Inspired by Reddit, I made a fake-news quiz game that pits real, but unbelievable headlines against fake ones, using API data from the Reddit forums 

. Players simply have to guess which are which, and are presented with proof after answering. Their streaks and correctness are tracked, along with the global number of people “fooled”. It was an opportunity to learn about real-time databases, and an excuse to procrastinate vicariously.

I designed the website to mimic the clear, slab like gauze of physical tabloid print, with pauses in between turns to allow the user to direct themselves to the article in dispute (if they don’t believe the answer). This simplicity allowed me to use CSS3 flex-box to make it mobile-responsive.

I made the inputs the largest individual elements (with some comical imagery), and ever present tickers hinting at the live state of the experiment.

 to grab a random post from both subreddits. Technically, you could cheat, and if I were to revisit it I would clean the code and wrap it all in a closure to remove access to private variables, further obfuscating the variable/function that gives the right answer – it wasn’t too important here.

 to create a document-driven database, with 

 only allowing sequential addition to either correct/incorrect metrics. A JavaScript file maintaining a persistent connection delivered snapshots to the front-end in order to update the view with callbacks.

I used browser cookies to track the user’s current streak.

I tweeted at ‘The Onion’ to no avail, however my post to the web development subreddit 

 was popular enough to warrant responding to feedback. The consensus was that although the idea was great, some of the headlines were too obvious due to patterns in syntax from one specific source. I was able to implement some rudimentary culling, and remove repeat questions based on this, and improve the user-experience. Furthermore, the Javascript did not execute on some iOS devices due to a cross-origin quirk that I was consequently able to resolve.

Overall, it was incredibly rewarding to watch users interact with my project in real-time, and it was several days before it churned completely, due in part to me responding to questions and cross-linking it in different forums.

Tricking people with fake news

We chose to create an app for student well-being called ‘Anatome’, with subsections focusing on different CBT techniques. I sought members of staff in our student wellbeing service to act as stakeholders, and, following a waterfall approach, we researched competing products in order to spec’ out, design and develop an Android application and marketing website. We published it to Google’s Play store, and the project culminated in a stand at a project fair.

The app’s design was skeumorphic – the main scroll was the human body, with sections such as the brain, heart and liver taking you to subsections with information about mental health, anxiety and substance abuse. Each section had links to helpful information, and some form of practical tool – a note taker, a breathing excercise with positive comments from the community, an alcohol unit tracker. We also integrated a faux appointments booking system.

Making a well-being app for Android

While at University, I wrote several articles about the games industry for our newspaper. I preferred interviews with developers over reviews, and the experience interacting with people in-industry and digesting research into bite-sized chunks probably helped push me towards the games industry as a viable career.

Blog

Technological tattle, design documents, and miscellaneous musings written during various projects

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