SearchOnAct: the intuitive, interactive, and alternative browser that transforms your daily online searches into internet access for the 2.9 billion people who still don't have it nowadays by connecting us with social partners and NGOs and transforming your clicks into global benefits.

To structure the whole design process of this digital product developed by a group of three designers as the final project of the Master in Digital Experience Design at BAU Design University of Barcelona, we have used Design Thinking and in particular, the four phases of the Double Diamond model, which have allowed us to go from the first stage of understanding and defining the problem detected in the field of privacy and culture, to the proposal of a solution that can deliver value and contribute to solving the problem.

— THE DIGITAL GAP

The problem that we decide to investigate is the one generated by the digital divide.
The digital divide refers to the inequality in access, use, or impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) between social groups. Traditionally considered primarily a question of access, today, with global cell phone penetration at over 95%, inequalities arise between those with more and less bandwidth and more or less associated technological skills. Inequality in access to technology is also a form of social exclusion, especially in times of COVID-19. To the extent that we smooth this fissure, we are underpinning a more secure structure for people. Empowering people in vulnerable situations increases their autonomy, promotes equality, and makes us better as a society.

— THE ACTUAL CONTEXT

One of the first things that we discovered by starting to interview people about their digital experiences related to culture, was the duality between what people say and what they actually do when they are on these digital platforms sharing their data and accepting everything, even without knowing exactly what companies do with their personal information. We heard stories about people willing to pay millions for immaterial things like NFTs or to buy expensive things in the metaverse, when they didn't know and don't even realize that we are facing a real tangible problem that is affecting 2.9 billion people who still don't access to the internet today.

— Privacy and culture as...

At this point, we have arrived at our definition of the two main themes of the project: "culture" as a connection between people and knowledge sharing and "privacy" as understanding the use and value of personal data on the net. We linked these 2 areas and came up with terms such as connection, knowledge, diversity, and safe navigation.

— Applied discovery methodologies

In this first phase, we did more than 20 interviews that allowed us to get into context, hear directly from people their thoughts and concerns, and in this way develop empathy.
We also found it very helpful to do extensive research on different channels - such as articles, blogs, videos, recorded interviews, and podcasts - to be able to understand and adopt the point of view of other main actors involved in this problem, which we might never have been able to meet physically.
Finally, a very important tool was the creation of several Customer Journey Maps about digital shopping experiences for cultural events, as an example of an online moment where personalization is sought. With this, we realized that in all of our user's customer journey maps a vicious circle is generated in which there are always the same big digital companies that put their own benefits before people's real needs, thus contributing to widening the digital divide.

— Applied discovery methodologies

Finally, a very important tool was the creation of several CJMaps about digital shopping experiences for cultural events, as an example of an online moment where personalization is sought. With this, we realized that in all CJMs a vicious circle is generated in which there are always the same big companies that put forward their own benefits, thus widening the digital divide.

After the first phase in which we were able to get deep into the context and get precious insights by talking to lots of people, we started the second phase by starting to define all that we have discovered to really understand and narrow down the problem.

— Chosen archetypes

We started by defining our archetypes, our model users, by using a matrix in which we used two lenses: people's knowledge about privacy and their frequency of use of digital devices. As you can see in the image below we prioritized 2 archetypes that may be considered opposites, the "always connected" and the "unconnected".

— Target Users and Primary Personas

The next step was to define how the primary personas of our product. They would be:
- web users with internet access located all over the world, who search the internet to consume visual, informative, and cultural content.
- constantly connected people, regular internet users who use their mobile or computer to perform daily searches.
- they usually "accept everything" before accessing a digital service because they think that nowadays "privacy no longer exists".
- they are aware of the problem of the digital divide and have a moral sense of social responsibility, they value to have the possibility to generate social benefits through their actions.

— Insight and Challenges

At this point, from everything we discovered in the discovery phase, we collect insights and prioritize them in order to define a how might we scenario together with our main challenges. We developed 5 insights and for each of them, we described a how might we question, which later on we reduced to two main challenges as they were considered the most relevant also by our users.

∗ How might we transform this "legal obligation" to accept terms and conditions into benefits for the community and not only for companies?

∗ How might we act within the digital transformation of culture so that everyone can be connected for free and unlimitedly?

Or in other words: how can we restore the true value of our individual privacy by acting within the digital world?
It was at this point that we started to look for a way that would allow digital users to continue with exactly the same as they normally do in all digital experiences, more specifically to use services in exchange for their personal data and preferences, but by using the legal obligation to share valuable data and transforming it into a possibility to generate revenue to concretely solve the problem of the digital divide.
Below you can see a visual summary of these two first stages that we created to represent the outcomes through storytelling.

It was with these premises that we started the third phase of ideation.

— Brainstorming

The first thing to do at this point, once we had a clear vision of the whole scenario, was to start and generate the most possible ideas on how we might resolve the defined problem. At this stage together with the class group, we had a bnrainstorming session, through which we collected several ideas and then we prioritized them and cclustered them into 4 main themes thanks to an affinity map through which we selected the ones that we thought could bring more value to our users and so deliver the best solution.

— User needs

It was necessary at this point to also write down our user's needs to understand how we could solve them through our idea.
What we found out to be our users' needs are:
∗ Speed, ease, and fluidity in their digital experiences
∗ To have a safe navigation
∗ Find results that match their tastes
∗ To see visually attractive ADSs that explain the value they can provide
∗ To understand and visualize the value of their privacy to generate a real change

— Benchmark

Then, we did a market study whose outcomes were divided into 3 main categories, which helped us to see and understand the current competition and how they are performing within the digital transformation.

As you can see in the image below, we have:
∗ Platforms and Apps with a social purpose, where Ecosia is our main competitor
∗ Browsers, from the most used to brave, the most innovative in terms of privacy protection, to Gigablast, the most basic that helped us to see what an MVP (minimum viable product) should offer
∗ Cultural references > the most popular platforms that offer cultural contents according to our users

Unlike big companies that use your data for their own profit, we securely use your data to generate a global social benefit!
Instead of keeping all the revenue like other search engines, we give a portion to our non-profit partners to finance social projects that generate internet access for unconnected people.
And you don't have to change your habits to do that, SearchOnAct allows you to change the world while going about your daily life: every time you search the web, you can offer a new Internet connection to people who don't have one yet.
It's also free and costs nothing because the money raised comes from ads in search results.
Moreover, to allow a safe experience, we take care of your privacy and your personal data during the whole navigation as we explain it simply and understandably to everyone on our website.
Last but not least, we want to offer a unique digital experience through an interactive and customizable interface to generate cultural knowledge, information, sociality, empathy, and debate on the topic of the digital divide.

— The Golden Circle - Unique Value Proposition

At this point it was simple and necessary to summarize our process into a golden circle that could represent our idea and its unique value proposition:

WHAT
We offer internet access to the 2.9 billion people worldwide who still don't have it every time you surf the web.

HOW
Through an interactive, secure, free, and intuitive online search engine that transforms every click into economic income for the social projects of partners such as NGOs that provide Internet access to people who don't have it.

WHY
We want to demonstrate that there is a fairer way of doing business, putting people first and making internet access a basic right of our era.

— Naming

To briefly explain the naming that we came up with at this stage, we have called our product SearchOnAct because it contains all the concepts we defined so far: it contains the action we invite you to do (search), plus a magnifying glass that reinforces visually the message.
Moreover, in the slogan that we chose, we wanted to play with the contrast of ON/OFF and relate it to the metaphor of connected vs unconnected people.
Finally, we wanted it to be in English because of the global target that we wanted to reach.

— Design Concept

Through this visual moodboard you can see what do we wanted to convey and how we want to convey it.

— Design System

Right after defining the design concept, we developed the design system with all the specific colors, typographies, and elements that would have ensured visual coherence in the whole project.

In these last sections, you can see the Figma prototypes both for the digital product prototype and for the website.
Once you are logged in, you can navigate it and surf the web with a preset search - please consider that there might be some user flow limitations, but we are always looking for improvement.
As already said, the desktop version of Search On Act is still a work in progress, but you can see and navigate through a few pages to see how it would appear visually.

Please, enjoy! :)