Experiments Overview

In order to test the assumptions underlying our design, we designed the following two experiments:

Experiment Details

To test the assumption that users will be comfortable sharing their streaks and viewing their friends’ streaks, we asked participants to give us a list of names of friends that they are close to without disclosing the fact that they will be sharing streaks with them. We then listed these names on a possible wireframe we explored in the previous assignment:

We then observed their facial expressions/reactions and asked them how they felt when they saw the Leaderboard as well as how comfortable they thought they would be with sharing streaks. We repeated this procedure for 3 consecutive days.

For our second assumption test, we showed participants a UI card of a 5-day streak, 10-day streak, and 20-day streak for each of the 3 testing days:

We then asked participants how motivated they are to continue the streak.

Participants Recruited

Participant 1: Caroline

College student who struggles getting out of bed in the mornings and has high morning phone usage in bed. We recruited her through referrals from past participants. Caroline was tested on both assumptions.

Participant 2: Arthur

Arthur is interested in reducing his AM phone usage. He “struggles” to get up in the morning, in the sense that he spends a lot of time in bed, sets multiple alarms, and generally has a slow start. However, he does not yet see this as an issue because it does not interfere with the rest of his personal and professional responsibilities.

Participant 3: Lydia

Lydia is at a transition point in her life, between college and internship/work. She uses her phone in the morning and struggles with getting out of bed because she feels tired, making her a good candidate to test our assumptions on as a potential user. Lydia was tested on both assumptions.

Findings

Learning Cards from Caroline

Learning Cards from Arthur

Learning cards from Lydia

Synthesis

Our first experiment confirmed our hypothesis: users do indeed feel comfortable sharing their wake up times, day after day, with their friends. The experiment was extremely useful in getting more nuance to this statement. Based on experimental results, we will prioritize the following in our designs:

1. Allow users to toggle leaderboard visibility in case the competitive aspect of it gets overwhelming.
2. Openly nudge users to add their contacts and share streak information with them (individually).
3. Make the leaderboard more engaging by letting users react to friends’ streak count or daily progress.

Our second experiment had mixed results. We still believe that maintaining a streak is motivating, but we discovered some caveats to this statement that we’ll continue to design for:

1. A long streak is extremely motivating to maintain, while a short streak can be similarly discouraging. Providing additional encouragement to users in the early days of developing a streak can go a long way.
2. For some people, streaks will not be motivating. We need to ensure that the value our app provides does not hinge entirely on the streak.