BEFORE THIS CLASS
Before this class I thought that it would just be a very similar version of the other classes in the 47 series. I assumed there to be a lot of busy work and readings and whatnot, but I found myself to enjoy the content, the assignments, and the overall energy that this class brought into my life. I thought it would just be a computer science class with some research papers about habits, but I was really wrong. I was unfamiliar with nuances of habits and learning how habits are created and how the tech that we enjoy in the world today are built around these habits. The intersection between tech and psychology and human behavior is so exciting to explore and this class is a great job at exploring that.
EXPERIENCE
Yeah, no, I love this class. It was actually such a great experience, especially having the ability to choose any type of habit or intervention that we wanted to build an app upon or some sort of product upon. It really enabled me to dive deeper to the creative side that I can’t really dive into in most of the classes here, especially in the engineering side of things. If I had to critique anything in the class, I would say that I didn’t enjoy that sometimes when we were to make big choices like the intervention we wanted to study and whatnot, there wasn’t a lot of structure or time to do that. I remember there would be two, three minutes in class where we sat as a group and had to come up with some sort of idea and go forward with it and build upon that idea. And I think having that very abrupt, “hey, just figure it out right now and let’s move forward” model made it easy for us to move through the content, but hard for us to come up with genuine design choices and genuine ideas that suited all of our interests and needs. This ultimately required us to talk about things after class and refine our ideas in following lectures, which ended up being okay, but I think having a bit more structure and time around letting people ideate without the pressure of ideating very quickly during some of the foundational stages might be very helpful.
That being said, I was really surprised with this experience. I think I never had to iterate and come up with ideas as fast as we did in this class. And going through this process showed me how much growth could occur when you don’t think too deeply and you don’t judge your ideas.
Ultimately, this experience has helped me want to explore a project external to my classwork. I’m personally very interested in the startup space. I’m currently working at a VC right now as a scout, and as I’m advancing my computer science degree, I really want to build my own product.
And the process that we went through in this class was super helpful for showing me that this is a very doable product that I could make, right? From taking the 147s to 347, as well as 278, I feel like I have all the tools I need to build a product and understand my users. From completing tests to figure out my usability, to making iterations, MVPs, write-ups, creating mock-ups, creating a prototype that’s clickable, improvising upon that prototype, etc. The whole ten yards!! I feel ready, equipped, and motivated!
Besides the project side of the class, I really enjoyed the discussion portion. In most classes, it’s really hard to get to know the other students and talk to other students, so I really appreciated having us alternate the tables that we spoke to. By breaking our group apart to join other groups and talk about discussion questions that we created ourselves was a really fun way of getting to meet new people and exploring interesting ideas. It was kind of like an icebreaker every time we had a discussion and it felt like it was a great way to get close to some people.
ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
On the note of discussions, I was looking over the ethical considerations and I’m still very interested in the nudging and manipulation side of things. Our project is definitely full of manipulation and nudging. A lot of our mechanisms are meant to manipulate users to become more productive, right from banking on social pressure and the gamification of completing tasks. But I think that these could be acceptable forms of manipulation because the user is self-opting and subscribing to the platform with the intention of being manipulated to become more productive. As for the nudges, we try to use notifications and messages you can send to friends, which I think is a healthy way of nudging. These are very common forms of nudges that people receive across other platforms and mediums, and by staying in the same realm of that, I think it’s an acceptable nudge.
That being said, well-being is a difficult matter in this conversation. Whenever you’re discussing productivity and people accomplishing things and gamifying that approach, it could create a very toxic and harmful environment.
NOW I THINK + NEXT TIME
Now I think this class has given much fruit for thought. When I create my own product in the future, I want to make sure that I’m being very intentional about the ethical considerations of my design choices. Next time when faced with a similar situation of creating design choices I want to ask the following:
- Am I manipulating users to do things that are harmful?
- Am I nudging users in a way that is ethical?
- Am I doing things in my design that lie with the well-being of users?
Before I close out, I do want to give a special shout out to the team from Christina, to Amy, and Melody. This was a dream team!!! Everyone was super helpful, super positive, and it was a team that made this learning experience amazing. Thank you!
