CS247 has been an incredibly rewarding journey, and 247B in particular has taught me so many surprising things when it comes to tech and behavior change. CS247 was actually the first HCI course I’ve gotten to take at Stanford. While I’ve had experience with design in a handful of classes and internships, I have never gotten to dive into the “why” questions as much as I have in this course. Before this class, I had not really taken the time to think too deeply about how technology can change behavior, whether in terms of design, ethics, or psychology. When I thought about behavior change and technology, I would mainly think about things like social media addiction and cyber bullying, as opposed to how technology can be utilized to inspire healthy habits. It was interesting to witness how in order to make an app, you simply cannot just code any solution – but instead, you must take an interdisciplinary approach that considers all aspects.
In particular, I really enjoyed learning about behavior change and studying how habits are formed. When previously thinking about behavior, I’d mainly think of things like sleep schedules, working out, eating habits, etc. and I had not considered how technology could impact these behaviors of ours. Something I did find difficult though throughout the project was considering personas who are not myself. I obviously know myself better than I know others, and I am curious to learn more about how designers can most effectively build personas they are not necessarily familiar with. I did however find the diary study to be quite insightful when it came to learning about others behaviors, helping me to step out of my own shoes a little bit.
When it comes to particular methods we explored in class, I really enjoyed the assumption mapping exercise and can see myself bringing it into my future projects. I think assumption mapping was a great way to take a step back from our project and to assess our current approach. I also really enjoyed the intervention study and also found it to be quite insightful when it came to behavior change. I thought it was interesting that while the intervention study did not directly involve our app/solution, it was still extremely helpful in guiding the development of our app. I think in other classes it can be hard to get a picture of what happens in app development outside of coding, so this was super insightful to see how research can play an instrumental role. If we had more time in this course, I would have loved to complete additional intervention studies to learn which type of intervention would have the most success.
I additionally found our ethical discussions to be quite fruitful. I feel like in other tech courses, I have discussed ethics at a much higher level, without really applying certain approaches to a specific project. In this case, I thought it was super insightful to be able to discuss the ethical implications of a project that I was actually working on (in addition to ethics in the industry as a whole). Something that I found particularly challenging was ensuring that our app could maintain user privacy. With the inclusion of global challenges, I am a bit worried that others will be able to predict people’s whereabouts/activity since every user is assigned the same task. We had a lot of conversations about ensuring that users felt safe when going outside, but I wonder if this would make some users feel uncomfortable. On the other hand though, I recognize that apps like Pokemon Go and GeoCaching encourage users to travel to specific locations. I wonder if they take any additional measures or precautions to ensure that user activity cannot be tracked and that users feel safe and comfortable. I thought this concern was interesting as well, because it shows how important user privacy can be. Previously when thinking about user privacy, I would mainly think about circumstances involving credit card or SSN leaks as opposed to the user’s physical safety.
Overall, I am stepping out of 247B with all sorts of takeaways that will prove useful in my future projects. I feel like I got a unique opportunity to learn about not only behavior change, but also design, and ethics and I am excited to see how these experiences will shape my future work!
