Nicolas Duc-Dodon
A web tool that predicts users' personalities based on their Facebook posts. It was built to demonstrate how today's public social networks can analyze user content.
Product Designer
June 2014
A key challenge we faced with Five labs was the story behind the product. Five labs was an online experiment. This means that we've had to design a user experience that makes it easy to start with a clear call-to-action.
We came up with a split homepage that had a fixed left pane with a scrolling right pane. The left pane contained the branding/copywriting with a clear call-to-action button: “analyze my post” while the right pane walked the user through a set of interactive graphics explaining the app.
A key constraint we had to develop against was trust (why would you give permission to sign in with your Facebook account into an unknown app?). We’ve had to reassure the user about his experience on the app. With this challenge in mind we came up with a modal (more like a metaphor) that would explain what we were actually doing with the data throughout a flow of 4 graphics.
Right after logging in with Facebook, the app will generate a graphic representation of your personality ; however that process could take up to 20s (relies on Facebook network request). The goal was to use the loading process to show the user the different steps of his profile generation. Contacting facebook, establishing a secure connection, receiving wall posts, analyzing words and generating profile.
The application’s predictions are based around the Big Five personality traits, the leading personality theory in modern psychology. According to the theory, personality is based on the following five characteristics:Personality is based on the following five characteristics: agreeableness, neuroticism, conscientiousness, extraversion and openness.
We used a radar chart shape to represent the 5 different personality traits. Each radar chart is unique for every users. It works really well to see which differences each variables has.
We used a radar chart shape to represent the 5 different personality traits. Each radar chart is unique for every users. It works really well to see which differences each variables has.
The app lets you compare your own personality to those of your friends and public figure. One of the main goal was getting the user to share his graphic representation with its social graph. We decided to make it very easy for him to share on his favorite social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn). With share pages that don't require login and custom OG images in Newsfeed, we focused on getting the user to share about himself, and everyone likes to share things about themselves.
Five Labs generated personalities profile for over 200 million people.
The app generated attention from journalists at New York Times and Business Insider.
Five Labs was an experiment to demonstrate how people express themselves online. We'll be taking down Five Labs on July 20th 2014 and removing all stored personality data.
The response to Five Labs helped us arrive at our biggest insight: that people want a comfortable place to express themselves without being analyzed for commercial purposes ; We are right now developing a mobile application focused on private social experiences.
Nicolas Duc-Dodon
🌴 Los Angeles, CA