Prof. Wodtke Round 2

The first week of classes felt like a parallel déjà vu. Fresh out of building a card game for FOMO (fear of missing out) in CS 247I, Medha’s my CA again!! This time on Zoom.

I took my first design class in Winter 2021, and this past year has been filled with stepwise growth, from progressing through the HCI core to professional experience, always with the mindset that I had lots to learn. I still recognized this position at the beginning of this quarter, but for the first time, felt that I was a veteran in some small way—at least of Christina’s classroom.

With that came expectations that I both put on myself and fashioned in others’ eyes, to perform and to know things. Elevating what it means to work on a school project was a driving theme not only for myself, but my also my teammates, fueled by the underlying structure of the class.

The behavioral studies

The baseline, intervention, and assumption studies were all opportunities for me to deeply immerse myself in the iterative design process 🤌🏼. But seriously, each one brought a myriad of challenges, tools, and lessons learned.

Recruiting woes

I had an early dream of conducting all studies with properly recruited participants—screener, screening out, compensation, and everything. This worked for the baseline study when we had the broadest target participant, allowing us to build a mini recruiting database, although dwindled as we defined our proto personas. I found myself texting close friends frantically as always, wondering🤔, if a recruiting budget would be possible in future iterations of the class given the number of studies and commitment magnitude of each. Our topic of kicking the online shopping habit, specifically for people who are motivated to do so, was more niche than expected.

Engrossing synthesis

Despite recruiting bumps, I was deeply engaged in the synthesis for each study. Writing sticky notes, chunking, diagramming, and discussion were all constants. We really gave ourselves the time to sink into the data, drawing connections across participants both within and across studies. We would organize our results visually in models that didn’t necessarily fit the assignments, but served as crucial intermediaries for our understanding.

Turning back time

With a magic wand, I would have wanted to conduct an additional assumption test that directly assessed whether the “buddy” / “mascot” model would increase the likelihood that a participant would opt for an alternative activity. This was a core component of our branding and identity, as the user’s confidante and cheerleader.

Graphic design boot camp

A personal goal I had going into the quarter was to develop my graphic design skills, mostly improving sketching, vector drawings, and component layout. There were many moments in 247B where I could learn and exercise these skills and tools, from casually sketchnoting lectures to Deb Aoki’s inspiring visit, or messing around with the Figma pen tool to gluing magazine scraps together. Amidst the design playground that was Lathrop 190, I took away two major lessons: take risky risks and ask for feedback.

Figure 1 – Lecture sketchnotes

Creative bungee jump

My proudest graphical moments came when I had a general map of core components, but allowed myself to take a leap of faith with say, hues that I wouldn’t normally reach for or spend unboxed hours figuring out vectors and animations.

Figure 2 – Mood board and individual style tile

Learning how to teammate

And after making these jumps, I could count on my team to be honest with me when things just didn’t work, pulling me out of my internal bias. Outside of graphic design, our team set an early norm that we would build in at least one to two feedback rounds per deliverable. The team dynamic sometimes resembled that of colleagues in a work environment, as we worked towards making this experience more than just a school project. Collaborating this way taught me a lot—it was hard at times; there were disagreements, three-hour meetings, and performance anxieties. But I genuinely feel stronger and more motivated to grow than ever because of it.

Ruminations

In the back of my mind, I was always concerned about a few underpinnings of Shift, namely, user privacy and addiction redirection.

Inter-app monitoring

As designed, Shift push notifies a user when they start online shopping in another app, for example, Instagram Shop or Safari. In order to intercept users, Shift needs to access usage data on other apps, which A) is probably not feasible to get that granularity and B) raises significant privacy concerns. Creating a system that reaches into other aspects of life via spying on tech interactions already happens and I personally allow it on my social apps as a user, but I feel less comfortable designing into this space 😣.

Creating new addictions

Another flag to raise is that Shift recommends additional activities, like starting a new Netflix show, which could be equally addicting. We anticipated this pre-mortem, but specifically scoped our target user to be individuals who want to reduce online spending. In its current state, Shift is designed to solve that isolated issue, but has potential for re-routing addiction as a byproduct.

Looking ahead

As I wrap up my coterm and five-year run at Stanford, I hope to use this class as an example for the experiences I craft in my final spring quarter. Learning how to navigate personal expectations, team dynamics, non-linear design, as well as grasping new tools and techniques, are all invaluable takeaways from 247B that I’ll hold closely moving forward.

And lastly, I want to reiterate how skilled this class was at weaving ethics discussions in to each step of the design process. The question of “should we be building this?” is a repeated theme I’ve encountered across classes, but 247B took it to the next level by examining this question from multiple angles, from predicting worse-case outcomes to challenges with boxing user personas, or layout accessibility to privacy lapses in monetization efforts. Instead of ethics being an afterthought or a framework to edit already finished work, I want to bring with me this perspective of design and ethics working in tandem beyond my time at Stanford.