fitness & lifestyle

filter bubbles
our mission
To explore the impact of social media influencers on
people’s fitness and lifestyle choices. Do they create
filter bubbles? Are people at risk of becoming shadows
of their influencers?

what is an influencer?

“...someone who influences trends on

social media. To me, an influencer is a
role model that you can look up to,
someone who can give you advice
about life...
- Guillermo
”
user research
We conducted 10 user interviews to gauge users’ habits
on social media and how that relates to their fitness and
lifestyle choices.
participant groups

Individuals who follow Individuals who are Inidivudals who neither

social media influencers social media influencers are influencers nor follow
an influencer

typical user journey map

for a social media influencer follower
happiness
Discover
Christine scrolls through
Youtube videos in the hopes
of finding a quick how-to on
making healthy, vegan
dinners. She finds a youtube
channel called High Carb
Hannah
Search
Christine wants to get back
to healthy eating and staying
active, but finds it too hard to
include homecooking into her
daily schedule.
Share
Christine starts seeing
results from following
Hannah’s receipes and
shares Hannah’s page Name: Christine Cho
Explore with her roommates.
Christine tries out
Hannah’s vegan chili recipe
Occupation:
and finds out that it was a Political Science student
lot less work than she
at UC Berkeley
expected.
Lifestyle Goal:
Follow Lose weight by eating
Christine follows Hannah and
feels a bit down b/c of how
healthy and exercisng
perfect her life seems. more frequently.
However, she later finds out
that Hannah hasn’t always
been slim and also feels
insecure about her weight.
Pain Point:
She relates to her content Frustrated in lack of time
even more.
and money she has to
make healthy meals.
time

affinity diagramming
key insights
1. Desirable life
People follow influencers because they
see them as motivators and inspirations.
Influencers instill the idea that the
viewer can be like them too.
4. In Real Life influencers
People they know or have a personal
connection with have a greater impact
on their decisions than influencers do.

2. Becoming an influencer 5. Relatability

Influencers want to impart knowledge People seek influencers who have similar
upon people, and the money is just a interests. Influencers who are going
plus. through the same journey can make
viewers feel like they’re not alone.

3. Healthy lifestyle 6. Source of information

People consider a healthy lifestyle to be Influencers are a major, if not only,
a balanced diet with organic and natural source of information about life,
foods. Cooking videos inspire people to products, and techniques.
cook their own foods.

How might we change

users’ perceptions of
design influencers’ seemingly
perfect lives?
opportunities

How might we better How might we

connect users to encourage users to pick
influencers and user up new interests &/or
communities so that skills from their
they can reach their influencers?
lifestyle & fitness goals?
YouReview by Youtube
youtube redesign

User submitted
ratings of the
recipe

Gallery of user
submitted photos
of the dish

“ [Influencers] make me think that I can be a cook too.

motivation
Our user research shows that influencers and their channels are becoming a
- Nick
”
significant source of information for individuals. Many of our interviewees describe
how their lives have changed forever due to the easily accessible recipes and video
tutorials for cooking and exercising in their influencers’ accounts.

So, to bypass some individual’s reservations towards trying the recipes shown online,
our group thought of integrating Yelp-like feature’s into Youtube. These new
features will:
1. Allow other users who passively view Youtube content to gauge how doable a
specific recipe is which will hopefully give them the motivation to try their hand
at making a new dish and learning a new skill.
2. Connect with others who have tried the dish and gather some tips and tricks
on how to succesfully execute the recipe.
Youtube Achievements
youtube redesign

Achievements tab for

quick access

Shows progress
bar and how long
until level-up

Shows current unlocked

achievement badges

Shows locked badges

motivation
From our user research, our team uncovered that many users find their influencers
to be inspirations. Users aspire to do the same things and live the same way as their
influencers. However, more often than not, users get sucked into passively watching
Youtube videos rather than actually engaging with the material presented. To bridge
the gap within the Youtube experience, our team decided to gamify the Youtube
watching experience by adding achievement badges.

Each achievement is designed by Youtube and influencer channels that people sub-
scribe to. The achievements can be unlocked depending on certain interactions with
Youtube pages and is intended to motivate people to not only take their learnings
into real life, but also follow their dreams in living like their influencers, in a healthy
way of course.

“ A lot of influencers focus on being healthy and fit,

which a lot of people take to mean skinny. I have
followed Jenn Im’s video on weight loss tips, and I
try to be optimistic and hard-working like her.
- Emily
”