week 4 - prototyping

Schedule

Monday

Prototyping Lecture

Tuesday

Created additional storyboards to define the scenarios of use that we want our design to support.

Scenario Storyboards included
- Going Camping
- Moving Out of a House
- Finding a Gas Station

Wednesday

Attended class and went over our goals and milestones for the week. Michael presented on Skylark prototyping process.

Outlined possible prototypes and research questions we need answered

Thursday

Met with professors to update them on our progress.
Met with our sponsor (Andy Cargile, Smart Technology) for project feedback.

We explained to Andy that the types of altruistic behaviors that we wanted to support. Having research other location based communications applications like YikYak, we noticed that anonymity seemed to have a correlation with negative social behavior. Andy suggested that we research sociology trust frameworks to guide our designs.

One particularly interesting research paper we found after the conversation with our sponsor proposed risk as being the mirror image of trust. In other words, perceiving high risk in an interaction with a person is equivalent to low trust in the person.

Friday

Created our first paper prototype (camping trip).
Pilot tested the paper prototype with 4 people from Startup Hall.

Sat/Sun

Discussed different interaction models - group formation, information gathering

This weeks goal

To create a prototyping plan and start building the different prototyping activities. In doing this, we hope to understand the behavior and mindset of people, both in a group, and as an individual seeking information.

Prototype 1 - Supply & Collaboration

Research Question

How can we improve resource and information sharing within a local community?

Design Hypothesis

We expect that online collaborative tools can improve resources and information sharing that currently occurs more organically.

Activity Summary + Protocol

We planned a group-based planning and supply activity. A group of 4-6 people will be asked to coordinate a camping trip. In the pilot version of the activity, the group was asked to complete this task with one member acting as the group leader. The leader was given a short checklist and asked to document the planning process using pen and paper.

-Introduce all group members, frame the purpose of the activity and the common goal.
-Provide prompts to facilitate group discussion and group consensus.
-Ask participants to plan their camping trip via provided tools.
-De-brief with group about the overall experience.

The activity will be documented naturally, as the participants will create a group chat and document. At the end of the activity, key points from the de-brief will be recorded with notes.

Participant Observation

Moving forward

-Make corrections to our prototype protocols from our feedback and observations from our pilots
-Start recruiting and running our prototyping activities
-Develop additional prototyping activities for other research questions we have

Over the next week, we’ll create additional prototypes to understand different aspects of the solution space. The two prototypes we are targeting are around privacy and how groups form. The findings from these three should be an appropriate starting point for our high fidelity mock-up.