❋

Media Literacy

Lesson Overview

Digital platforms and media are often intentionally designed to influence user behavior.

Features such as notifications, autoplay, and infinite scroll are created to capture attention, sometimes at the expense of user well-being. As future designers, students must understand not only how these systems work, but also their ethical implications.

❋ Lesson Focus

  • How design influences behavior

  • The concept of “design tricks” (persuasive or manipulative features)

  • The relationship between user experience and ethical responsibility

  • Students examine how design decisions can have unintended or harmful consequences.

❋ Learning to Evaluate

  • What is this design encouraging me to do? Who benefits?

  • How might different users be impacted?

  • Is this design supporting or harming user well-being?

  • Move beyond passive consumption to become critical evaluators of design intent and impact.

❋ Activities

  • Design an “engaging” app using common attention-grabbing features

  • Analyze how real platforms use design to influence behavior

  • Redesign an app to prioritize user well-being and ethical interaction

  • Reflect on how design choices shape user experience

  • Adapted from Common Sense Education

❋ Connection

As students develop their own projects and client proposals for their portfolio work, this lesson will help them:

  • Consider the ethical implications of their design choices

  • Anticipate how their work may be interpreted or used

  • Design with awareness of audience impact and responsibility

Lesson Plan

  • Students will work in groups to design an app for a chosen company that they are working for. The must consider what features, content, and experiences to include to make their app engaging.

    Discuss engagement and technology as a class and where there lie both positives and negatives. Where do they see this in their own lives?

  • The class will watch this video and fill out an organizer to prepare for a class discussion afterward that will cover the four included questions.

    Discuss: Four questions and the connection between design intentions and realities. Look at examples like the video shares with autoplay and other products whose interaction with users has changed their purpose.

    Think-Pair-Share: What is one thing we talked about today that you hadn't considered or known about before? How does it feel to learn about some of these design tricks and why they exist? How can this apply to your work as a creative?

  • Explain UX or “user experience” and how companies design their platforms around it and maintaining our attention when we visit.

    Discuss: What if your job was to start redesigning a world where people had healthier relationships with technology? Where instead of designing for the best "user experience," you designed for the best human experience? What would that look like?

    Redesign: Going back to our apps we created in Part 1, how can we assess and potentially change our design to prioritize our user’s well-being?

    Share: What changes did you make?