Overall Experience
I really enjoyed my time in this class! I initially registered for this class because behavior change is something I am very interested in. In the past, I’ve tried so many different tactics when it comes to behavior change, some that have worked and some that haven’t. This class contextualized a lot of my previous experiences.
In learning how to design for behavior change, I’ve reflected on how I can design my own life to change behaviors. One of the most impactful insights I gained from this class was the concept of “anchoring” to change behaviors, as discussed in BJ Fogg’s “Tiny Prompts”. I’ve found myself improving productivity levels when studying, sticking to a more regimented exercise routine, and more regularly finishing my daily ToDos by utilizing anchoring. As a Muslim, I pray 5 times everyday, and these prayer times serve as excellent anchors for habits.
Another part of this class I really enjoyed was the guest lecture by Deb Aoki. Drawing is such an important skill and I honestly wasn’t able to draw much before this class. After Deb’s lecture, I saw a drastic improvement in my sketchnotes and actually felt like I could better remember the content I drew.
With regard to the design process, this class definitely differed from other classes I’ve taken in the past like 147. One of the processes I found to be most helpful was deriving insights from studies by different sticky note groupings (chunking, affinity grouping, etc). I often find it difficult to go from raw data to actionable insights, so I found this process very helpful. I also found lectures on branding very impactful–it led my team to think more deeply about different design/stylistic choices. Design is an art in that a seamless design is the culmination of hours of research and decision making, and I found that to be apparent as we worked on developing our app.
Ethical Considerations
Privacy:
Our app, Palendar, allows users to find mutual availability with their friends and schedule a meetup time. While developing this app, there were several privacy concerns we faced. In our initial design, a user could see their friends’ entire calendar. We realized that this had the potential for harm, especially in the case of abusive relationships. We changed our design so that a user could only see times when their friends were available, instead of their entire calendar with details about their day.
This design may still pose some privacy concerns, though they are less extreme. A user may not want their friends to be able to see when they are free, it may make saying no to a hangout more difficult since their friends already know they are free. A feature we could implement in the future is being able to pause incoming invitations by blocking out your entire calendar.
Design Justice:
When it comes to social interaction, we discussed there were two personas that appeared that were polar opposites: anxious Annie and outgoing Oscar. We strongly considered how individuals facing social anxiety or individuals who are more introverted need/desire social interaction just as much as those who are more outgoing. We wanted to uphold design values inclusiveness, openness, and accessibility, as mentioned in “Design Values: Hard-Coded Liberation.”
To cater to both personas, early on in the process we decided to focus on maintaining existing connections as opposed to creating new ones. We found through user interviews that some people experiencing social anxiety felt more comfortable with people they already knew—this helped us narrow our focus.
Looking Ahead:
This class provided several thinking points with regards to the ethical considerations that shape the design process. It was interesting to me that both of the insights regarding ethics I mentioned above were the results of user interviews. User interviews help bring ethical considerations to light—when designing in the future I hope to interview diverse groups of people and dig more for thoughts regarding ethics.
