Final Reflection

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Reflection 🥸

I initially thought behavior change was just a function of motivation and discipline. I think I was half right, since I asked Christina on the second day why people feel the need to change yet still cannot. I’m glad that on the first day I found a friend I knew. I’m grateful that we had the opportunity to work together and that I had the opportunity to meet new people. I’ve seen all my group members outside of class in unique contexts, whether that be at the gym or performing a haircut on them. I didn’t really guide the direction of the project too much. I’m glad I took a more “hands-off approach” because I remember a group member saying that their Figma design/clickable prototype was their “baby.” I learned to let others in my group and in my class do what they want. It was a humorously difficult class to manage, on Christina’s side, on Krishnan’s side, and the other CA’s. 

It was a strangely early and long class, but we found ways to manage. And when everything is said and done, I felt the most at home when everybody sort of accepted each other and let whoever do whatever was on their mind. A challenge I had was communicating with my team, inside and outside of class. A large majority of my team thought this. I think this was actually easier than I thought to fix. I sort of can be defeatist, but I really tried to open up, and be clear on all channels of communication, positive and negative. I would start telling my group if I was going to be late to class, if I couldn’t make an assignment, if I was going to show up 15 minutes late, if I could only call in through phone, if I had to miss a meeting, etc. I started telling my team all these things and within a couple weeks, we felt as if it was a whole lot easier to open up. 

I used to show up to class tense, but I don’t get that feeling anymore. I’m finally glad that there was food, even if it was on the very last day of class. I remember Krishnan also bringing in a baguette. It was probably a couple hours old and was no longer fresh but I was actually starving, so it was an explosion of garlic flavor in my mouth. I think Krishnan really killed it with the teaching and the feedback and the walking around, sarcastic remarks. I can tell he cares about the students and the material. I can only imagine how much work it was to manage 100+ students on top of CS classes like 124. Another fun memory was petting Nina. I’m a senior, and I’m about to graduate soon, but the very human-like experiences I got from the friends I made in this HCI studio class were like no other. 

Ethics 📚

Our product places a great deal of emphasis on user freedom and friendliness, giving users the freedom to go wherever they want, caption whatever they feel comfortable, and organize their scrapbook in a way they see fit. Our mechanisms for behavior change include stickers, notifications, and calendar integration. 

Stickers are what allow you to decorate your scrapbook and fill up the progress bar for reward and accomplishment. Users take a picture of the outdoors and add it to their scrapbook. Notifications are easy to opt-out of, and “nudge” our users every so often to go outside. We feel frequent calendar reminders are acceptable or even encouraged if users are trying hard to establish a new habit of going outside.  However for some users trying out the app for the first time, they may feel they need it on. Modeled after current appointment scheduling interfaces, we give complete user freedom by displaying your week and day, allowing you to color in however much of your notification space you want the app to take. The goal is only for the user to go outside. 

Two big things we want to look out for include excessive tracking of data and the possibility of harm. Excessive tracking of data, companies like Google and Facebook are guilty of, allows targeted ads that you may continue to see even after you’ve solved the problem the ads fix. The possibility of harm is introduced whenever users are allowed to caption a photo. Since we are not as big as Facebook, the possibility of fake news is lower, but we would ensure both the moderation of hate speech and a balance of free speech, given if we were owners of this app in a real company. Finally, as both a reflection and ethics statement, I realized how important it is to think before you act and not be so callous with HCI/design. ✌️