Pop Your
Bubble
A news application that makes the invisible visible — exposing algorithmic filter bubbles and offering an alternative perspective on every story.
ROLE
Solo UX/UI Designer
Type
Vordiplom/Pre-Diploma
CONTEXT
10 weeks (2022)
TOOLS
Figma
PROBLEM 01/06
INVISIBLE CURATION
What is removed from a feed is never surfaced — users cannot know what they are not seeing.
LOCKED PROFILES
Algorithmic identities accumulate silently and are impossible for the user to inspect or reset.
NO COUNTER-VIEW
Every news app delivers one version of a story — there is no built-in mechanism to read it otherwise.
NEGATIVITY DEFAULT
Mainstream feeds optimise for engagement; positive and constructive stories are systematically deprioritised.
DESIGN APPROACH 02/06
Rather than removing personalisation, Pop Your Bubble keeps it — and surfaces it. Every article comes with a toggle: YOUR VIEW (your algorithmic profile, black UI) and OTHER VIEW (a second profile you configure, white UI). The colour assignment is intentional: black reads as fixed and opaque, white as open and configurable. Neither is framed as neutral.
01
BLACK UI
YOUR VIEW
KEY FUNCTIONS
Generated from behavioural data — read-only
Personality profile shown via Five-Factor Model
Updates automatically as reading patterns shift
02
WHITE UI
OTHER VIEW
KEY FUNCTIONS
Up to 8 manually configured personality profiles
Or connect directly to a friend's real profile
Renders the same feed through a different filter
03
DISCOVERY
EXPLORE & HAPPY PAGE
KEY FUNCTIONS
Explore: articles outside your current interest profile
Percentage indicator shows distance from your bubble per article
Happy Page: positive global news, interest-balanced
DESIGN 03/06
Registration skips topic checkboxes entirely. Instead users choose between image pairs in under 3 seconds — time pressure forces intuitive choices the algorithm can use reliably. Hesitation is registered as a signal too. The output is a personality profile across five dimensions, not a list of interests.
Image pairs,
not topic checkboxes
Forces intuitive choices; users cannot construct a flattering false profile.
3-second time limit
Decision delay is itself a signal; hesitation reveals genuine interests the algorithm can weight.
Five-Factor Personality Model output
Maps to established psychological dimensions so the profile display is legible, not arbitrary.
Up to 8 configurable Other View profiles
Sliders adjust each personality dimension independently; profiles are saved and switchable at any time.
Connect to a friend's real profile
The most direct form of perspective shift: the feed is literally someone else's, not a hypothetical approximation.
Every section carries the YOUR VIEW / OTHER VIEW toggle. Global and Local follow standard news categories. Sublocal surfaces stories within a 60 km radius and pairs them with an equivalent event elsewhere in the world. The Happy Page is positive news only, balanced across interest areas regardless of the user's profile.
Black for YOUR VIEW,
white for OTHER VIEW
Neither framed as neutral; the colour inversion is the conceptual argument, not decoration.
Same topic,
different editorial framing
Both articles address the same subject; only the perspective and emphasis shifts, not the subject matter.
Category tabs persist
across both views
Politic, Economics, Opinion remain consistent; only the algorithmic filter changes, not the navigation taxonomy.
WHY SUBLOCAL WORKS THIS WAY
YOUR VIEW shows stories within 60 km — local relevance is preserved. The OTHER VIEW mirrors the same event type elsewhere in the world. Users see that their situation has a parallel somewhere else, without losing the local anchor.
THE ALTERNATIVE REJECTED
Showing an unrelated global story in the Other View. Rejected because it loses the structural parallel — matching event type to event type is more legible and more meaningful than simply swapping geographic scope.
DESIGN System 04/06
Helvetica Neue
2-colour system Unfarbigkeit
The palette is reduced to two colours — black and white — named Unfarbigkeit (un-colour) in the project documentation.
Black carries YOUR VIEW screens: fixed, generated by behaviour, uneditable by the user.
White carries OTHER VIEW screens: open, configurable, a blank surface for a different perspective.
An optional setting lets users switch all article images to greyscale — surfacing how much colour shapes emotional reception of the same information.
Reflection 05/06
WHAT WORKED
The two-colour architecture communicated the concept without needing explanation — the black/white split was immediately readable as two distinct perspectives. The gamified onboardingsolved the cold-start problem neatly: no topic lists, no blank slate, no self-selection bias. The Sublocal pairing logic — local story matched to a geographically equivalent story abroad — was the most original structural idea and differentiates the app clearly from existing news products.
WHAT I WOULD DO DIFFERENTLY
The Other View slider configuration assumes users understand what adjusting "conservative vs. curious" produces in a feed — that mapping is not self-evident and would need clearer onboarding. I would also run user tests on the colour inversion earlier in the process; the black YOUR VIEW risks reading as negative rather than simply fixed. The Happy Pageneeds sharper editorial criteria — "positive news" is too broad a brief to hand to a content team in production.
resources 06/06
Pariser, E. (2012) Filter Bubble: Wie wir im Internet entmündigt werden (E-book). Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag. ISBN 978-3-446-43116-4.