Final Reflection – Michael Elabd

Before this class, I thought design was something that I can not do, I was never an artist and so obviously I can not start learning now how to draw or sketch, or design. I can think creatively or solve technical problems but designing that is not in my skill set. It was very interesting when Christina mentioned growth mentality from the angle of behavioral change. I found it very insightful that I always assume that I have a growth mentality but what I never considered is that this mentality is limited to what I am already good at. “I can be a better soccer player”, “I can code a better program”, etc. But it never was the case that I said, “I can have a better memory”, “I can learn how to draw”. This struck me as an inherit contradiction. It changed the way I viewed myself and how I approached the class and my learnings in general. It encouraged me to go above and beyond on my sketches. Instead of hoping to get a 95%, I aimed for a 100% everytime. I wanted to draw something impressive, something different, even if it took 4 times as long. I became so proud of my drawings, I started showing them off to my friends. It was very cool that I went from the I can not design, to learning how to design and draw from this class. Christina’s lectures on fonts and the guest lecturer’s class on sketchy screens or wireflows were very inspirational. Moreover, I found that Alyssa’s feedback on the drawings was very constructive and she helped me improve everytime. I was actually kind of upset that we stopped doing those assignments midways throught the quarter since I really learned so much from them. I remember so much more from my drawings and the colorful images that everyone drew than just my normal notes. I really wish that next time the class is taught, this assignment can be a quarter long expedition whereby the end, students get to see how they have improved and changed their style as well as found their design language.

Regarding the project, I was surprised by the number of exercises Christina had to ensure that we have thought about everything for the project. I really loved the mappings and the problem finding and solution-finding. I really enjoyed finding a problem and then weeks later landing on the solution. In my experience, I have seen founders and industry leaders think about the solution first and then try to fit a problem that they say they have solved. Moreover, my friends and I when ideating about cool projects to work on, usually start with “wouldn’t it be cool to do x, or y” rather than “x is a problem, how can we solve that?”. I loved that the way Christina structured the class gave us no room to infer the solution, but let us explore the problem space first and identify key issues that we can then think about how to resolve. I especially enjoyed that part of the class where we kept ideating. I found that it was a very creative and fun process. I also loved when every week we had a different exercise to further develop our project. It felt like we were playing a video game and every week we get a different challenge to upgrade our village or our character. The continuation of the project across the quarter as well as differing exercises made the class very engaging. However, one problem that my team and I constantly faced was remembering what each exercise was. I wish there was some easy way of looking back to remember what each exercise was and what was it for. I keep thinking that a sketch for each exercise would be very cool and it would help us remember them a lot.

Regarding the ethics section of the class, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I enjoyed having those debates. However, I hated that they remained fairly shallow as people did not want to ask harder questions. It seemed like maybe people were a bit uncomfortable or uninterested in those questions which made the discussions less engaging. Regarding our project’s ethics, I really thought that the nudging and manipulation discussion was quiet interesting. We found that our project uses a lot of nudging to help users to change their behaviours. We also found that some nudges were slightly manipulative like not allowing the user’s to look at their friends’ posts until they themselves have posted. Whether to include this or not was a difficult decision for us to make, however, we decided to include that nudge to ensure that this does not become another laid back social media where users are just consuming content with no thought process. Instead, we wanted every user to be an active participant of the network, pushing their friends to improve on their activities as well. Thus, we found that the nudges are acceptable so long as the users have the choice of not adding their friends on the platform. This choice allows them to switch off the social media component of the application if they disagree with our implementation. We are still concerned that this use case is manipulative since it forces users to complete their activity before viewing their friends’ posts. If it becomes manipulative, we can change the requirement to a strong recommendation of finishing your activity first.
After the class, I think that I can change my behavior and skills by altering my mentality and my surroundings. I have been able to consistently read, exercise, and eat healthier food all because of this switch in my brain about what I can and can not change. I am also a lot more cognizant of the ethical ramifications of the most well-intentioned products. Ethics and technology can not be decoupled and any effort to do so, I think, is misguided.
Next time when faced with something I want to change about myself, I will take small steps with an altered mindset that I can indeed change that fact. I will also setup accountability mechanisms to ensure that I stick to my goals. When faced with a problem that I am not good at, instead of saying I cant do it, I will try just as I tried in my sketches and in my team’s prototype.

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