With an international network of designers and behavioral scientists, the Prosocial Design Network is dedicated to helping transform the Web into a healthier, more respectful place to visit.
Our Slack group is where we coordinate our research and activities, and share the latest news in behavioral science and design.
Request an Invitation to the SlackThe Prosocial Design Library is a pattern library of evidence-based design interventions, which designers may use in their products to improve the quality of their users’ interactions with one another.
Interventions are specific user experience design elements for digital platforms, which produce—or could produce—a quantifiable prosocial outcome in controlled experiments.
Examples of prosocial outcomes could include:
Reductions in online trolling, bias, harassment, cyberbulling, and cyberhate
Increased feelings of safety, recognition, inclusion, and acceptance, for users hailing from real-life, marginalized communities
Disagreements become more productive. Regardless of outcome, parties exit disagreements feeling as though their dignity was left intact
Tested Interventions are interventions that the Prosocial Design Network has deemed to work, based on published and preprinted experiments.
Each tested intervention is given an evidence-grade based on the quality and quantity of the research supporting it.
From high to low, those evidence-grades are: Convincing, Likely, Possible, and Tentative.
Untested Interventions lack testing. However, they are included due to being: analogous to offline interventions, used in a product for prosocial aims, or otherwise having expert endorsement for prosocial outcomes.
However, as these all lack quantitative data to support them, they share the same, unique evidence grade of Untested.
For ease of navigation, along with being sorted by Tested or Untested, each card belongs to one of the follow four classes of intervention:
The Dispel Rumors classification covers interventions that stop the spread of misinformation or disinformation.
'Fake News' created by Nithinan Tatah, TH, from the Noun Project
The Empower Connection classification includes interventions that both help people reach consensus and convey emotions more constructively.
The Stop Hate & Bullying classification covers interventions that both anticipate and prevent expressions of, and incitements to, hatred and harrassment.
The Evoke User's Visibility classification addresses interventions that either remind users that they are part of a community; that they are being seen and heard, often by a larger audience than they realize; or that they are an individual human being, capable of making their own choices.
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