I signed up for this class wanting a change of pace from all the AI classes I have been taking. I have never taken a design or HCI related class, but I had some previous knowledge from working on a small team in my SWE internship where I listened in on some UX discussions. Before this class, I did not think much about the design of apps I use every day and how they form habits and reliance. I was aware of persuasive technology like Amazon saying things like “Only 10 left in stock – order soon” and Temu/Shein having pop-up ads everywhere, but those are the obvious and extreme cases. Also before this class, I had a pessimistic attitude towards behavior change apps. I have tried many – Duolingo, Habit trackers, diary/mood trackers, diet trackers, screen time, etc. – but I never stuck with these and now they sit abandoned on my phone. I was convinced that no app could change my ways. After this class though, I wish some prototypes I saw from other teams were real products, especially ones related to sleeping. I would actually love to use them! I have learned that a systematic and research-grounded approach to behavior change works much better than some simple tracker/logger.
Definitely the most enjoyable part of the class for me was the AI-assisted coding to make our idea a reality. It was a fast paced week – between the initial prototype, assumption tests, usability testing, and coding up changes based on all the feedback – but perhaps that made it more fun. I had the most fun refining and implementing features that we didn’t even have in the MVP, like adding music and adding LLM as a judge to score prompts. In retrospect, I think I might have taken the reins of the coding too much, not giving my teammates the opportunity to contribute more or to push back on changes I was making, since I was just adding features spontaneously. But as a CS person, that is just the type of thing I enjoy doing, much more so than designing studies, interviewing, and drawing stuff. With that being said, sketchnotes were definitely a chore, and I think that is reflected in the decline in my sketchnotes’ quality over the quarter. In fact, I think I would have learned more from the readings if I took traditional notes instead. Nonetheless, that’s just a skill issue on my part and not something that should be changed in the course. I liked how this class felt like I was in high school again, with most of class time being spent working with my team instead of listening to boring lectures.
A concern I personally had for our final project idea was privacy. Whether our product is a real browser extension or not, it requires careful thinking of where user inputs are going. I was thinking about how, besides academic purposes, people use AI for very personal and emotional issues. We do not want our extension to be enabled or to have anything to do with this if the user is discussing non-academic subjects with an LLM. Plus, right now anything the user types is going to Gemini API and we are not transparent about that. If I were a user of Clanker Clash, I would wonder what is being done with my prompts, like if they’re being stored in a DB under my name. Worst-case, these prompts could be used to build a profile about me (if this were a real, full-scale product). There should be some disclaimer saying we do not store any prompts, and Gemini is used to score them.
Next time I need to change some behavior – whether that behavior is in my personal life or behavior of the users of the product I’m working on – I will consider the principles we learned in this class. For personal good habits, I think I will always remember things like habit stacking, changing your environment, making the habit ridiculously simple, etc. And as an engineer, it is likely that I won’t have to revisit concepts like wireflows, personas, journey maps, user studies, etc ever again. Nonetheless, as I implement features, I will keep ethical concepts in mind and aim to make interfaces easy to use.
Now I think that anyone can change their habits because it is not about willpower or mental fortitude. To me, trying to wake up early in the morning feels like it requires so much strength to just get out of bed. Hopefully during spring break I can really sit down and think about how to apply behavior change to my own life (I was too busy during the quarter to ever do this…). To change habits, all you need is small changes and to make it enjoyable.
