Before this class started, I was excited for a different course vibe compared to CS147. I was exhausted from CS147’s fast paced schedule, and I was excited that we are only focusing on the design (no coding) in CS247B. Word of mouth told me that CS247B teaches a lot about user research and user interviews. Although I did have some UX research background before this class, I was looking forward to more theoretical knowledge to support my practice .
My expectations were fulfilled. CS247B taught me how to dissect user research data step by step, and I enjoyed connecting the lecture materials with what I learned on my own through experience. An example of this would be when we annotated quotes from an interview transcript and drew insights from the annotations. I also loved learning about different design techniques, specifically the ones that helped dissecting complex problems. Techniques I found particularly useful include connection circles, fishbone diagrams, experience mapping, behavioral personas, assumption mapping, wireflows, and style tiles. Some of these techniques were quite game changing for me. The behavioral personas we learned about make so much more sense than the traditional personas I was used to seeing. I remember I would see people putting personas in their project case studies and wonder how much the persona actually helped versus simply being a “standard step” in a case study. What Christina said about creating wireflows instead of wireframes also resonated with me—I always wondered what the purpose of having the greyscale of everything was since that would just be a coloring game.
However, there were also other tools/design techniques that I felt like did not help our progress much. I understand that the class was trying to teach us different types of techniques, but sometimes I felt like we were asked to create many different models while models may not be so applicable to our project. Personally I didn’t find the path diagram and user story map very helpful.
Something that surprised me was how little time we got to actually work on figma. Compared to CS147, there was less time to revise and polish the design on figma. I looked at the course calendar and realized how long UX research took us. Both the baseline study and the intervention study were pretty in depth, and I suppose it’s a tradeoff between spending more time in the research or the design.
Ten years from now, I will probably remember the coincidence of working on a project on maintaining relationships while being in a phase of considering the intentionality of my own friendships. Before the class started, I was thinking about the friendships I have made at Stanford and how many of them were formed based on proximity and convenience. I wanted to be more intentional about my friendships, so it felt very coincidental that I was working on a project that investigated this issue. Conducting interviews and studies helped me understand the challenge of maintaining relationships objectively, but I imagine it will still be difficult when it comes to practice.
My team’s project (Team 18: Rotary) raises a user’s self-awareness and intentionality in maintaining existing relationships by having users reflect on their photo memories. Users are prompted to browse through pictures with friends and write about how the selected picture makes them feel. By encouraging users to reflect on their relationships and their emotions, our app nudges them to be more intentional about who they want to stay in contact with, why they want to stay in contact, and whether they want to reach out to that friend. These nudges are acceptable because it is, first of all, not compulsory. Our app is an individual reflection app—we don’t push our user to complete reflections by comparing them to other friends. Second, our nudge does not take away the user’s freedom in how they want to maintain their relationships. We nudge them to be more intentional, but what action that intentionality leads to is completely up to the user. However, our app could potentially become manipulative if it makes our users feel satisfied with only past memories. It could become an escape from creating new memories with new social circles as one faces new life transitions.
Coming out of this class, like I mentioned before, I feel like my expectations were fulfilled. What I did not expect is the amount I have grown in terms of understanding the nuances of design ethics. I learned about the different principles of ethical design and how some are more applicable in situations than others. Despite not having clear answers for many ethics discussion questions I saw in class, my new understanding will help me pause before making design decisions in the future. To name just a few of the things I will consider: 1. Questioning the problem definition since it is a normative process 2. To consider the tradeoffs of different design principles 3. To balance business profits with accessibility…
Overall, I really enjoyed CS247B. Kudos to my awesome teammates. Thank you TAs, and Christina for a great quarter, I truly learned a lot.
