings toward each other.