Before this class, I didn’t really think much about behavior change. In my life, I have my share of both successful behavior change and unsuccessful behavior, mainly in the realm of personal health. To me behavior change was something that could be achieved with the right mindset and a strong internal motivation. Generally speaking, I was under the impression that behavior change was something that would only stick when there is an internal motivation powering that change. For the most part, this notion is unchanged. During the class, I did read that internal motivation is definitely a part of behavior change, but I didn’t recognize or appreciate that there were multiple factors such as nudges, tiny habits, and also the switch theory. I didn’t consider myself knowledgeable about behavioral change coming into this course and at the conclusion of CS 247B, I can more fully appreciate the technologies and techniques that explain behavior change.
As far as the course and team project goes, I quite enjoyed the lectures, especially during the ethics discussions. It was interesting to see how most students believed that companies would not act ethically without a strong financial incentive. It was also inspiring to hear that, as Stanford students, we have the opportunity to be vocal voices for change in these tech companies and encourage them to adopt more ethical practices. A line that particularly sticks with me from one of the later ethical discussions is about the focus on designers for empowering ethical changes. As a design course, it is understandable that ethics discussions in CS 247B happen through a designer’s lens. Since I generally consider myself as a developer, rather than a designer, this notion sparked a thought in my head: “what could a developer do?”. I think this is a question that I will continue thinking about as I engage in more internal deliberation about ethics and my future professional life.
Another aspect that I really enjoyed was the emphasis on visual presentation methods such as drawing diagrams and storyboarding. As a very visual person, I really appreciated having the opportunity in class to draw diagrams such as the system path diagram and have assignments that helped me visualize and finalize designs that I thought up in my head. I’m also really appreciative about sketchnotes. This course was my first experience with sketchnotes. Admittedly, I did find it more difficult than traditional note taking, but I found that I retained the information better (as Christina mentioned multiple times in the beginning of the quarter). Additionally, I was also able to exercise some creativity in visual composition, a skill that I know I’m somewhat lacking in.
Something I appreciated about the final project was that the topic and implementation details were completely up to the teams. During the science fair walkthrough, I was impressed by the wide variety of topics such as a sunscreen reminder app, an affirmation based decision making social network, and an app which focused on making people go outside. I also had the chance to see one team which implemented a browser based app instead of the mobile application that most other teams decided on creating. With such creativity, I am encouraged to imagine how our mobile app, Divert, which focused on limiting screen time could be implemented in different mediums, such as the computer screen. Something that my group talked about earlier in our ideation process was how we could incorporate a sort of wearable that would show how little screen time was spent on problematic apps. Now I wonder how our project would have changed if we incorporated a wearable which would have served as a sort of positive status symbol for people with less unproductive screen time. As for all the other projects, I really appreciate that our final class lecture was used as a time for everyone to see what everyone else has been up to. Prior to the science fair, I didn’t really know what topic space each team was exploring and how they were helping to promote behavior change.
When developing our prototype, I was very focused on the idea of privacy and protection of a user’s personal mobile device. Since the premise of our app revolves around the idea that our app can control the ways users interact with the phone, it was very important to make sure that our app did not “lock” users out of using their own phone. At the same time, we realized that since we would need screen time information, it was important to use an opt-in system so users knew exactly what we needed in order to run the app. Our app’s setting page was created with these considerations in mind. We wanted to give users as much control as possible over what interventions could be used. Without a user setting these permissions, the app would not be able to function properly, which is fine since we wouldn’t want users to experience these interventions without their prior knowledge and consent.
Our app relies on nudges that encourage users to limit their screen time on problematic apps. The idea of having an intervention such as grayscale or spiders are nudges that the user expressly opts into (through the creation of an intervention). Our nudges range from pretty gentle (grayscale) to potentially very frightening (alarm and spiders). I don’t think this is particularly manipulative, even for the more extreme interventions, since the user would have to create these interventions themselves. Additionally, our app allows users to preview the intervention before creating them.
There is also the flow where if a user tries to delete or disable an active intervention, then they would be met with several screens prompting them to reflect on their decision and to act with intentionality. For this, I don’t necessarily think it is manipulative, but for some people, it might be leaning towards the manipulative side. If a user decides that they do not want to delete or disable their intervention, then they are met with a congratulatory message. If a user decides that they do want to delete their intervention, then they would be asked to type out the phrase “I don’t want to reduce my screen time anymore”. Since there is no way to bypass these screens, along with the congratulatory message that only appears when a user does not delete or disable their intervention, I do believe that some people may consider this to be a more manipulative nudge.
Now, after this course and project work, I have an appreciation for some of the earliest words that I heard in this course “change is hard”. I now realize that there are many different factors that can affect how people successfully change their behavior and the numerous models that researchers have developed to better understand behavior change. Although I’m not sure about whether or not I’ll make a career out of being a designer, I am certain that the skills of using diagramming, drawing figures to better illustrate ideas, and thinking critically about ethical considerations about a product will last with me all throughout my professional career. For this I am thankful that I decided to take this course.
The next time I’m faced with a similar situation about behavior change, I think I’ll approach the situation with more consideration with regards to design for accessibility and also the space for which my products will be designed for and the company in which I am working for. I think the ethics discussions surrounding how we can try to orient the technology industry towards making more ethical decisions will be something that stays with me and will influence my decisions in my future.
