"This is the kind of experience I want to have": Supporting the experiences of queer young men on social platforms through design

Queer young men (similar to others in the LGBTQ+ community) depend heavily on social platforms but their use can often be problematic. Their needs are often not adequately considered in the design of general platforms and they can be exposed to intra-community harms on LGBTQ+ specific platforms such as dating apps. To explore how social platform design could be improved to better support the needs of queer young men, we conducted a co-design study. We recruited 13 queer men working in technology design to generate new concepts for social platform features. We then refined these concepts and evaluated them in group sessions with end users, a different cohort of 15 queer young men. Here we present mockups of the concepts and findings from evaluations. Our findings show specific ways that providing more agency to social platform users could improve their experiences and we discuss implications for design.