Before 247B
Prior to this class, I was quite skeptical about whether behavior change can truly be accomplished. In my own life, I’ve tried numerous times to make changes (e.g., starting assignments earlier, using my phone less, etc.) without much success. My motivation for achieving these changes was relatively high, however I have rarely had success with reaching a goal related to a change in my day to day lifestyle. During this course, I learned about the elements that contribute to successful behavior change, and what I should keep in mind when I strive to make personal adjustments. My overarching conclusion is that behavior change can be achieved through nuanced understanding of why the behavior is a problem in the first place.
During 247B
Throughout the quarter, I worked with Team 1 to develop TimeIt, an app designed to help users decrease their unwanted TikTok usage. One aspect I appreciated that differed from previous HCI courses was the attention dedicated to user studies. Specifically, the assumption tests were a highlight for me in our development process. In CS 147 and CS 194H, we implemented features in batches and noted feedback on each iteration as a whole. I found that during the interview process, extremely targeted questions were needed for users to comment on a feature that appears minor in the context of the entire prototype. This is not the case with assumption tests, as the experimental process results in two groups with only one easily identifiable difference. My team was able to get clear directives to keep in mind while we iterated.
While I really enjoyed assumption tests, I was a bit more unsure of mood board creation and the personification of the app. The in class activities and group synthesis were amongst the highlights of the class for me, though I still have some uncertainty about the direction that my team decided to go in. Like the assumption tests, I would have felt more confident about creating a moodboard if there was some preliminary research done with users. The activity of imagining TimeIt as a person and ascribing human characteristics to it didn’t come naturally to me, so having some starting point would have likely made that process easier to complete.
Overall, I’m happy with the work that my team and I completed this quarter. It really brought to my attention some of the societal issues that have occurred because of short form media. Negative effects like shorter attention spans and the need for immediate gratification have created lasting effects for younger generations. However, it is undeniable (from personal experience and from interviews) that short form media consumption also has significant positive impacts. A recurring theme in the design of TimeIt was learning how to find balance between the two.
Ethical Considerations
With regards to the ethical considerations, TimeIt relies heavily on the use of nudges to change behavior. This comes in the form of design decisions like “close app” being the first option when a user’s time limit runs out rather than “request an extension” and the preset low values when a user is determining their daily time limits, among others. These nudges are acceptable because they work towards the purpose of our solution, which users actively engage with our app to experience. While our implemented nudges don’t present a major problem, there is potential for manipulation due to the approval needed by a friend to exceed a time limit. To actively prevent this from occurring, we included aa guiding statement on how users should select their TimeIT Buddy during onboarding.
Privacy is also critical to the app development process, though it wasn’t an explicit major consideration for us this quarter. This may be because we didn’t create a high fidelity prototype that would shift our frame of mind from a well executed idea to an actual product. Thinking beyond just what we did this quarter, our project respects users’ privacy by really only monitoring how much time they spend on TikToks. During lecture when the topic of discussion was monetization, we did come up with a few ways that would go beyond a standalone measurement. For example, detecting the type of content consumed while on TikTok could be useful when perfecting marketing techniques. However, as a team, we decided that in the hypothetical world where TimeIt became an actual app, we would not want to move forward with this model. Privacy, to me, is when users have full knowledge of how they interact with an app and the downstream effects that can result from this interaction. Additionally, users must be given the ability to change these interactions at any time. Something like detecting TikTok usage would likely need to be heavily buried within legalese to ever actually be approved by users, undermining the idea of privacy altogether. Instead, more generic advertising space can be given to vendors on TimeIt’s homescreen (not necessarily determined by users’ previous data) to generate revenue.
After 247B
After my consideration of TimeIt and the ethical principles ingrained throughout the design process, I’m certainly more of a believer in behavior change. It begins with identifying a problem and chunking that problem down to identify achievable action items. I’ve learned that one of the key prerequisites is intrinsic motivation, which can be augmented by external motivation in the forms of accountability and encouragement. The next time I have a desire to change a behavior, I’m going to follow this template to achieve my goal. Importantly, I’ve learned that behavior change can take a long time to actualize because the degree of motivation is not always constant, emphasizing the value of patience. Additionally, future iterations will place more emphasis on ethical concerns, especially accessibility. A high value solution should be accessible to everyone, not just a subset of the population.
