Design for Behavior Change was a course that helped reorient the way I thought about design and how to work on a team when building a product. I have worked with teams in previous design courses where I did not feel excited about the work being delivered and the team work dynamics despite receiving a great grade. Many design courses try to balance design and some other topic which often leads to corners being cut on important pieces of the design process. The pedagogy of this course, which embedded the ideas of behavior change naturally with its design teachings, allowed me to better grasp some more complex concepts. I was able to learn a great deal more about the design process, especially through working on the final project this quarter. My learning was facilitated not only by the course staff but by my great team members which I had the fortune of working with. Working with new design frameworks was a great learning experience. Making different diagrams and models was helpful for understanding what I was trying to accomplish. Learning more about Figma and how to present the UX experience to testers was a vital designer skill that I will carry onto future courses as well.
I do lament not being able to fully understand all of the various frameworks and diagrams presented in the course. Diagrams like stock and flow and some of the system models were partially lost on me. Thankfully my classmates were helpful and aided in filling in the gaps when I did not understand some topics. There were activities and assignments in the course that enabled me to better understand the more involved material. The reading and sketchnotes helped me internalize some of the advanced concepts on design throughout the course in a digestible enjoyable way. It was also fun perusing the class blog and seeing people’s work and how they interpreted aspects of the course differently.
When thinking about design ethics I now have a better understanding of how we as designers have to be cognizant of how we are driving behavior change to avoid ethical violations. The simple things apps on our phone try to get us to do are now something I come to question. Apps with mixed incentives that either involve money or even love in the case of dating apps exploit the psychology and behavioral economics embedded in us all. As designers we were careful and thoughtful about how we approached reminding friends of one another by ensuring there was always an exit route and that we were not taking advantage of the user’s cognitive biases. Our applications core focus being to promote social interaction among graduating students did help keep us oriented in our design path and in making the app comfy and low friction in a way that helped us avoid manipulative design. At the expense of casting a smaller net we are able to know more about our target user and place more emphasis on designing for their well being.
Next time I take a design course I will apply many of the skills that were either learned or refined from this course to contribute to a new project. The user testing and interviewing skills that were practiced in the course will be something I will continue to work on as finding people who will benefit from your projects is a driver for my interest in design and creating software solutions at large. I hope to have another wonderful team in future courses where I can pay forward some of the lessons from my fellow classmates and learn more from them in return. I will also do my best to take the best attributes from our team and work them into other groups. Meeting up regularly, communicating frequently, and coming to class as well as meeting excited about what we were working on are all habits and traits I hope to see and will try to instill in future groups I work with.
