Author Archives: Scott Henry

Blogpost #6 – Experiment Abstract and Materials

Blog Update #6a – Pilot Test:

In our first pilot, we found improvements to our protocol and medium-fidelity prototype. We discovered the running time per participant was only half an hour, which eased recruitment. Verbal instructions were clear. The participant did not require additional help in the onboarding experience. However, the participant relied heavily on the prompts we provided, and felt they had to use those words specifically, rather than being able to use variations. We realized Facebook timestamps were not specific enough for conversation length, and used a stopwatch after the first conversation. We established that the webcam was not intrusive, and participants forgot about it.

For the second pilot, we made minor changes to the instructions in the onboarding experience. We added labels to the social burnout images and the friends page to facilitate user understanding of the images. We renamed the Social Burnout page after receiving feedback that it was abrupt. We finessed the experimenter roles on our end. The process was more smooth in the second pilot, and the team has a better understanding of their roles and responsibilities. We had forgotten to update the screenshots in the survey for Pilot 2, so updated them before commencing the experiment.

Blog Update #6b – Experiment Abstract:

We introduce a chatbot to Facebook Messenger, called Social Butterfly (SB), that improves socializing by reducing planning time in online chats. SB is designed to assist event planning by parsing chat prompts from conversations, and making informed suggestions based on user interests and schedules. We were particularly interested in the benefits of SB for different personality types (introvert and extrovert). To demonstrate the benefit of SB we conducted one experiment with a total of 10 users to show: (1) that SB improved performance in planning one-on-one events, (2) that trends emerged that SB can broadly improve performance in a variety of event-planning scenarios and (3) that introverts may be more satisfied using SB. The trends observed with SB are encouraging, and suggest that with further research and refinement, a social-assistant chatbot could greatly improve socializing for both introverts and extroverts.

Blog Update #6c – Revised Supplementary Experiment Materials:

Blog Update #6c – Revised Supplementary Experiment Materials:

There were no changes required in terms of any documents such consent forms and call for participation. During our lab, we conducted a demo on our prototype and from the feedback we received, changes were made in our prototype and user satisfaction survey accordingly.

Some of the alterations added to our prototype were as follows:

  1. A back button was added to our onboarding experience screens. This was to ensure the fact that while adding their preferences, users can go back and forth between different pages to alter their preferences.
  2. For one of the onboarding experience screens, we decided to rename the title from “Social burnout” to “How much me-time”. The reason for this alteration was considered due to the fact that it was hard for the users to grasp the concept of social burnout. Additionally, on the same screen, captions were added to each image so the users can comprehend the meaning of each image.   
  3. Additionally, changed instructions on Social Butterfly prompts page (last screen in onboarding experience) to indicate that they are suggestions or a special set of Strings that will catched by the bot in order to plan an event within that chat.  
  4. Lastly, the fake profiles created for the experiments were given names that creates a scenario where actual people are interacting since we did not have profile pictures set up for each individual taking part in a conversation with the participant.

Our user satisfaction survey conducted consisted of some screens from onboarding experience, were also according to the changes mentioned above.

 

Blogpost #5 – Medium-Fi Prototype

#5a – Rationale of Medium Fidelity Prototyping Approach

There are two components to our experiment design; one is the onboarding experience where we gather the users’ preferences about their interests and friends, and the other is the SocialButterfly chatbot. To gather the users’ preferences, we decided that a website was more effective and user-friendly than an app, as after setting the initial preferences, the user would not frequently go back to edit them. Though the onboarding experience is not the primary focus of our experiment, it is an integral part of how the chatbot works, as it provides the necessary information for the chatbot to help plan events more efficiently.

The onboarding experience is mostly implemented horizontally to allow the user to experience creating a complete profile. The Facebook login, the search-and-select-friend functionality, and the ability to link to a calendar, are specifically Wizard of Oz’d,because while they are clickable, their functionality is faked behind the scenes since we are not evaluating those functions. Logging in through Facebook and connecting to one’s calendar are reduced to one-step processes by removing the authorization functionality provided by Facebook or Google (for Google Calendars) to connect to one’s account. As friends are imported from Facebook, we created friend profiles. The selection of ‘best friends’ is still up to the user. The way the user indicates their interests and their social burnout levels are prototyped more thoroughly. We prototyped the burnout levels sliders because it is a secondary experiment goal to evaluate if users are able to understand the burnout concept. The combination of horizontal and vertical implementation of should sufficiently convince the subject that the system is mostly implemented. Axure provided the ease for having mouse events on elements like selecting interests, friends, the calendar the user wanted to link to. The dynamic panels allow us to easily make state changes to single elements without doing much redundant work. It also allows us to prototype a web page easily, which in turn, also provides a more realistic onboarding experience for the users.

The main experiment goals focus on evaluating the usefulness of the chatbot, but it in order to test that, it didn’t make sense to create the chatbot and integrate it into Facebook Messenger without doing a preliminary test of its usefulness. Instead, by naming one of the evaluators SocialButterfly, and participating in a group chat, responding to keywords and command prompts during a conversation, and Wizard-of-Ozing the chatbot, we can evaluate our experiment goals. The evaluator will change his or her profile picture to the SocialButterfly logo and only respond to the given commands using the set answers to emulate the chatbot effectively.

Blog Update #5b – Prototype Demonstrations

We decided to Wizard-of-Oz the chat bot by renaming one of us to SocialButterfly and responding using just the preset responses that we had set up. This allowed us to evaluate our experiment goals without the additional work of re-creating Facebook Messenger which had an integrated chat bot. This method allows us to show our participants how the chat bot would communicate with them and gives the participants a chance to provide some insight on the feasibility and usefulness of the bot.

 

Below, we wanted to highlight the list of the preset commands and answers that SocialButterfly is limited to for our prototype.

Prompt the Butterfly to Suggest a time and event

  • “Meet up”
  • “Hang out”
  • “Do something”
  • “Are you free”
  • “Catch up”
  • “I miss you”

Prompt the Butterfly to Suggest an Alternate Time

  • “I can’t do <day of week>”
  • “I’m not free”

Prompt the Butterfly to Suggest an Alternate Event

  • “I don’t want to do …”
  • “I’m not interested”

Prompt the Butterfly that You’re Attending an Event

  • “Sure”
  • “I can go”
  • “Yes”
  • “Going”
  • “I’m down”

Response: Time and Event Individual

“Hey there! I noticed you guys want to meet up. You’re both free on <day of week>, and you both like <interest>. What about <this event>? Does that work?”

Response: Time and Event Group

“Hey everyone! I noticed you guys want to meet up. You’re all free on <day of week>, and your highest common interest is <interest>. What about <this event>? Does that work?”

Response: Time

“Hmmm… Looks like <proposed day of week> doesn’t work. What about <alternate day of week>?”

Response: Event

“Hmmm… Looks like not everyone likes <proposed event>. What about <alternate event with next common interest>?”

Response: Added to Cal

“Awesome! I added that event to your calendar(s).”Video Demo

The video below summarizes the major design decisions taken when creating the medium-fidelity prototype and addresses the reasons behind them according to technological limitations and human abilities.

Video Demo

Blogpost #4 – Experiment Design

Experiment Goals

    1. Which interface encourages users to meet face-to-face more efficiently?
    2. Which interface allows users to settle on a common interest and plan an event more efficiently?
    3. Are users more satisfied with Facebook Messenger with the addition of Social Butterfly?

Participants

10 participants will be recruited through convenience sampling of the research team’s network. Participants will be evenly split between those who self-identify as an introvert and those who self-identify as an extrovert. Due to the sampling methodology, it is anticipated that participants will be aged 20-25, currently studying in at a postsecondary institution. This sample is somewhat representative of the target population which is young adults.

Conditions

Two different interfaces will be examined during the course of the experiment, both use Facebook Messenger as the base interface with additional content to change the interface.

Facebook Messenger

Facebook Messenger is a simple chat based interface. It features a list of recent conversations on the left panel, the ongoing message history of the selected chat on the middle panel and information about the current conversation on the right panel. The conversations on this interface will be without any chatbots.

Social Butterfly

Social Butterfly describes an interface of which Facebook Messenger is the base with the addition of a chatbot in all conversations. The chatbot(research team member) will respond to participant entered commands and activate if specific keywords are used during a conversation. The chatbot will recommend events that match all conversation member preferences. This will be triangulated through using the basic and friend profiles provided to the participant and research team respectively.

 

Tasks

Two, tasks with their order counterbalanced will be completed by the user throughout the experiment. Participants will be given a profile listing their best friends, interests and preferred event types. The pairings of interface and sets of friends will be counterbalanced. Each friend group will have unique interests and constraints. The research team will be operating the other Facebook accounts in the conversation to simulate a discussion. Each Facebook account in the conversations will be assigned a friend profile which details their availability, interests and preferred events. Overall there are four possible combinations of task order and interface order that the participants may get.

Task1: Group Chat

The prompt provided to the participants will be “Use this interface to plan a group outing that satisfies everyone in the current conversation.” The participants goal will be to set up an event within the next week that meets the three other group members contraints.

Task2: One-on-one Chat

The prompt provided to the participants will be “Use this interface to plan a one-on-one outing with your friend in this conversation.” The participants goal will be to set up an event within the next week that meets their friends constraints.  

Design

2 x 2 x 2 mixed factorial design, more specifically 2 levels of social classification (Introvert and Extrovert, between subjects) x 2 interfaces (Facebook Messenger and Social Butterfly, within subjects) x 2 tasks (Group chat and individual, within subject)

Procedure

The following details the basic procedure of a participant in our experiment. It should be noted that the order of tasks and interfaces will vary depending on the participant because we will be counterbalancing interface type and task order.

  1. A preliminary demographic survey will be provided to the participant.
  2. Participants will be given 3 minutes to read a basic profile and task description.
  3. Participants will be presented with the SocialButterfly interface. They will be directed to fill out the onboarding flow to record the preferences which have been outlined in the profile provided.
  4. Participants will then commence Task1 and Task2 on the SocialButterfly interface.
  5. A followup survey on the SocialButterfly interface will be provided to collect feedback on the user’s satisfaction levels. This will be followed by a 3 minute break.
  6. Participants will be given 3 minutes to read a basic profile and task description.
  7. Participants will be presented with the Facebook Messenger interface.
  8. Participants will then commence Task1 and Task2 on the SocialButterfly interface.
  9. A followup survey on the Facebook Messenger will be provided to collect feedback on the user’s satisfaction levels.
  10. The participant will fill out a closing survey to gather their preference on the interface and their overall satisfaction with both Facebook Messenger and SocialButterfly.

Apparatus

The experiment will take place in various project rooms in ICICIS. The participant will be presented with each interface on a provided laptop with the basic profile and task prompts on a separate piece of paper for their reference.

Independant and Dependant Variables

The dependent variables of the experiment are as follows:

  • Time to Completion – How long from when the participant beings the conversation measured until all conversation members agree on a specified event plan. A research team member will record start/stop times in a spreadsheet.
  • Error – Recorded each time an individual in a conversation declines the proposed event. The chat log of the conversation will be reviewed to identify any errors which will be segmented by task and interface type.
  • User Satisfaction – Recorded based on a likert scale (converted to continuous data) that seeks to understand their satisfaction with each interface after completing both tasks. The participant will fill out their preferences in the Interface surveys following the completion of both tasks.

The independent variable of the experiment are as follows:

  • Social classification (Introvert and Extrovert, between subjects)
  • Interfaces (Facebook Messenger and Social Butterfly, within subjects)
  • Task Type (Group chat and individual, within subject)

We will be controlling for the various variables:

  • Order of Tasks – The order that each participant completes the assigned tasks will be counterbalanced.
  • Order of Interfaces – The order that each participant sees each interface will be counterbalanced.

Hypotheses

Efficiency

  • H1: Participants who use Social Butterfly for Task 2 will be faster and have fewer errors.
    Null: Participants who use Social Butterfly for Task 2 will perform the same as users on Facebook Messenger.
  • H2: Participants who use Social Butterfly for Task 1 will be faster and have fewer errors.
    Null: Participants who use Social Butterfly for Task 1 will perform the same as users on Facebook Messenger.

Participant Satisfaction

  • H3: Introverts will be more satisfied with Social Butterfly than Facebook Messenger.
    Null: Introverts will demonstrate no difference in satisfaction between Social Butterfly and Facebook Messenger.
  • H4: Extroverts will be no less satisfied with Social Butterfly than Facebook Messenger.
    Null: Extroverts will be less satisfied with Social Butterfly than Facebook Messenger.

Statistical Analysis

An Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) will be used to the test the difference in means between time, error rate and satisfaction level. Ordering of interfaces and tasks will also be considered as a potential confounding factor.

Limitations

Various limitations exist due to the limited resources and small scope of this experiment. The group conversation scenarios are very forced, unnatural and thus, not very representative of typical interactions. Due to using Facebook Messenger, the research team has no way to measure conversation variability which could prove to be a valuable variable in the future. The experiment only considers one possible alternative to Social Butterfly, Facebook Messenger, whereas other interview participants noted their use of WhatsApp and WeChat. Considering that the participants don’t end up going to the event and rating it, it is hard to fully visualize the impact of having an event that meets all conversation member constraints. The scope of this experiment does not permit exploring social burnout, but the research team suggests future research should be conducted to develop potential evaluation methods.

Supplemental Experiment Materials

 

Blogpost #3 – Prototype, Walkthrough & Experiment Goals

Blog Update #3a – Further Updated Task Examples:

Erika – The extrovert who just wants to hangout

Erika wants to go out to karaoke on a Wednesday. She starts a group chat with 15 of her friends, inviting them to go out. Erika receives numerous responses within the next few hours. 4 of her friends cite tiredness and decline. 2 of her friends express possible (non-committal) interest. The remaining 4 express definite interest. The remaining 5 do not respond. Erika stays in contact with the 4 definites to finalize a plan. Erika drives the plan, suggesting an exact time to meet and get a table that they should all arrive. Erika promises to keep the 2 maybes posted. Erika arrives at karaoke on time. 2 of the definite friends arrive shortly after. Erika lets the maybes know that they are there in case they want to join. Only one responds, and says they might be able to go later. One more of the definites arrives. After several hours, most of the group is tired and wants to leave. Erika doesn’t want to go yet, so messages several friends to see what else is going on. She goes and meets some other friends at a bar for drinks until late, and then goes home.

Taylor – Social burnout, social obligation, and importance of mutual friends

Taylor is planning to go out for his friend Jason’s birthday on Tuesday. Taylor only knows one other person going. He notices an hour before the event that his other friend is no longer attending. While Jason’s friends are very welcoming, Taylor is uncomfortable around strangers, and knows Jason will need to be social for everyone else. Out of obligation because it is a birthday, Taylor makes himself go, but finds himself quickly exhausted. Taylor makes an early exit after 1 hour. He tells Jason he is leaving, and Jason is hurt that he is leaving so early. Taylor has plans with his and Jason’s mutual friends on Wednesday, but he is socially exhausted from Tuesday night. He messages Jason and their friends, and suggests they go rock climbing, which is a common activity they all enjoyed. Jason is annoyed from the previous night and tells him they are sticking to the plan. Taylor goes, but is tired and his friends notice that he isn’t himself. The next day, Taylor messages Jason and tells him he is sorry, and explains that he is burned out from meeting so many new people. He tells Jason that in the future he will leave more time around events that are tiring to him, and make sure he can be there for the important ones. Jason understands and promises to try not to overburden him. Taylor suggests making plans the following week to make up for his absence.

Alexa – Importance of common tasks and face to face interaction

Alexa is an introverted college student. She finds it difficult to maintain her social relationships, especially when she gets busy, but it is important to her to keep her friends in her life and not let them feel abandoned. She wants to see her friends, because she takes joy in them, but finds it exhausting to reach out and make time, or to have many social events in close proximity. Alexa realizes she has not made plans with friends for over a month, and misses them. Though she normally waits until her friends reach out to her first, she reaches out to her friend Laura, and asks how she is. Alexa says they should do something soon. They go back and forth, and Alexa becomes annoyed at messaging and puts her phone aside for the evening. She tracks Laura down after class two days later to say hello. Alexa is happier talking to Laura face to face because it feels more genuine. The two make plans to meetup make Origami and watch movies. Alexa enjoys the common ground and it isn’t a lot of pressure. Their plans are for Friday night. Alexa stays in Monday through Thursday so she won’t be tired. When Friday arrives, Alexa brings her Origami paper and goes to Laura’s to watch movies. After one movie, Alexa is tired and goes home.

Blog Update #3b – Low-Fidelity Prototype(s) Demonstration:

Low-Fi Approach #1

Our low-fi prototype went through two main iterations. The first one was a more complete package, but included some features that are duplicated from traditional messaging and calendar apps.

Other features of the first low-fi prototype include:

  • A suggestions page to suggest events if they feel like going out, but not taking on the associated overhead (pictured, left).
  • Ability to create events
  • Ability to rank interests to compare with friends

Low-Fi Approach #2

The second prototype was based on having initial overhead to capture the important aspects needed in a successful design: mutual friend requirements, common/shared interests, and a tentative way to measure burnout and inform the user.

This video clip demonstrates how the categories in the onboarding experience reflect Alexa’s experience (notice that many of the categories also reflect Taylor’s experience):

The rest of the second approach is a chat assistant. We decided to prototype this approach in order to avoid trying to create a replacement for Facebook Messenger or Google Calendar (which already have market share). The chat assistant (your Social Butterfly) will listen for specific commands, and be available in group chats, as well as in a one-on-one chat with the Social Butterfly to update preferences set in the onboarding experience.

In this image, the Social Butterfly intercedes in a chat based on the command “Let’s Meet Up”, and suggests an activity and a day to do something. This is motivated by the overwhelming attachment to face-to-face interaction that we found from our field study.

Note that this helps Alexa in her desire to do something that is familiar to her (in this case origami), and limits the back and forth on an online platform that did not appeal to her, and made her tired.

 

 

This image represents a user’s chat with Social Butterfly. The commands demonstrated are “I need more me time” (which will allow more time to recover from social events), and “What does my week look like”, which will yield a calendar image from the events and “me time” the app knows about.

Note that this image allows someone like Taylor to update his preferences based on a surprisingly exhausting event (such as Jason’s birthday without his mutual friends).

Not pictured, the Social Butterfly also warns users if their mutual friends cancel, and suggests alternate options to make the event more appealing.

Blog Update #3c – Additional Information about Prototype(s):

We chose to support Alexa and Taylor’s task examples in our prototype. This is due to our experiment focus on supporting introverts in socializing. Many of the foci of our experiment have to do with overcoming problems that were embodied by our introvert task examples, so we chose to focus on prototyping those.

Our two prototyping approaches evolved from one another. Our initial design direction was Low-fi #1. However, we noticed many of the features were redundant when compared to Facebook Messenger, Google Calendar, etc. We did a walkthrough with the prototype to see if there were any relevant aspects that the users were required to understand. Our second prototype emerged as an alternative design direction that could be a complementary design to existing tools, and interfaces that users frequently regularly, rather than seeking to replace them. We ensured that all key aspects in the chosen task examples were covered in this prototype.

During interviews we found that all participants used Facebook Messenger for event planning, so we decided to integrate a chatbot into Messenger. To aid the process of coming to a decision faster when event planning  the onboarding experience takes into account various user preferences. The onboarding process will allow users to set event interests, choose friends that would motivate them to attend an event, and indicate the amount of social burnout they would feel after a specific type of event. Once the preferences are set by the user, the chatbot would be able to listen for key words during a conversation, or respond to text commands, and suggest a proposed event time/location/date that would appease all group members. A user will be able to chat and get notified by the chatbot one-on-one for an update of their burnout meter or schedule.

Blog Update #3d – Walkthrough Report:

We ran a cognitive walkthrough of the second prototype, asking the user to successfully plan a meeting with a friend using the chatbot interface. This required the user to create a profile using the onboarding experience, followed by a conversation with the chat assistant present to aid the planning. The overall walkthrough process was mostly smooth with some confusion about the terms used in the onboarding process when the user was asked to provide their preferences. The login screen for the onboarding experiment has good visibility, and the familiarity of the Facebook login allowed the participant to login without any confusion. The participant paused at the “Interests” section and needed explanation to continue. This could be due to the lack of information on paper prototype, or the naming of the section. Perhaps changing it to “event interests” or providing proper instructions would reduce the amount of confusion. The participant understood that low-key/high key was used to indicate group sizes, but was confused with the meaning of “me-time”. The participant hinted at the difference between group sizes and the proportion of those groups being mutual friends versus strangers. To address this, we could provide 2 sets of sliders; one looking at event size, and one looking at the amount of mutual friends. A description or definition briefly explaining “me-time” could also be provided. When describing this to the user, we used the term “social burnout,” which made things a lot clearer, so perhaps keeping that term would be beneficial as opposed to changing it to ‘me-time’. Providing an approximate number as example for the “burnout” level section may also help guide users to set a more accurate scale. The walkthrough for actually planning an event with a friend using the chat-bot went smoothly since user was familiar with the chat workflow as it was similar to Messenger. The pop-ups had clear instructions to allow user to select the appropriate options when scheduling events and finalizing the plans.  

The walkthrough covered the task example for Alexa by using the chatbot to try to minimize the amount messaging needed to arrange an event. Suggested events by the chatbot are based on the user and their friends’ interests, which they provided in their preferences, therefore reducing both parties’ efforts and back-and-forth conversations for figuring out when and where to meet. The walkthrough also briefly covers the task example for Taylor, who struggles with social burnout, as the onboarding experience allows user to set the burnout level for different event sizes so the chatbot can help user avoid social burnout.

Blog Update #3e – Proposed goals of experiment:

  1. Test whether or not the integration of a bot in Facebook Messenger would encourage users to meet face-to-face more efficiently
  2. Test whether or not the integration of a bot in Facebook Messenger would allow users to settle on a common interest and a plan events more efficiently.
  3. Test how well users understand the preference interface and measure user satisfaction qualitatively    

From our field study we found out that participants preferred having a face-to-face interactions over using facebook messenger. Our primary goal that we want to address is whether integration of a bot would lead to a quicker meeting between users from the initial conversation point. It will be measured in terms of how long it takes for the user to schedule a meeting, as well as how many errors and inconveniences the user has, via using a bot vs. not using a bot.         

Our second goal is subtly different from the first.  We are evaluating using the user-specified preferences  to make event suggestions. This is related to our first goal, but expands on it by necessitating a common interest is found as a specific “event”, rather than just any face to face meeting. It will be measured in the same way as goal 1.

Our third goal we want to address is regarding how well the user understands the interface, and each of the user preferences that are presented. This goal will be measured qualitatively based on whether or not user understand the bot integration, how preferences set by users helps bots in planning events for users and whether or not they are satisfied with the bot integration.

 

Blogpost #2 – Next Steps & Design Direction

Blog Update 2a:Next Steps*

The next steps of development will be to partake in generating low-fi and medium-fi prototypes while determining an appropriate experiment design to explore our conclusions further. Given limited time and resources, we will be focusing on two key learnings from our field study. Throughout interviews, all participants cited that familiarity plays an important role when factoring into their decision making process and levels of social exhaustion experienced. Given the role of familiarity there was an identified need to balance the types of events on priority, mutual friends attending and social exhaustion experienced. Additionally, users preferred face-to-face contact, so we should reflect that in limited time messaging online. While developing various machine learning components to recommend events or predict social exhaustion would be useful, this is beyond the scope of the course project.

Moving forward we plan to prototype strategies that could be used to address the high level learnings from our field study. We will explore different approaches of limiting conversation time to prompt action on the users part to schedule an event by suggesting an option that aligns with both users preferences. Given the need to categorize events, exploring ways to measure exhaustion and an event’s priority will be crucial. For example, when scheduling an event, it is important to know how challenging it is going to be so the user can make an informed decision. If they are unfamiliar with the event type, they may be more reluctant to go.

By exploring ways to categorize events, measure social exhaustion and prompt users to schedule, all while consolidating their messages and calendar we hope to address help introverts manage their social interactions more effectively.

*(300 word limit)

Blog Update 2b: Task Examples

Summary of Revisions:

  • The provided task example for Erika captured most of the key insights of the data: mutual friends, social burnout that extroverts don’t have, the introvert trying to meet face to face.
  • To make Erika’s example more meaningful we added a “group chat” component to capture the difference in comfort levels when interacting in such chats.
  • For Alexa we modified movie to a non-interactive, familiar outing, this is capture the reliance of introverts on shared experiences such as mutual hobbies.

Alexa – The introverted college student

Alexa is an introverted college student. She finds it difficult to maintain her social relationships, especially when she gets busy, but it is important to her to keep her friends in her life and not let them feel abandoned. She wants to see her friends, because she takes joy in them, but finds it exhausting to reach out and make time, or to have many social events in close proximity. Alexa realizes she has not made plans with friends for over a month, and misses them. Though she normally waits until her friends reach out to her first, she reaches out to her friend Laura, and asks how she is. Alexa says they should do something soon. When Laura suggests a day, Alexa writes the date and time down on her calendar so she can plan around it. When the day arrives, Alexa feels burned out and asks if they can do it another week instead. Alexa writes a post-it note reminder to reschedule with Laura. The next week, after seeing the post-it note every day and feeling guilty, Alexa reaches out to Laura again, and suggests they meetup make Origami and watch movies. Alexa enjoys the common ground and it isn’t a lot of pressure. They make plans for Friday night. Alexa stays in Monday through Thursday so she won’t be tired. When Friday arrives, Alexa brings her Origami paper and goes to Laura’s to watch movies. After one movie, Alexa is tired and goes home.

Taylor – Social burnout with strangers

Taylor goes out with his friend Jason’s friends on Tuesday. While Jason’s friends are very welcoming, Taylor is uncomfortable around strangers and begins to feel very exhausted after an hour. Taylor makes an early exit after 2 hours. He tells Jason he is leaving, and Jason is hurt that he is leaving so early. Taylor has plans with his and Jason’s mutual friends on Wednesday, but he is socially exhausted from Tuesday night. He messages Jason and tells him he is feeling burned out. Jason is annoyed and tells him he has to come. Taylor feels guilty, so forces himself to go out. However, he doesn’t have fun and leaves after an hour. The next day, Taylor messages Jason and tells him he is sorry, and explains that he is burned out from meeting so many new people. He tells Jason that in the future he will leave more time around events that are tiring to him. Jason understands and promises to try not to overburden him. Taylor appreciates his friend understanding.

Erika – The extrovert who just wants to hangout

Erika wants to go out to karaoke on a Wednesday. She starts a group chat with 15 of her friends, inviting them to go out. Erika receives numerous responses within the next few hours. 4 of her friends cite tiredness and decline. 2 of her friends express possible (non-committal) interest. The remaining 4 express definite interest. The remaining 5 do not respond. Erika stays in contact with the 4 definites to finalize a plan. Erika drives the plan, suggesting an exact time to meet and get a table that they should all arrive. Erika promises to keep the 2 maybes posted. Erika arrives at karaoke on time. 2 of the definite friends arrive shortly after. Erika lets the maybes know that they are there in case they want to join. Only one responds, and says they might be able to go later. One more of the definites arrives. After several hours, most of the group is tired and wants to leave. Erika doesn’t want to go yet, so messages several friends to see what else is going on. She goes and meets some other friends at a bar for drinks until late, and then goes home.

Blog Update 2c: Prioritized List of Requirements

Requirements: Absolutely Must Include
These requirements represent the most common themes (event familiarity, event exhaustion level, and focus on face-to-face participation) among participants. These are the biggest problems to solve in addressing introverts’ socializing problems (particularly when communicating with extroverts). Additionally, getting these requests will require more user testing and refinement than some of our “could include” requests.

  • Events are categorized according to familiarity level so users can make informed decisions of how the events will make them feel.
    • System includes a way to for users categorize and classify the type of social burnout experienced so they do not become overloaded.
    • System includes a method of mitigating group chat use, so that users can achieve face to face communication faster.

Requirements: Should Include
These requirements are also very prevalent among users, but were slightly less important than our “must include” requirements because they require less additional user testing (mutual friends and invitation filtering).

  • Mutual friends attending any event are very public.
  • Users have the ability to specify how much social burnout is caused by an event.
  • Users have the ability to specify filtering options for event invitations based on how appealing the invitation is (based on inviter).

Requirements: Could Include
This is less necessary because it was only mentioned by a couple participants, and it embodies a conflict about how users respond to event reminders, with some participants finding it helping, and others disliking the functionality.

  • System includes a way to prioritize event reminders to users.

Requirements:  Exclude
This is a great long term addition, but is currently out of scope and will not impair the core functionality.

  • Machine learning algorithms to hone event discussions and invitations to user preferences.

Users: Must Include
The system must support all users who want to be involved in event planning in order to be relevant.

  • Useable for anyone who wants to plan an event with their friends, regardless of WTC scale.

Users: Exclude
Since physically and mentally disabled users may have many other constraints on events and social activity, we are choosing not to support them at this time.

    • Users with severe physical or mental disabilities.

Blog Update 2d: Design Alternatives

Alternative #1: Unified Messaging Dashboard
Description: User messages are collected all in one place and categorized/filtered depending on the members of the conversation. Option to “selectively mute” each message: so can filter by only receiving messages from certain people, or only receiving message summaries. Option to pre-suggest an event based on the availability of members (to get to face-to-face time faster), or have a “message summary” feature that prompts users to send a message that summarizes what has been discussed. Option to pre-invite people to group chat, then open the group chat with pre-defined idea, so all the planning is done ahead of time. Essentially blocked group chats until ready.
Strengths

  • Addressing filtering group chats to get to face-to-face
  • Universal for introverts and extroverts
Weaknesses

  • Missing level of familiarity with group or event
  • Undefined definition of “burnout” or how to categorize that
Alternative #2: Weekly Planner
Description: An interface that imports all the invitations to the events across all the social media platforms and stores them in a calender based on priority of the event. Priority is identified using different colors. Priority of an is set by considering factors such as number of friends attending the event, familiarity of the event. Option to prioritize events based on social burnout. Option to choose colors based on high and low priority. Option to set a reminder about the events.
Strengths

  • Helps user make quick decision based on priority.
  • Helps introverts track the number of hours before social burnout.
Weaknesses

  • Hard to calculate social burnout for different individuals
Alternative #3: Extensive Event Preferences
Description: Regardless of the key interface (calendar or messages) this alternative explores having the user creating a curated list of common events maintained in app. Option to add the priority/preference level to the event, how socially exhausted it typically makes them feel and the type of event. These preferences could be used to provide suggestions to users who share similar preferences. A weekly “burnout” meter would be set by the user could be updated when new events are scheduled.
Strengths

  • Familiar types of events would be given preference, aligning with a key learning from our study.
  • Takes out the decision making, suggests events that both users would like to attend.
Weaknesses

  • Difficult to measure social burnout, how will users perceive it?
  • Users may not want to spend the time to add/update events on the list, therefore decreasing the value of it.

Sketches

Design [Alice]: Focus on a unified message dashboard where user can select to mute conversations, get a summary of the event and share said summary with a group of friends.

Design [Scott]: Focus on a curated list of events that the user is interested in with feedback to deal with the ‘burnout’ aspect of social interaction. A matching tool where users with similar event preferences is also proposed.

Design [Chavon]: Focus on group chat aspect that was the most used form of communication across both introverts and extroverts for event planning. Emphasis on rating mutual friends to determine how likely user would be to go to the event.

Design[Aayush]: Focus on a weekly calendar that lets user import all the event invitations and prioritize them based on factors such number of mutual friends attending the event and familiarity with the event.

Design [Anushka]: Focus on event based preferences and matching them to interests of the user. Relies on a lot of integration with user’s social media and texting and call logs to keep current modes of contact open to not be ‘just another social media app’.  

Blogpost #1 – Design Direction & Task Examples

Design Direction

We have kept most of the overarching direction but have clarified and added the points below:

  • Integration with sending messages, the messages to a customized contact list of friends that user inputs. Starts the conversation with something like “Hey, what are you doing next Tuesday?”
  • User can set distinct preferences of how many times they want to go out each week, maybe specify the length of time and what type of activity. That way the text message could be better informed. Such as suggesting to go see a movie versus going out for coffee.
  • The app could have a “check-in” feature with the user to record how burned out they felt after the interaction and to update their preferences. It could also “check-in” at the beginning of every week, in case other factors are impacting the current scheduled preferences and if the user is busy that week.
  • It could have a simple mobile interface, that potentially restricts changing the user’s preferences too often to avoid backing out of interactions. Haptic notifications could remind the user to fill in the “check-in” report.
  • The “check-in” report could be gathering and displayed to give the user an idea of when they feel most burnt out in the week. It could then suggest tailored strategies to alleviate the feeling.

Alexa – The introverted college student

Alexa is an introverted college student. She finds it difficult to maintain her social relationships, especially when she gets busy, but it is important to her to keep her friends in her life and not let them feel abandoned. She wants to see her friends, because she takes joy in them, but finds it exhausting to reach out and make time, or to have many social events in close proximity. Alexa realizes she has not made plans with friends for over a month, and misses them. Though she normally waits until her friends reach out to her first, she reaches out to her friend Laura, and asks how she is. Alexa says they should do something soon. When Laura suggests a day, Alexa writes the date and time down on her calendar so she can plan around it. When the day arrives, Alexa feels burned out and asks if they can do it another week instead. Alexa writes a post-it note reminder to reschedule with Laura. The next week, after seeing the post-it note every day and feeling guilty, Alexa reaches out to Laura again, and suggests they have movie night. They make plans for Friday night. Alexa stays in Monday through Thursday so she won’t be tired. When Friday arrives, Alexa goes to Laura’s to watch movies. After one movie, Alexa is tired and goes home.

Taylor – Social burnout with strangers

Taylor goes out with his friend Jason’s friends on Tuesday. While Jason’s friends are very welcoming, Taylor is uncomfortable around strangers and begins to feel very exhausted after an hour. Taylor makes an early exit after 2 hours. He tells Jason he is leaving, and Jason is hurt that he is leaving so early. Taylor has plans with his and Jason’s mutual friends on Wednesday, but he is socially exhausted from Tuesday night. He messages Jason and tells him he is feeling burned out. Jason is annoyed and tells him he has to come. Taylor feels guilty, so forces himself to go out. However, he doesn’t have fun and leaves after an hour. The next day, Taylor messages Jason and tells him he is sorry, and explains that he is burned out from meeting so many new people. He tells Jason that in the future he will leave more time around events that are tiring to him. Jason understands and promises to try not to overburden him. Taylor appreciates his friend understanding.

Erika – The extrovert who just wants to hangout

Erika wants to go out to karaoke on a Wednesday. She copies the same message to 15 of her friends, inviting them to go out. Erika receives 10 responses within the next 2 hours. 4 of her friends cite tiredness and decline. 2 of her friends express possible (non-committal) interest. The remaining 4 express definite interest. Erika stays in contact with the 4 definites to finalize a plan. Erika drives the plan, suggesting an exact time to meet and get a table that they should all arrive. Erika promises to keep the 2 maybes posted. Erika arrives at karaoke on time. 2 of the definite friends arrive shortly after. Erika lets the maybes know that they are there in case they want to join. Only one responds, and says they might be able to go later. One more of the definites arrives. After several hours, most of the group is tired and wants to leave. Erika doesn’t want to go yet, so messages several friends to see what else is going on. She goes and meets some other friends at a bar for drinks until late, and then goes home.