he heuristic evaluation in the last post named five UX patterns and grounded each one in a mechanism and a source. But naming a pattern in a research document and getting someone to actually recognize it while scrolling are two different problems. To close that gap, I built something more concrete than a catalogue: a wireframed prototype that simulates the experience of being algorithmically escalated, and then tests whether people can spot what just happened to them.
The prototype is a fictional social media feed, structured in two phases.
Phase one is a straight scroll through five posts(in a more refined version probably more), with no annotation or warning. The content itself escalates in a deliberate sequence: it opens with something completely mundane (a weekend BBQ post), moves through generic economic frustration (a rising energy bill, “does this ever stop?”), into nostalgic in-group framing (“our grandparents built this country… share if you see it too”), into outrage-framed conspiracy (“the media won’t cover this, ask yourself why”), and ends on an explicit call to join a named movement. Two things escalate in parallel with the content itself: the engagement numbers (from 235 likes and 15 comments on the first post to over 74,000 likes and 8,400 comments on the last) and the comment threads underneath each post, which shift from neutral to increasingly validating (“finally someone saying this,” “I knew it,” “count me in”).
After the scroll, users hit a short reflection screen: “What did you just notice?”, with three answer options. It’s there to test whether the escalation registers consciously at all, or whether it just works on people the way it’s designed to.
Phase two replays the identical feed, but now the posts carry annotation boxes naming the specific mechanism, for example, labeling the energy-bill post as an “Emotional Trigger” (frustration without a named target, which the algorithm treats as highly relevant because it drives comment activity), the grandparents post as “Social Validation + Frictionless Sharing” (the like count signaling consensus, the oversized share button removing any pause before spreading it further), and the media-conspiracy post as “False Credibility + Outrage Architecture” (borrowing the visual language of legitimate news to make a vague accusation feel credible). This second pass is the direct, hands-on version of the heuristic evaluation from the previous post, the same three mechanisms (amplification, validation, frictionlessness) made visible on the exact content that used them.
At this moment, this prototype has only been walked through informally with three fellow design students, not yet with any of the young people the tool is actually meant for.
Still I gained valuable feedback from my peers:
- The engagement-number escalation is probably the easiest thing to miss. Peers who read UX interfaces daily are likely to focus on the text of the posts rather than the like/share/comment counts sitting quietly to the side, meaning even a design-literate tester might land on “the content got more extreme” while missing “the posts had more and more likes,” even though both are true and both are the point.
- The “Join the Group” call-to-action is probably the moment that lands hardest. Everything before it is observational; that button asks for an action. It’s a reasonable guess that this is where testers would say the discomfort became concrete.
- The annotated second pass likely produces a genuine “oh” reaction, precisely because pass one deliberately withholds any framing. The value of the two-pass structure is exactly this contrast. But it also means the specific wording of the annotations (how technical vs. plain the labels are) probably deserves the most iteration.
- Peers may find the labels (“Emotional Trigger,” “Outrage Architecture”) a bit academic for a tool aimed at teenagers. As they are now, they are very technical and too complex for my actual target group.
Outlook: Testing With Actual Young People
In my next steps I would refine my current prototype and start testings with my actual target group. This could look like the following:
- Small workshop groups (4–6 participants, ages roughly 14–17) rather than one-on-one sessions, since group discussion after the reflection question is likely to surface disagreement about what counted as “extreme” or “unusual”.
- Co-facilitation with a media-literacy or extremism-prevention professional, given that even a fictional simulation of this content needs someone in the room who can handle a participant reacting more strongly than expected, and a clear opt-out built into the session, not just offered at the start and forgotten.
- Interviews with people that are part of the extremist movement. This is one part of which I am very unsure of, but I believe I could gain valuable insight from people that are on the political right. Understanding how they got there could help me create a tool for prevention. This part requires the most preparation, as I would need to find a way for people to talk to me in the first place.
