Digital Literacy Review for Rooms

With a sudden move to 100% work-from-home, all over the globe due to COVID-19, Facebook moved quickly to develop a group video chatting feature, Rooms. The timeline was aggressive and the asks were huge, so the team pulled on any and all resources to get it out the door. As part of an internal consultancy on accessibility, I was asked to review the initial launch candidate for any digital literacy concerns, and I found a few!

Myself and my research partner identified nine launch-blocking concerns, and we were able to convince the team to address all but one of them in the first launch, with the last one waiting until a subsequent launch. 

For me, this launch got to the heart of what I love about working on digital literacy: assumptions! The people who are working on this product have a strong familiarity with the patterns and interactions of video chatting. We do it almost all day as part of our jobs. For the general population, this was a new model (even with the burgeoning prevalence of Zoom). Integrity and digital literacy concerns I raised included:

• Were people told numerous times that their face and background would be on camera and identifiable?

• Was it clear who was in or out of a Room at any given time? 

• Had we given sufficient thought to how stalkers might use the Room?

• How do we keep children safe from adults seeking to take advantage of them?

• Are all reporting affordances obvious and clear?

Before

Concern: I was worried that users might be confused with what to do on this screen with the "Create" CTA. Specifically, the Create and Join look super similar, so it looks like the user has already started a room with the picture of "Lois's Room." Can you make them visually more distinct/clearer?

After

Here we see a clear distinction between my Rooms and other ones, both in terms of a distinction in the CTA as well as hero image. The camera icon telegraphs the usage, conveying that I will soon be visible.