Even though I have a few friends who have taken this class before, I really had no idea what to expect, especially given the broadness of the term “behavior change.” Most of my experience with product design and development comes from either my work in other HCI classes—which are primarily centered around the design-thinking process—or my experience in industry—which often came with a metrics-driven perspective. I thought I had a baseline understanding of how to identify and empathize with target users, but I had no idea how (or even what it meant) to effectively and ethically change their behavior.
I really enjoyed both learning the theory and applying it towards our project! For example, I thought that the readings on ethical nudges provided an interesting and scientific framework for pushing certain habits and/or behaviors on users, and we had that reading in mind while making decisions surrounding push notifications. Furthermore, the “Tiny Habits” reading reshaped my perspective on habit formation and was relevant for both this class and my personal life.
I think that my approach for synthesis is more discussion-based, and even though I found the visual layout of the different synthesis methods useful for extracting more hidden insights, I would have preferred open-ended discussion prompts. That being said, I can see how the approach inherent to the synthesis methods we learned can be applied towards other mediums.
One of my favorite parts of this class was working on a problem that I cared about: often I find that HCI classes so tightly structure the ideation process that I end up with a product I’m not personally invested in; because we thought about types of behaviors before interviewing users, we had a framework that guided us towards to key findings about decision-making, which our team was excited about!
If I had the opportunity to work on this project for a little more time, I would love to perform more testing with users in our target audience. More specifically, I think it would be a valuable exercise to implement an MVP that is usable on a mobile device—our intended medium—and more thoroughly understand how users feel about making reflections and adding to their social network when those interactions aren’t Wizard-of-Ozed away from them. That being said, I was surprised by the feeling of completion I and other team members felt with just our prototype: because we spent so much of the class building out every detail (moodboards, tasks, etc.), I felt confident in the work presented there.
As someone who will be starting a Product Management role (alarmingly) soon, I genuinely believe that the technical skills I strengthened in this class—applying relevant research, comparative analysis, pain point identification, rapid prototyping—will better equip me to approach my job. I think that so many interviews for jobs like mine also suffer from excess structure surrounding the ideation and prioritization process, and I appreciate the diversity of methods we explored this past quarter. As someone who has spent most of the HCI track working with friends, I also learned to sharpen my soft skills working with several teammates I did not already know, and I think I emerged a better listener!
Our team tried to give users as much control as possible over their privacy while using our product: we default to more private options (e.g. not displaying posts to friends) in our settings, and don’t notify those in the user’s social network that they posted unless they opt into doing so while making their reflection. However, much of our product relies on external support to bolster the positive feelings stemming from self-reflection, and even changing the defaults present to encourage greater use of that feature, or automatically compiling a social network using other social media platforms (as many products already do) could compromise our initial values. I’m curious how this balance would play out should our app have been further developed.
When designing personas, I definitely suffered from drawing from my personal experiences and the experiences of those in my close social circle; our team had a “diverse” range of perspective when considered in the very specific context of a Stanford CS classroom but not when considered against the range of perspectives across all college students and new grads. For example, our college student persona had relatively few financial concerns, and finances did not influence her day-to-day life and/or stress levels, which is a level of inclusion we should have considered. While it may have been problematic to draft personas we do not personally relate to, we should have taken the time to interview a wider range of people in our initial research.
Ultimately, I think that this class has taught me to use the guiding principles and frameworks behind people’s thought processes to design effectively. I have found myself more carefully asking why someone expressed something, rather than just noting that thought down, and I’m excited to watch these techniques carry me forward in my career!
