As a master’s student who didn’t go to Stanford for undergrad, I came into this class really curious about how Stanford teaches HCI and design. When I was an undergrad, I had taken and TA’d for my university’s equivalent of CS 147, so I was excited to gain new perspectives from Stanford’s approach to design. Because of this previous experience, I had felt confident in what I knew about UX research and design, but I ended up learning so many new concepts and skills. I actually come from a psychology background, so one of my favorite parts of this class was getting to see all the different ways to apply psychology concepts and research to design and behavior change. I entered the class thinking it would be the typical process of conducting interviews, sketching, and creating a prototype, but I feel like this class went beyond that—I enjoyed all of the different types of studies we conducted (e.g., intervention study, assumption tests), and I learned some new synthesis methods too. Christina and the teaching team also created such a kind and fun learning environment, so overall, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I truly enjoyed this class and how much it kept me motivated throughout the quarter.
Class Experience
I feel like this class’ approach to teaching design aligned well with my learning style and preferences. I particularly enjoyed the balance of lecture and discussion/group work—it made 3 hours of class time go by relatively quickly. At first, I felt overwhelmed by all of the deliverables due each week, but in retrospect, all of those assignments in the first few weeks did prepare me well for the actual project. One tool in particular that I’m confident I will use again is system mapping—it really helped me design for the user and made me think about what type of interactions and overall path I’d want users to have with our product. Creating bubble maps also helped me think in terms of the “bigger picture,” which is incredibly useful before actually getting into solution building and designing.
Something that I think would have been beneficial for the class, though, would be incorporating more opportunities for collaboration between teams. I feel like I didn’t get to talk to or interact with other teams and their projects until the end, but I would have loved having some sessions where teams can give each other more in-depth feedback and critique on their designs and solutions, as well as brainstorm together. Some of the most useful feedback I got for our project was from 5 minutes spent talking to another classmate, so having more formal critique sessions could facilitate a more collaborative environment. Additionally, one of my favorite activities from this quarter was creating a moodboard and style tile because it let me tap into elements of visual creativity. In fact, this is definitely something I will remember ten years from now, as I see myself creating those artifacts for future design projects. As a result, I think the class could incorporate more creative activities like this, or dedicate a bit more time to them, into its approach because I’m sure students would love to explore different things like color theory and branding more in-depth.
Ethical Considerations
I think the biggest ethical concern when it comes to our app is the mechanism being used to change behavior—our reminder messages are, at their core, fear appeals because they utilize statistics/facts about negative effects/harms of not taking breaks and pairing them with a positive, encouraging suggested preventative action. The term “fear appeal” sounds scary, but really, we see these all the time in our daily lives, such as in advertising. As a team, we made sure to do research on fear appeals before writing our reminder messages, taking measures to ensure that only mild amounts of fear are used (just enough to instill a sense of urgency in users) and that triggering content (e.g., mention of death or severe illnesses) is not used. Still, I think most would probably argue that this method is manipulative, since it can pervert user decision making. However, as discussed in class, manipulation is not necessarily malicious, and I would definitely argue that manipulation in this case is helping users make choices that are better for their health. In addition, we wanted to keep the perversion to a minimum by minimizing infringement on users’ autonomy—we did this by clearly displaying “Skip” and “Snooze” buttons users can use, users have an “escape.” We received some feedback from classmates about nudging users by making those buttons smaller or harder to see in comparison to the “Start” button, but we didn’t want users to feel like they only had one option, so we kept them all the same size.
Also, in regards to inclusive design, I think we took steps to ensure that our design/system matched the requirements of the individual by allowing users to set preferences for the types of breaks they want to be recommended (e.g., someone who uses a wheelchair could make sure that they don’t receive lower body stretch suggestions). This lets the system meet users where they’re at and better tailor the user experience to their needs. I think allowing users to “Shuffle” to receive different suggestions does this as well. Thus, we included a couple of features to make our solution more accessible, but I know that there are still many other inclusivity considerations that could have been made. We didn’t think there were any barriers to using our product for people of different genders, races, or ethnicities, but there may be some underlying challenges or barriers that could be unearthed with more time, interviewing, and user testing. In addition, I believe something else that we should have also thought about more as we designed is the digital divide—our target users may be college students and young professionals, but is there also a way for us to foster better physical and mental wellbeing for those who don’t have reliable access to computers, the Internet, or smartphones? For example, everyone could benefit from things like posture checks and stretches. This may be out of scope for our project, but it’s still important to think about.
Moving Forward
Moving forward, when designing for behavior change (or just designing in general), I will be guided by all of the theories, frameworks, tools, and methods that I learned in this class. Particularly, I will make a conscious effort to always think about ethical issues and accessibility issues, as well as inclusivity and design justice, at every step of the design process. I am aware that there may always be limitations in these domains, and sometimes you cannot solve all of those issues or accommodate every possible user’s needs, but you can still do your best to let those design principles guide you. Not only will I carry class concepts with me, I also learned a lot about teamwork and communication from my group, which I also plan to carry with me on future group projects. I think most importantly, I’ve learned to accept and become comfortable with the idea that a lot of times, there is no “right answer” when it comes to design. I’ve always been a bit of a perfectionist, so it’s a hard pill to swallow. But, from now on, as I keep designing, I will make sure to do my best to design with an open mind without worrying about what the “perfect” solution is. The best we can do is try to meet our users’ needs and desires, and there may be several different ways to do so—if anything, it’s better to have options and not be fixated on one idea. Ultimately, this has been a quarter full of growth and development, so I am beyond grateful to the teaching team and my team!
