When I chose HCI as my concentration, it felt very freeing to garner experience in the behind the scene work of UI. Growing up with a zeal for architecture and design, the words I associated with design were “functional” and “aesthetic.” And they must both work hand in hand for a good design. Much of that attitude also translated to UX design. And prior to CS247B, I added on the word “intuitive” to also be associated with UX design. If it is not intuitive, then it can’t be interacted with by people, meaning it must be a poor design. Or so I thought.
But then, the HCI department has really uprooted a lot of those beliefs. First, in 147, I remember James Landay quoting Steve Job’s rhetoric of “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” Then, in 247B, I now know that educating or raising awareness of a behavior hardly ever translates to behavioral change. These exposures led me to question what it means to be “intuitive.” Now, I would probably agree that intuition isn’t something inherent to a design as I had previously assumed. There was nothing intuitive about using your fingers on a touch screen as we do know. Realistically, a new user (without previous exposure to how others use a touch screen) would probably wonder ‘Which finger do I use? My pointer? My thumb? All of them.’ And it is no wonder that it still took several years for the iPhone until the majority of the world switched to a touch screen phone. In fact, my mom has only recently switched to one a few years ago. Rather, now I would say that good HCI design doesn’t have to be intuitive at first, but it must reach a point of invisibility for a user. I don’t know when it was decided that most people in my generation would use their thumbs on a touch screen, but there is an invisible consensus that that is the case.
I mention this because much of those enlightenments have recurred in this class regarding behavioral change. In fact, maybe it is other non-UX startup founders who believe ‘intuitiveness’ to be a feasible business model that are the reason for all the startup slop. Startups take an already built model with “unintuitive” features and reiterate on them, hoping for a better outcome. Maybe that is why my team somehow ended up with a physical teddy bear product. To those that I have pitched my solution, many have mentioned our solution doesn’t seem very realistic or intuitive. And maybe it is true. But I can also argue, thanks to this class, that behavior change doesn’t have to be intuitive for the person for it to be effective.
I think I rambled too much already, but I must say, my absolute highlight to this class (besides Nina) has been the readings. More specifically, the ones concerned with ethics. I can even narrow down and say that Professor Wodtke’s input reading was by far the most enlightening. I will even shamelessly admit that after that reading, and OpenAI’s new contract with the US pentagon, I have refused to use ChatGPT and now favor Claude. On the topic of ethics, I recall that one of our earliest dialogue’s as a class was on whether nudging is manipulative. I think the general consensus in class was that it isn’t inherently manipulative unless you design it to be. However, later on in class, I remember from another one of our readings that the UX designer who popularized scrolling didn’t intend for it to be the manipulative nudge that it is today (aka doomscrolling). Hence, I am not all convinced that no nudge is not at least slightly manipulative.
On the other hand, I do believe there are a few of the sketchnotes which are way too redundant to past ones. Specifically, the ones from weeks 4-7 kind of feel like different fonts of the same good habit tips. I can see how the redundancy has drilled the concepts in my head now, but I would have much rather heard/read a new take on habit building. Additionally, I feel like the quarter system really doesn’t favor a class like this (as with many HCI classes). Specifically, I know my group’s project was greatly impacted by the timing of when the intervention study had to be done (as it was during a having exam part of the quarter). Hence, I wonder if the intervention study being done immediately after the baseline study could help some group projects.
All of this is to say that this class has changed my perspective on the role of “intuiveness” in UX design and for the next time that I am in a similar class, I really want to hone in on an idea that seems so intuitive that it should not be developed.
