user-path/scenario #1

by | | 0 comments
I am working towards my first visual study by concreting my user-path/scenario. For this first moment, I am looking at Charly Dawson's introduction to the cognitive artifact (aptly named fb-minder). I am going to speculate on how Dawson learns about the artifact, is engaged to participate, and starts customizing the artifact towards her behavioral goals. I am also hoping to use this opportunity to teach her about persistence—informing her decision to change.

USER-PATH


SCENARIO
Charly Dawson is a 24 year old female college student who graduates with her Bachelor of Education this May. She has been an avid online social networker since 2005, but participates in Facebook the most. Charly finds time to visit Facebook everyday of the week, multiple times a day.

...

This Saturday morning Charly rolls out of bed and instantly gravitates to her desktop computer to look for any updates in her e-mail and Facebook accounts. When she logs onto Facebook 01 she notices a new feature called fb-minder being announced on the homepage. Curious, Charly clicks on 02 the link to find out more. Seeing no harm, Charly 03 activates fb-minder to run an analysis on her data. Before it starts, 04 Charly is asked to answer a few provoking questions to personalize her analysis, which heightens her anticipation as she waits for the results. Charly stares at the 05dynamic visual indicator of fb-minder's progress, which gives her insight into which information is being accessed; she can see which touch-points the data is coming from, and how much is stored there. Charly is shocked to see six years of social interactions strategically compiled right before her eyes.

When 06 the information has finally loaded, Charly is excited about the screen that drops down to overlay the interface, clearly activating fb-minder. 07 The icons and visuals that compose her new environment are enticing, and she instantly accesses her 08 aggregated information to 09 explore what fb-minder has to offer. She notices 10 the screen and information below adapt and change as she clicks through her data.

Charly can clearly see from the information on the page that 11 fb-minder is ready to help her in a variety of ways. As she comes across an embarrassing old status, 12 Charly asks fb-minder to let her know how many times she has put out a status like this, and to alert her if she ever does so again. 13 Fb-minder begins to clarify what Charly's intentions are for tagging that piece of information.

...

designing for experience

by | | 0 comments
After my committee meeting yesterday, I feel confident that the foundation of my research is sturdy enough to start exploring visually. This move forward is slightly involuntary at the moment, because I know that there are still blind-spots in my data, but I am excited about working concretely.

This week, it is important that I create a scenario with my persona—to define parameters—and develop visual studies. The earlier I can get feedback, the earlier that I can make improvements, and the earlier I can start writing analytically. Phew.

The big question that my project has turned into is: How could a cognitive artifact engage participants of online social networks to think about behavioral changes they would want to make, assess what those personal goals are, and then encourage them to meet and sustain those goals?, which essentially means: How could my cognitive artifact take the participant through the Adkar model of change?

Accordingly, I chunked my big question into four different visual studies that I could do. For the purposes of this time frame, I am going to be speculating on Visual Study 02 and Visual Study 03, as seen below. There is something interesting about the point when the participant tells the artifact what their goals are, and then when the artifact helps them during a potential step away from that goal.





01. WHY
EMOTIONS AND NEEDS THAT NEED TO BE ADDRESSED


After pinpointing where my time will be spent until May, I wanted to take steps towards a user-centered design process. I went through the Adkar model of change and listed what the participant should ideally be feeling during each step in the process.



Awareness
+ curiosity
+ reassurance
+ guidance
+ secure

Desire
+ motivated
+ sure of myself
+ committed
+ relieved that there is help
+ necessity

Knowledge
+ safe
+ control
+ clarity
+ competent
+ prepared

Ability
+ don't feel self-conscious
+ I appreciate the coaching
+ I feel safe and guided, like my best interests are at heart
+ don't feel attacked
+ comfort in invisible bumper guard
+ still feel in control
+ truly not surprised because the artifact is doing exactly what I expect
+ encouraged that I will remember next time

Reinforcement
+ appreciate that it noticed
+ personal gratification
+ enjoy visual indicator of progress
+ anticipation and surprise
+ never gets old

Afterwards, I looked for themes in the moments that I will be speculating for: Awareness and Knowledge. The three themes I noticed were safety, control, and appeal. I wanted to understand what it meant, from a system's standpoint, to facilitate the participant's optimal experience.

Safety Safety*
+ secure information
+ unjudgemental
+ credibile
+ dependable
+ reassuring

Control Esteem*
+ easy
+ clarity
+ no surprises
+ ability to opt-out
+ full agency
+ full transparency
+ respectful
+ customizable

Appeal
+ visually attractive
+ functional
+ not obtrusive to SNS
+ tolerable interruptions
+ variety, anticipation
+ cater to curiosity
+ ease of use
+ fun

* Maslow's Hierarchy of Need



02. WHAT
WHAT YOU CAN DO WITH IT


+ have your social networking experience mediated
+ assess your goals
+ be alerted of behaviors that do not align with your goals
+ have your behaviors visualized
+ be helped to change behaviors
+ customize the artifact to fit your needs
+ have the meaning of your language input understood



03. HOW
HOW YOU INTERACT WITH IT


mediating
+ opt-out
+ direct hub
+ transitions to overlay

assessing
+ give concrete examples
+ see how the artifact understands my goals
+ manipulate dichotomized variables
+ refine

alerting
+ agency to listen or not
+ can be audio or visual
+ can either interrupt, be periphery, or temporal
+ I am aware that the artifact is activated
+ can control emphasis

visualizing
+ can control variables
+ can easily be read
+ can access deeper levels of information
+ can "wipe slate clean"

customizing
+ intuitive
+ quick
+ see change immediately
+ clarity
+ quickly enter/exit

understanding
+ guide
+ enter into a dialogue
+ debate meaning

system map/research poster

by | | 0 comments
This is what I developed to have a visual conversation with my committee members on my up-to-date research.

The poster can be seen in it's entirety on Scribd.

research_poster

the keystone to my thesis: motivation theory

by | | 0 comments
On the outside looking in many things probably seem obvious, but as you are immersed in a thesis project attachments grow to certain terminology that actually create tunnel vision. Up until now, I have been calling it "synergy". I knew that this was a key aspect to my cognitive artifact that would differentiate it from other attempts to mediate the social networking dilemma. While I was enlightened to the relationship that my cognitive artifact had to have with the participant, I never viewed it as an entry point into the architectural and interactive system map that I needed.

I had just finished taking a 3 day online workshop for CoAT (Certificate of Accomplishment in Teaching), and the topic was Motivational Teaching Strategies. We were instructed to read an article called, "Student Motivation: Putting Theory to Work in the Classroom" by Michael Wuthrich when I noticed parallels between what Wuthrich recommended in the classroom and what I wanted my cognitive artifact to do. His implementation of motivation theory in the classroom indicated the effectiveness of a synergistic relationship between the teacher and student. Therefore, if I approached the design of my cognitive artifact through the lens of the theory of motivation, synergy would be an implicit result.

The three objectives that Wuthrich describes for encouraging motivation are balance, goals, and clarity. I reflected on how those objectives aligned with my participant's actions, motivations, and goals. As I was mapping this out I became enlightened by my sub-questions. I had an instinct at the beginning of this project that the reason that participants had disillusions of a trusting environment while social networking was because they (1) didn't understand the susceptibility of the future self, (2) didn't see the patterns of their online behavior that was placing them at risk, and (3) they did not understand the permanence of their online information. When I discovered danah boyd's properties of networked publics and began aligning them into a matrix of researchable points, I noticed that my sub-questions directly correlated with those properties. I initially rationalized this as an objective that I had to meet (the sub-question) at a particular touchpoint (the property of networked publics), but once I stepped away from that matrix I did not know where to go with it. It made sense, but fell flat. What I came to realize—while mapping out how the theory of motivation could be the platform for my cognitive artifact—is that my sub-questions are not separate from the properties of networked publics, they are just a concrete rephrasing.

What my sub-questions really get at—and what ends up being the overall goal of my cognitive artifact—is the following long winded question that will make sense and find a proper rephrasing in the near-future:

How can I bring clarity to the properties of networked publics that contribute to the bad actions which impede the participant's goals, by incentivizing towards the participant's motivations in an effort to refreeze the participant's behaviors towards their explicit goal?

I promise this will make more sense later, but for now....a major breakthrough.

making connections

by | | 0 comments