Trouble in the Neighborhood

Preview the solution

Click through the slideshow to preview the high-fidelity prototype.

Going door to door

User Research

In order to better understand these issues and how they are impacting users’ experiences, our UX team decided to design a short online survey to send out to Nextdoor users. The survey received 15 responses and included 21 questions, where respondents provided demographic information, detailed their usage of the platform, reported how often they come across misinformation and instances of racial/class bias, and expressed how likely they are to report or engage with those types of posts.

After taking a look at the raw numbers and affinity mapping the qualitative responses, our team identified a few key themes:

The bottom line

Business Analysis ▪ Project Goals

After identifying some of the key user issues, it became clear to our team where user issues and Nextdoor’s long-term business goals converged. The prevalence of misinformation and biased content, and the company’s inadequate response to the issue, is straining users’ trust and leading them to interact with the platform less — and, in some cases, resulting in them leaving the platform altogether.

Not only do these persisting issues represent a larger societal threat that the company bears a moral obligation to address, but they also point to a long-term obstacle to Nextdoor’s continued growth.

To address such a complex problem, our team established three primary goals we hoped to achieve with our proposed solution based on some of the key user insights.

Word on the street

Design Hypotheses ▪ User Flows

With our guiding design goals set, our team engaged in further research to kickstart solution ideation. We conducted a heuristic evaluation of the Nextdoor platform, where we assessed it against various design standards, and dug deeper into their current features and policies. We also ran a competitive analysis of other social media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook. In addition, we led a design studio session with three additional UX designers to help generate creative solutions.

After careful consideration of the insights from these different methods, and factoring in MVP feature prioritization from a business standpoint, our team developed three design hypotheses and user flows for our proposed solutions.

Kick it to the curb

Wireframing ▪ Usability Testing

Our team next made some preliminary sketches and developed mid-fidelity grayscale wireframes. After prototyping, we decided to put our solutions to the test with usability testing. All six participants were instructed to complete the tasks for each user flow.

Users expressed that they believed our features were major improvements to the current platform and could prove to be extremely beneficial for combating these key issues. However, some elements were standing in the way. In particular, significant changes were going to need to be made to our cumbersome helpful/unhelpful button.

Find more information about these key iterations below.

New in town

High-Fidelity Prototype

With our key changes made, our team finalized the design of all three solutions embedded within the current Nextdoor interface. While this proved to be a particularly challenging design problem, we believe these solutions can help Nextdoor take the necessary steps to curb critical issues facing its platform.

COVID Misinformation Flag

While Nextdoor currently has a COVID Misinformation flag, our research found it to be inconsistently employed and inadequate in its provision of educational resources. Now, it will appear in red as an alert on a specific post. When the post comes into focus on the screen, the flag expands to reveal a call-to-action, directing users to a centralized information hub that includes national and local resources about COVID-19 and other helpful features, such as a Vaccine Finder.

Unhelpful Button

User research indicated that users were unlikely to report instances of bias and misinformation — in part because they did not feel invested enough to do something about it. Our team decided to create a middle-ground option where users feel more empowered to help the platform with moderating content by adding an unhelpful button, where users can quickly provide feedback on posts that go beyond the bounds of Nextdoor’s community guidelines.

Reporting Process Tracker

Another reason users expressed a reluctance to report is that there was a lack of transparency around Nextdoor’s reporting process. Our team decided to make additional resources detailing how the process works accessible to users after they report a post. Users can also now check the status of any report they’ve made and see how Nextdoor’s moderators decided to handle the matter — information that was previously unavailable.

Thoughts & reflections

After initially being overwhelmed with the enormity of the issue we were tasked with, our team was able to build and rely on a strong system of communication, reflection, and teamwork that allowed us to do a thorough exploration of this issue. While it was challenging at times to rein in the scope of the project, I am proud of the work we were able to produce and am excited to have the opportunity in the future to work on similarly stimulating design challenges.