This, week our team wanted to test three central assumptions in the design of our behavior changing solutions?
- Only one gratitude exercise per day is optimal for establishing habits
- Providing a recap of one’s weekly reflections would incentivize the user to continue using the app and establish their habit.
- Users will return to the app and reflect on their experience after doing a “dare” during their day.
Assumption Testing Cards:
Recruitees:
Julia (Test 1 and 2): Julia was chosen because she is currently very occupied with coursework and struggles to prioritize personal time: we were interested to see if introducing the opportunity for mindfulness would be beneficial, overwhelming, or somewhere in between. Moreover, she had participated in the previous intervention study and would be able to compare and contrast her experiences with each design.
Ellena (Test 1 and 2): Was chosen because she has a strong want to be more mindful in her life. She has a lot on her plate looking towards what she might do after she graduates from UC Berkeley in May. She tries to meditate often and finds that the rest of her day is tightly correlated to her actually being able to meditate and finds herself overwhelmed later in the day if she can’t.
Raina (Test 1 and 2): Raina was chosen as a participant in our mindfulness design study as she fits our focused role of a time-crunched graduate student. She has a healthy relationship with practicing gratitude in her life but could always use more opportunities to fit reflection into her day.
Manan (Test 1 and 2): Manan was chosen as a prime candidate of our behavior testing as he fits the model of an overly-stressed new-grad-turned-young-professional very well. Between working 60 to 70 hours a week and trying to maintain a healthy relationship with mind and body, he rarely has the time to sit down and reflect on all that occurs around him.
Caroline (Test 3): Was chosen because she has tried other mindfulness activities but hasn’t established them into habits. Enjoys going on walks and picking flowers for people. Used to scrapbook in high school but doesn’t have time in college to be consistent.
Dev (Test 3): Was chosen because of chaotic class/work schedule and frequent mental breakdowns. Has said that she feels like she’s overbooked and cant find things to enjoy. Frequent receiver of flowers from Caroline. Struggles to articulate her feelings.
Assumption Test 1: Less is More
Test Design:
In this experiment, we wanted to test whether one prompt (truth or dare) would be enough for a user to feel a sense of completion in their day. This assumption was based on the fact that our target users are people with busy schedules (such as college students). Although they are more than capable of completing an endless stream of prompts, this audience benefits from having exercises that they can do in a small chunk of time during their day. The limit of one exercise per day allows the user to feel like they have accomplished something in their day, maintaining a sensation of productivity without overwhelming the user.
To test this assumption, we recruited __ participants from our previous studies. We followed a similar structure to the intervention study, in which we would text our participants a truth or dare prompt in the morning, providing reminders for reflections at their desired times. However, after a user completed their truth/dare reflection for the day, we would offer the option to complete another truth/dare exercise. In this test, we are simply seeing whether users are inclined to complete more than one truth/dare prompt when given the opportunity. At the end of the assumption test, we ask the participants if their self-satisfaction was associated with the number of truth/dare prompts that they completed each day.
Testing Results:
We found that most people only completed a single prompt per day. For the users who completed more than one prompt in a given day, it was most common to do multiple truth prompts, rather than multiple dare prompts. During our post-test interviews, we found that the offering of multiple prompts each day led to more confusion than satisfaction. One particpated reported that there were unclear expectations in a given day when multiple prompts were offered. With just a single prompt, a user knew exactly when they had completed their task for the day and would have something to look forward to the following day. However, the offering of mutliple prompts each day deincentivized the user to come back the next day, as their was no suspenseful waiting period for the following prompt. We also found that varying the truth prompts made users more engaged with those reflections. One user reported feeling as if she had more to talk about because of the variation, preventing the feeling of writer’s block.
From our testing, we believe our assumption to be true. Having a single provides the user with consistency that aligns with their schedule. Having a single prompt avoid overwhelming the user and gives them something to look forward to each day, similar to Wordle.
Assumption Test 2: Recaps are Rewarding
Testing Design:
In our intended design, we wish to provide users with a weekly reflection recap. The first purpose behind this function is to motivate users to reflect on their past reflections more frequently. The second purpose of this is to help motivate users to continue using the app as they try to establish their habits. We believe that seeing these weekly recaps will help users see their progress and see help them remember more things that that they are greatful for. However, this functionality falls under the assumption that users would even want to see their weekly recap or enjoy seeing their past reflections in the first place.
To test this assumption, we created a weekly recap of our users reflections from the intervention study. We sent this at the beginning of the week in a google doc where we could track if a user visited the link and viewed it. If a user clicked on the link, we would ask about their experience with the recap and how it affected their behavior in the first assumption testing.
Presented here is an example recap.
Testing Results:
We found that all of the users in this assumption test viewed their weekly recaps. Two of our users did not need to be prompted about their experience with the recaps, they were very excited to provide feedback. All of our users enjoyed viewing the recaps and felt that they made them more motivated to continue with the truth/dare prompts. We did receive some feedback that the design of the prompt would make them more engaging and more motivating. Overall the reception was very positive, proving our assumption to be correct.
Assumption Test 3: Pour Your Heart Out
Testing Design:
Our final assumption test was our most pivotal. In the flow of our intervention study, it became clear that the truth prompts provide an instantaneous way for users to complete the truth/dare prompt for a given day. However, after receiving a dare prompt, we assumed the user would still want to return to the app to complete the reflection.
In order to test this assumption, we recruited three new participants who wanted to engage in mindfulness activities. We provided these participants with a daily “dare” prompt in the morning and text them for a reflection at the end of the day. We made it clear that these reflections were completely optional. We measured our assumption based on whether we received a prompt in a given day. If we received a response, our assumption is true. If not, then our assumption is false.
Testing Results:
In this experiment, we found mixed result. Our participants responded to the reflection forms most days. however, we found variations in the quality of the reflection based on how the question was asked. If we asked the user about their experience in a robotic way, reflections tended to be short. If we asked in a more human way that was excited to hear about their experience, then they would simply talk about their experience (one even sent voice memos because her stories were long). From here, we learned that the reflection does represent a pivotal point for a user in determining the completion of their task. When a user did not repsond, they felt as if they didn’t actually have a chance to think about the gratitude exercise. Most importantly, we learned the importance of tone within our notifications.
Learning Outcome Cards:
