Nick Hafer Final Reflection
Before this class I thought:
I loved talking to people and trying to figure out what they like and dislike. I didn’t like working with Figma much because I had several big projects using it in prior classes. I felt like I was ok at it but not the best. I think I’ll use Figma, lots of the interviewing techniques, sketching, and some of the ways to understand people’s day-to-day/emotions. I was surprised with the app that we came up with at the end of the class. I felt like usually the apps we come up with in this class are dumb and won’t work, or are a ripoff of another existing app, or both. I felt like our app didn’t already exist and it was cool to try something simple that I hadn’t seen before. A specific problem we had was trying to decide how much to try and do with the app: should it be social? Should it have journaling? What about prompts or accountability? Do we have onboarding and a tutorial? We decided against any user to user interaction on the app because it was simpler and so it wouldn’t be another “social media app”. It felt like we could get closer to this app’s full potential through figma if it wasn’t a social app (i.e. user testers didn’t feel like they needed a community or other user-generated content to feel satisfied with their experience). Also if there is no data between users, there are fewer privacy/security risks because you don’t have to move around as much data and you’re less vulnerable to attacks. Something unresolved for me is whether people would actually benefit from this app and use it. I feel like lots of the components people liked, and we had a narrative for the types of people who would use it, but I want to see that validated with real people using it. I think something I noticed is that everyone struggles with social anxiety, just in varying degrees and for different reasons. If we can recognize what each other’s weaknesses are we can help each other along to feel more comfortable. I feel like it doesn’t relate too much except for the whole HCi nature of it, given I’m doing my undergrad and coterm in HCI. 10 years from now I think I’ll remember a little about the app that we made, “moomin” our mascot, and hopefully the friends I made along the way. While I loved meeting new people and working with them through a group project, I really wish I was placed with my friends from the get go. I didn’t know them super well going into it but I had met them in 247A and wanted to get to know them better through group work. I felt like I got closer to them through seeing each other occasionally in class, but it was annoying that I got placed with people I didn’t know nor have anything in common with even though I listed a lot of people to be placed with and was flexible in my project interests. Sorry for the rant.
Suggestions for redesigning the project:
- Learn more about behavior change and specifically how to incorporate it into the app
- Use more of class as guided group work time with TAs walking around for feedback, less time lecturing, more time getting to know the other students in class
- I think the better you know your peers, the harsher you can critique their designs and the better you’ll both be after. And you leave the class with more friends 🙂
- The rolling deadlines are annoying honestly. I know they’re trying to be helpful but I would rather just have a deadline with maybe a flexible 24 hours grace period but just something to get it in. Also wish we had more rubrics/examples for milestones
- Sketch notes are the bane of my existence. I feel like video sketchnoting is great because I can watch and sketch at the same time, but reading and sketching doesn’t make any sense and is super slow for me. I don’t like it. I think assigning a paper to read and a separate drawing assignment would be better for both
Ethical considerations:
Our project uses a lot of internal reflection and intrinsic/extrinsic motivation to help people get better at socializing. Goal tracking is more extrinsic because you can see your progress on the calendar, but the reflection and the feeling you get from getting better is more intrinsic motivation. It’s more private since we don’t need to move data off the user’s device because it isn’t a social app. We nudge users along in their reflections by giving them helpful prompts to guide their thinking that they can keep refreshing until they find one they like. They can also completely ignore it and just write if they’d like. Our project promotes well being by helping users think introspectively about themselves to see how they can improve, without relying on external factors to find value. We tried to make the app very simple (few buttons/screens/interaction modes) and cheerful (moomin, yellow blobs, pictures on the prompts) so users would feel happy and excited to use our app. We wanted users to feel like we met them where they were in terms of goal setting and comfort with social interactions. If you want to get better at meeting new people, we can help. Just want to get better at reaching out to current friends? We can do that too.
Now after this class, I really like working in Figma, but I think my visual design skills could use some practice and improvement. Next time I’m in a class with a group I want to switch into, I’ll communicated to the teaching team earlier.
