For my UX capstone project, I wanted to design an interactive mobile app that would connect more queer youth of color in the Midwest who either grew up in or currently attend PWIs, to any desired resources for identity reconciliation and community building.
In previous semesters, I knew I wanted to commit to a community-oriented capstone project allowing for participatory design with marginalized groups. This particular problem space is very dear to me because many of my loved ones and I grew up in this user group. Medium-wise, I also knew I wanted to explore a fun, playful identity development and interaction design due to my design philosophy.
Overall, this is a love letter to my teenage self and all queer youth of color who grew up or are currently growing up. 💝
Queer of Color
Taken from Brockenbrough (2015): "Anyone having LGBTQ+ identities and nonconforming gender identities and expressions affected by heteronormative power structures, and anyone deemed non-White, including Black, Latinx, Asian, and Indigenous/Native American people."
Youth
For this project, youth is defined as ages 18-24 due to potential difficulties obtaining parental consent for minors, especially when minors are not out to their guardians.
My user group is queer youth of color (QYOC) ages 18-24 in the Midwest who either either grew up in or currently attend predominantly white institutions (PWIs).
One major limitation of this project is the fact that recruitment for interviews, cultural probes, usability, and user testing, are all dependent on participants already having some level of “outness” or feeling comfortable disclosing their queer identity to me. As a result, any questions and answers about resources in forming identity are retrospective.
The first 2-3 weeks of this project was an exploratory milestone to identify what resources queer youth of color currently have and use, versus what resources they want and need to navigate their multiple identities better.
I reviewed 11 journal articles on the queer of color experiences and their identity formations and affinity-diagrammed my notes on them to find the common themes.
Literature Review Miro Key
The guiding questions that I wanted to answer via this activity were:
How do QYOC develop racial/ethnic and queer identities?
What is the impact of their multiple identities, and what minority identity-related barriers do they encounter?
What is the impact of community support and affirming resources on their identity reconciliation?
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Because the participants identified queer community building as an ideal resource, I looked at the app “Lex: Queer & LGBTQ+ Friends” because it’s a current mobile solution for in-person and online queer communities without being centered on dating.
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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.
If I were to restart this project, I would need to recruit a more diverse sample of participants in interviews and testing.
As mentioned earlier in the documentation, a major limitation of this project is the fact that recruitment for interviews, cultural probes, usability, and user testing, are all dependent on participants already having some level of “outness” or feeling comfortable disclosing their queer identity to me. As a result, any questions and answers about resources in forming identity are retrospective.
My participants throughout the project were mostly East and South Asian participants with only 1 Black nonbinary participant, so there are many first-hand experiences I failed to use when designing, which is important considering the vast number of intersecting identities in the queer-of-color community. This is especially important as Black and Latinx queer youth had the most negative mental and physical health outcomes identified in previous literature reviews.
The app Hues as it was created in this project still exists in a vacuum. Because the testing was mostly focused on UI and features within the app, I made many assumptions that would have to be fully addressed if this were to be launched.
For example, one participant mentioned in the user test that in order for her to use the app, there would already have to be an active userbase.
Because queer youth of color face multiple and intersecting forms of oppression and could be a targeted user group, there needs to be a moderation system and user verification system without compromising the data privacy of users. Currently, Hues is imagined as a separate company with a team of moderators reviewing each post for bigotry before it appears on users’ timelines. However, more secondary research should be conducted on this to create a full and realistic experience. Privacy Policy, Terms & Conditions, and Rules must be created before this app “launches”.
