As a current Senior at Stanford with this winter quarter being my last quarter as a student, I will have to say I was pretty tired of school. The ‘itis got me good and I was pretty unmotivated to spend that much time on my studies. Before taking this class I wasn’t too sure what to expect. Having taken 147 and 347 already, I knew that this class was going to be some sort of flavor of both of those. Scoping a project, doing some interviews, doing prototypes, and creating some sort of final product. I didn’t come in with many other expectations than that. I think that having taken the class I was pleasantly surprised that I wasn’t going to be forced to stand up a mobile application in 3 weeks.
The things that I wasn’t a big fan of were the sketchnotes, discussion prompts, and pop quizzes. I was a fan of the prototype testing among the class and splitting up our group to different teams to discuss our project. Those felt like a better use of my time and more applicable to the meat of the course.
Oddly enough the thing I think will stick the most with me was the drawing lesson and how to give feedback. The drawing really upped my ability to sketch scenes and emotions in a way that is comprehensible and doesn’t look like chicken scratch. The feedback lesson was good because I like the structure of “start doing…, stop doing, and stay doing…” It makes giving feedback structured and gives me a way to approach it.
Our application uses money to manipulate behavior. People bet money to be able to focus for a certain period of time and if they can’t meet that focus goal or challenge, they donate their money to an opposing political party. It creates intrinsic motivation within our users to not feel like their money is wasted or even worse that their money is supporting legislation that actively challenges their own ethical beliefs.
Now after taking this class, I’m a little more aware of all the tactics that apps use to try to evoke certain behaviors. If I’m gonna be honest, this may be the start of my villain arc. You can use this knowledge for good or for evil. Guess which route I’m gonna take for my future personal projects and startups. Dolla dolla bills y’all.
I work for Palantir (or at least will start in the fall). They have already had publicity blunders for some of their not-so-good contracts. Perhaps when working there I could try to think of the ethical dilemmas that could arise depending on certain requests from clients. I could bring these up to my team or when I’m building out the data pipelines intentionally input some sabotage …. MUAH HA HA. Naw, Imma be realistic. When faced with these ethical considerations I may push back, but it’s likely imma do what it takes to collect my check and bounce. No need to lie to ourselves. What I’ll likely do is position myself where I face these issues less frequently if ever.
This was a great course with a great pace and a great teaching team. Thanks for everything!
