CIID Final project report

Final Year Project: “Life is an act of balance”

going solo on the interaction designpilot year

CIID/DKDS Pilot Year 2009Advisor: Heather Martin

Eilidh

Eilidh Dickson, CIID/DKDS Pilot Year 2009

WHO IS EILIDH?

Eilidh is an energetic designer who has just graduated from the Interaction Design Pilot Year

run by Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design.

Prior to moving to Copenhagen Eilidh had a background in Product and Service Design, where

she placed a strong emphasis on user-centered design, the value of experience prototyping and

gaining inspiration and insights from real people and the culture they live in. She is also espe-

cially interested in how the use of emerging technologies can be applied to service

orientated systems and is passionate about using her skills as a designer to help address the

complex social and environmental problems that exist in our society.

On completion of her undergraduate degree she started exploring service design within the

public sector and became fascinated with the idea of designing with - rather than for – the user,

harnessing their creativity and knowledge to co-create ideas. She has worked on projects at the

London based service design agency “thinkpublic” and ran a service improvement project at

Wigan Renal Dialysis Unit in the UK.

While at University, Eilidh spent her summers in upstate New York working as a councilor for

the Freshair Fund. This experience allowed Eilidh to work with people from all over the world

each with their own valuable contribution to give. She likes to think it helped her grow in to the

person she is today.

When she does not have design on the mind, Eilidh loves playing hockey, snowboarding and

trying new sports that involve speed and a little danger!

Area of Expertise: Interaction Design, Service Design, Design Research, Scenarios & Storytelling


I AM INTERESTED IN AND INSPIRED BY

For my final project I am investigating on how you give people the ability to change elements

of their behaviour, in order for them to feel like they have a balanced life (subjective to the

individual). This is acheived by either allowing them to become more aware and learn about

their lifestyle habits, so they can make behavioural changes themselves, or by providing them

with tools or services that will actively help them make changes to their lifestyle.

I am especially interested to see if the emerging field of Personal Informatics can play a role in

helping people achieve this. If you could track intangible information about your day-to-day

actions would it trigger people to change their behaviour? I believe this new realm has huge

potential to redefine the way in which we interact with the physical world and gain insights

about our actions that make up our daily routines. I am excited that this greater awareness has

the potential to help us to adjust and moderate our behaviour in a number of positive ways.

Currently in our everyday lives we are commonly engulfed in specific contexts, which makes

it difficult to see the bigger picture. I am curious to understand if personal informatics can

enable people to pinpoint areas of their life that bring them personal fulfillment and support

them to experience this more often.

An area I see as an underlying thread throughout the project is addressing the issue of ‘time

poverty. People need to feel connected to people, to places they live, even the food they eat.

Traditionally this was much easier to achieve, as family all lived together, you knew all your

relatives and you knew that your food had come from your back garden. These connections

have been weakened because of a fast pace of life. The advance of new labour saving

technologies has allowed us to achieve more in a shorter space of time, yet instead of using

the time we save to ‘slow’ down, we are prone to making ourselves even busier.


PROCESS OVERVIEW

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RELATED PROJECTS AND REFERENCES

At the very beginning of my final project I collected some examples around personal

informatics and mapped them out, purely to understand what was already available. Below are

some of the more successful and interesting ideas I collected. They all focus on very specific

areas of an individuals life, that helps them to monitor and control their behaviour.

Nike +

Nike + is one of the most commercial and well discussed personal informatics tools currently

available. The system is made up of a small chip that you insert into your running shoes,

combined with a personal online service. The tangible UI which is imbedded in the sole of your

shoes communicates with your Apple iPod (which has pre-loaded software) feeding it with

information about your running to help you track your training regime. The system essentially

becomes a digital personal trainer. After you have completed your training session you can

plug your iPod into your computer and log into your personal Nike + account. What I think

has greatly contributed to the success of the Nike + system is that even though you have a

personal account you are part of a community. Your web based account allows you to provide

training tips and advice to other people and recommend good running routes. By being part of

community I really believe that it makes peoples actions feel more valued.


Wattson

The Wattson is a new kind of home appliance that is networked to a sensor attached to your

home’s electric meter box. Using colours and numbers, the Wattson device displays your

energy consumption and stores it on an online database making it easy for you to manage

your electricity usage and therefore save money. Not only is the system hugely informative

and practical… the device also looks great.

Google Power Meter

How much does it cost to leave your TV on all day? Which uses more power every

month — your dishwasher or your washing machine? Is your household more or less energy

efficient than similar homes in your neighborhood? These are some of the questions you will

be able to answer with a new prototype Google are experimenting with. Google Power Meter

helps you become more energy efficient and save money by pinpointing which devices are

using specific amounts of energy. You can even have friendly competition between your

friends and neighbours.

Last Fm

Is an online web tool that monitors your music habits by connecting to your itunes or other

media software. Every track you play will tell your Last.fm profile something about what you

like. It suggests friends based on your music tastes and recommends songs from their music

collections and yours too.


Dopplr

Dopplr is an online tool used to track your traveling habits. Dopplr members can share

personal and business travel plans privately with their networks, and exchange tips on places

to stay, eat and explore in cities around the world. Each year you get an annual review of all

your traveling, including when your travel plans have overlapped with friends and how much

impact you are having on the environment. What I really like about dopplr is the flexibility it

provides, you can update your profile on your personal profile, through your mobile or on other

social networking sites, and you can sync it all to you iCAL or outlook calendar on your

computer. It appears to be very seamless.

References

Johnny Holland, The Power of Personal Infomatics

http://johnnyholland.org/magazine/2009/04/the-power-of-personal-informatics/

Addressing the issue of ‘time poverty’

http://www.slowmovement.com/

Tools for knowing more about your body and mind

http://www.kk.org/quantifiedself/


Frog Design on Personal Informatics

http://designmind.frogdesign.com/blog/greener-gadgets-saving-the-worldone-meter-at-a-time.

html

Personal Informatics, Matt Jones & Tom Coates

http://www.slideshare.net/blackbeltjones/polite-pertinent-and-pretty-designing-for-the-new-

wave-of-personal-informatics-493301

Behaviour is our Medium, Robert Fabricant (Frog Design)

http://www.slideshare.net/frogdesign/interaction-design-is-not-about-computing-

technology?type=presentation

TED talk on meta data

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6t1JxElEVw&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2

Finbox%2F%3Fref%3Dmb&feature=player_embedded

Pervasive Design article

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009745.html

MY STARTING POINT

My starting point was a curiosity to investigate how design can be used to change people’s

behaviour especially within the context of life balance. This interest was very much

inspired by our TUI project at CIID that focused on using RFID technology to create an

awareness of the environmental impact caused by certain food products transportation. On

completion of this project I further investigated it by writing an article on personal

Informatics for an online Interaction Design magazine called Johnny Holland. During this I

found out that there are currently a number of personal informatics tools on the market to

help people balance their lives, mainly focusing around health, finances and energy

consumption. Some of these have been a great success while others are just a waste of time.

When looking at these examples I was disappointed by the lack of imagination that was driving

this emphasis on data displays and was very skeptical that any bar chart on a screen would

actually motivate anyone to change his or her behaviour. I was interested in how to trigger an

emotional experience to motivate behavioural change and find a more specialized area that

could be addressed by personal informatics to help people feel more balanced.


INITIAL EXPLORATIONS

After conducting some initial desk research on personal informatics and existing tools to help

people balance their lives, the majority of my time was spent on planning (1 week) conducting

(1 week) and analyzing user research (1 week)

Research Objective

My objective for my user research was to gain an understanding of what it means for people to

live a balanced life, what are people’s personal values, what do they need to feel comfortable

in their lifestyle, how does this change depending on what stage of their life they are at and do

they use any tools or strategies to achieve this?

To understand how people’s values change at different stages of their lives I conducted

research with three different user groups; students, couples working and families. Within these

categories there were also some extreme users that included an avid sportsman, someone

with diabetes and two people that were away from home frequently due to work. I was

interested in hearing if people who had more extreme lifestyles had different strategies to keep

themselves feeling balanced.

Mapping Research Candidates

WORKING

STUDENT

LIVING ALONE LIVING WITH PARTNER/HUSBAND

EXTREME USER

HAS CHILDREN

PERNILLEERIC

MARTIN

JON

LAURA

RUNE

AMANDA

RUNE. P

FRANCESSCA

KATE

KRISTIAN

DAVID


Reasearch Candidates

Amanda Bligh, USA David Kearford, UK Eric Stevenson, USA

Francessca Mustaffi, Italy Jon Wettersen, USA Kate Pilkington, UK

Kristian Kørrup, Denmark Martin Wøldik, Denmark

Pernille Christoffersen, Denmark

Rune Bottzauw, Denmark Rune Dittmer, Denmark

Laura Ceriol, Italy


Research Planning

Out of 12 people I conducted nine 2 hour research sessions in person, 2 Skype interviews to the

US and one remote experiment in Italy. During the research sessions I used a number of

reflection tools I had designed to help facilitate the session and provoke conversation. I also

had a set of questions on more specific areas, that I adapted depending on how the discussion

evolved. These questions covered areas such as typical daily routines and habits, enjoyable

parts of their day, things they don’t have time to achieve and why, how they manage their

time to meet all their priorities, use of labour saving technology, triggers that make them feel

stressed, how they deal with conflicts in their time, what their ‘feel good’ activities are, and

how their priorities have changed as their responsibilities have changed.

Conducting Research

Figure 1: Rune using the mapping tool

I used a Card sorting activity where I got people to choose from a list of things they do either

on a daily, weekly or random basis. This was used as a warm-up activity, to get people starting

to think about what was important to them. It was a great conversation starter, as you could

then question them on their answers.


Figure 2: Mapping tool

I also designed a mapping tool to get people to think about more specific values they need to

achieve to feel in control and what really brings them meaning in life. This exercise was very

valuable as it forced people to take a moment and reflect on what was really important to

them. People found the exercise difficult, especially when they started to realize that they were

achieving very few of the things that were important and a priority to them. Although the task

was challenging almost everyone I interviewed found it beneficial to have a moment of

Figure 3: Diaries

During my research a few people also kept a diary so i could gain insight into their routines,

sleeping and eating habits. After completing the diary I questioned them to see if they had

gained any value from writing in it each day. People responded with saying that they felt like

they wanted to be more productive throughout their day so they had something positive and

interesting to write in it. This shows that actively logging your activities can lead to increased

motivation to do well.


Figure 4: Emotional timelines

During some of the interview sessions I got people to draw an emotional time line map of a

certain period of time that they decided upon. The peaks in the diagram are when they are

feeling out of balance. This allowed me to see that periods of inbalance are often due to a

change or transition in their lifestyle. This often included moving to a new city, leaving home or

starting a new job. Although these are not negative situations to be in, the uncertainty and the

anxiety of starting something new can make people feel out of balance.

The remote exercise in Italy involved an extreme user (Laura, who is rarely at home due to

work related travel). I asked her to keep a detailed diary for one week. Here she recorded her

day-to-day

activities and routines, including eating and sleeping habits. I also asked her to reflect on how

she felt throughout the day and in the moment while she was doing certain tasks. If anything

made her feel stressed she had record it and the same goes for if she was happy. She also took

photographs of the following:

1. Things that you do on a regular basis that make you feel comfortable and content.

2. Any tools or strategies that help you meet your priorities.

3. Things that you make you feel uncomfortable or unbalanced in your life.

The result of this exercise provided detailed and rich information, with a number of key

insights to what it is like when you are continually on the move.



Research Analysis

On completion of my user research I created character boards for each person, writing down

key quotes and observations from their session. At this point, I then filtered the information

again and selected the most intriguing and surprising quotes from each respondent. Within

these insights three underlying themes were formed. These were:

1. Communication with Family and Friends

2. Food and Eating Habits

3. Personal Prioritising and Planning

Figure 5: A sample of photographs from Laura’s photo diary

Figure 6: Transcription of Interviews

Figure 7: Character board

Figure 8: Mapping out my insights


Figure 9: Understanding what each quote means

Figure 10: Creating How might we statements

Figure 11: Voting on the most interesting insights


Within each of these themes I used the IDEO method of asking what does each insight mean,

and then writing “How might we statements” for them all. At this point there were still a num-

ber of areas I could choose to develop, but I decided to focus on personal prioritizing as this is

where I felt most challenged, excited and saw potential to apply personal informatics to. Some

of the key insights in this theme were:

“I transfer work trips to our calendar at home, but only a few weeks before, mainly so Mas

[husband] can’t see what’s ahead of him!” (Kate, UK)

Meaning: People only really use a ‘public’ calendar for really important events that are

necessary to share.

“I don’t currently write in a diary as I imagine someone reading it, so I won’t put anything

personal in it…….I like the approach of this diary, I actually find that I want to be more

productive just so u can write something positive in it, kind of indirect motivation”(Eric, USA)

Meaning: Having to actively record you activities allows you to reflect and become

motivated to do well.

“I would love to be able to schedule time for reading…….but it sounds kind of dorky….so I would

love to be able to track some of these things I would like to be able to do without having to

actually track it” (Amanda, USA)

Meaning: People feel silly scheduling ‘me time’ but are interested to understand what they

spend their time on and when.

“I keep a personal to-do list, I prioritise everything, so when I have been neglecting something I

move it up the list, I keep it on my desktop so I can always see it” (Jon, USA)

Meaning: People need to have a constant reminder of what it important to do otherwise

they will ignore it.

“Hobbies are great when they are built into your life, I love it, but when you don’t do it for a

while you forget how much you enjoy it until you do it again” (Pernille, Denmark)

Meaning: People easily forget how important something is and how much they enjoy it when

they stop doing it.

“Prioritizing is difficult, it would be good to have ground rules, or a rule of thumb to follow”

(Francesca, Italy)

Meaning: People like to be guided in some way when it comes to making personal decisions.

“I found writing in a diary can be really helpful, as it gave me a very good chance of stopping

to have a deeper insight into my thoughts and feelings” (Laura, Italy)

Meaning: Periods of reflection are a positive thing!


DESIGN CHALLENGE

Due to an increased pace of life and personal competition with ones self to become ‘someone

better’ people are continually busy, going from one task to the next. This has been heightened

by a more prominent use of technology in our lives, which has resulted in lifestyle barriers

that used to exist have been broken; people can now work anywhere, contact anyone anytime

and achieve much more on the move. The result of having this fast pace of life is that people

become absorbed in ‘achieving more’ and detached from what their day-to-day life looks like

and what brings them a real sense of enjoyment. Within their busy lives, people find it hard

to prioritize when making decisions in their own life and would often like to be guided in some

way. Some people use diaries and calendars to schedule (make time for) ‘practical

appointments’ but very rarely for personal activities. Yet they are interested to understand

what they spend their time on, especially for things they enjoy doing, but rarely have time to

do. In order for people to have a balanced life on a bigger scale, they have to first reconnect to

themselves, and focus on what they need to be content rather than everything that is possible.

The design challenge is:

How might we create a flexible and customizable platform that will help people to reconnect

to themselves, enabling them to prioritize in their lives by keeping track of and reminding

them of past experiences that they can then use as a reference point to make more

informed decisions?

Other Questions to probe for brainstorming

1. How can we create a greater awareness of elements of our lives that bring us enjoyment?

2. How much time we actually spend on these activities?

3. How might we compare what your day actually looks like with what you would ideally like it

to be?

4. How can the act of recording these experiences be seamlessly integrated into your lifestyle?


FURTHER EXPLORATIONS

Brainstorming and Idea Generation

After I had formulated my design challenge that I felt was the correct combination of being

open enough to generate lots of wild idea’s, but not so open that I would have no theme

running through them, it was time to start brainstorming.

I facilitated a brainstorming session to generate ideas surrounding my design challenge. This

was a huge success!! A lot of creative ideas were generated that proved to be great inspiration

and triggered new thinking. After completing the brainstorm I spent a little time clustering my

ideas before going through them. Some the clusters that formed were goal orientated tracking,

tracking with sensors and using tangible objects to visualize behaviour.

Figure 12: Clustering brainstorming ideas

Initial Seed

Out of all the drawings and post-its that were filtered I picked 5 and sketched them out further,

thinking of possible solutions of how they could be implemented into people’s lives. By the

end of this short exercise there was already one idea that was stuck in my mind. The idea was

based around tracking your happiness at different locations through GPS and inputing who you

were with and what you were doing to add a specific context.


Figure 13: Initial Seed of an idea (tracking happiness to your location)

Experience Prototype #1

At this point I decided to do an initial experience prototype to test the basis of my idea. For the

experiment I recruited 4 people and on a map of Copenhagen I got got them to plot their

weekends activities, after giving them step-by- step instructions to. These were:

Step 1: Write a list of priorities you like to do on (i) a daily basis (ii) a weekly basis.

Step 2: On different coloured post-its categorize these priorities, how do you divide up your

time.

Step 3: On the map of Copenhagen mark where you live and work.

Step 4: Plot your weekend activities by writing individual activities you did, at what time and

with who. Write these activities on coloured post-its corresponding to one of the categories

you already defined (use the color code you set).

Step 5: Place the post-it on the map at the location of where the activity took place

Step 6: Give the activity a rating out of 5, of how satisfying it was (writing on the post it as

well) 1 being low and 5 being high.



Figure 14: Ujjval completing the map experiment

Figure 15: Comparing different peoples maps

Experience Prototype #1 learnings

1. People are unaware of how much they actually do, or how busy they are, until they actually

sit down and think about it.

2. People have very different approaches about how they categorize their time.

3. Using colour to show different categories, very quickly enables you to see patterns in

behaviour, especially related to the home and workplace.

4. Putting priorities into categories allows you to see what areas you spend most time on in

your life, and then you can go to a deeper layer of data to find out specific activity etc.

5. The people who you are with often has a huge influence on the satisfaction of the activity

you are doing.

To learn more about these patterns and behaviours I decided to test the experience prototype

on myself as well. But instead of putting a few days on a map, I recorded everything I did each

day on a new map. This way I was able to compare each day individually, and see the patterns

and routines that occured.

Scenarios

After these initial experience prototypes I could see that there was potential in my idea,

especially by the reactions of the people I had tested it on. My next step was to develop the

idea further, for this I first created a simple system diagram of the service and then started on

a detailed scenario, showing how the system would work, the user experience and the

critical touchpoints. During this time I thought of the different stages of the service, how the

data would be recorded, any feedback the user would get, how would the user review their

data and reflect on it and how the service could be expanded in the future. The result was a

very detailed and slightly overwhelming scenario!



Figure 16: Detailed scenario

Figure 17: Detailed scenario turned into a book for midway reviews

Service Blueprint

After the scenario was produced, i decided to look at the service on a more generic level, and

created an initial service blueprint. This allowed me to focus and establish the key user

interactions, the role of the service provider and the touch points of the service that need to

be designed for my experience prototyping and my end communication. I have also come up

with a name for the service (“echo”) and started working on the branding at this point, as i felt

this was an important factor to make my service appear believable! Throughout this process

of mapping out my service i was able to continually develop the idea, seeing where there were

holes that needed to be thought out and coming up with new touchpoints that could add to the

over all experience. I was very focused on creating tangible touchpoints throughout the

service, so it wasn’t purely screen based.


Figure 18: Paper based service blueprint

Eilidh Dickson, CIID/DKDS Pilot Year, 9th June 2009


Experience prototype #2

When I felt I had my service mapped out fully, I wanted to start doing more experience

prototyping, to test different elements of the service. I conducted a quick experience prototype

to test of few questions I had about my idea. From my first prototyping session I wanted to

learn:

1. How much effort is it to log your daily activities and the goals you want to achieve? Do you

gain something from doing so?

2. What is it like to have to quantify your happiness after doing certain tasks, and what is the

the most natural way to do it?

3. What does it feel like to receive friendly nudges of encouragement and motivation from the

service? Do they work or does it just become irritating receiving them?

During the experiment I asked Sarah to track specific tasks she wanted to achieve by sending

an SMS to the service (my mobile phone) when she had completed it. At this point, she also

had to quantify her happiness and satisfaction by using a set of cards I had given her. These

asked her to illustrate how she was feeling in a variety of ways i.e with words, colour, icons.

While all this was going on, the service was also sending her prompts and motivation by SMS’s

to encourage her to complete her goals!

Figure 19: Experience prototyping pack


Figure 20: Experience prototyping instructions

Figure 21: Everything needed to get started!


Figure 22: SMS sent to the Echo “service” during the experience prototype

After the experiment was complete I interview Sarah to get her feedback on the experience.


1. Receiving messages and reminders worked as a good support line.

2. By recoding what she was doing, it brought things to her focus, she started to realise why

she was or wasn’t doing something.

3. She liked that the service was personal, so she felt more commitment towards it and

responsibility for her actions, as it was something that was helping her.

4. It was easiest to quantify how she was feeling with a number or slider, or sometimes using

words to describe it.

5. Seeing what you have achieve is very motivating, and remembering how good you felt when

you did it is encouraging to do it again.

6. Knowing it was a person on the end of the phone and not an automated message made her

feel more motivated and responsible. So how can the service be personal to each user and

seem like a buddy or friend?

Experience prototype #3

During my third experience prototypeI wanted to question what motivates people to stick to a

program and how would people react if they are rewarded for it? During this experiment, like

the previous one I got Mimi to track certain tasks she wanted to complete, and alert the service

(me!) when she had done so through either an SMS or by leaving a physical note on my desk.

When Mimi was doing well I would give her rewards in different ways…these included:

1. An email with a reward voucher attached to it that she had to print out and bring to me to

then exchange it for a gift.

2. A surprise gift and note left on her desk one morning.

3. simple “well done” messages to her mobile phone.


Figure 23: The activity sheet that Mimi filled in (what she wanted to achieve)

Eilidh Dickson, CIID/DKDS Pilot Year, 9th June 2009


1. The system has to be flexible enough to deal with changes in people’s schedules and

spontaneous events that may happen.

2. When a gift was a complete surprise, it was better than knowing you were about to receive

something in advance.

3. Big rewards were not expected as part of the service, but it was nice when the little surprises

were personal and tailored to the individual as it makes you feel like the service knows you.

After conducting these prototyping sessions and consolidating these learnings, I made some

small changes to some of the feedback mechanisms that would be used in the service. I then

started to think about the final communication of the service. I created a storyboard for my

final scenario, this allowed me to imagine a real person using the echo service as well as see

how many props and service touchpoints I needed to design and produce to communicate the

idea in my video. From this point on the focus of my work was producing the final interfaces

and physical artifacts.


Figure 24: Some of the rewards Mimi recieved


Figure 24: Paper based service touchpoints needed for the video

Figure 25: Interface shot of Echo software

MY CONCEPT

Who Is it for?

Anyone who know that they have an unbalanced life and are unhappy about it. They want to

become more aware of their habits and understand their behaviour so they know where to

make changes. It is for people that currently live a busy lifestyle and find it hard to prioritize,

often sacrificing the things they really enjoy doing, so they can achieve more in other areas of

their life. These people are motivated to do well and want to change!

What is the idea?

Echo is a service that provides a platform for people to self reflect and become more aware of

their lifestyle patterns by helping them pinpoint areas of their life that bring them personal

enjoyment and supporting them to experience it more often.

How does it work?

It works by using GPS tracking and direct reporting (data input) through the users mobile

phone to build up a map of how they spend their time, with who and how happy they are. The

data that is tracked and recorded is then transformed into different visualizations that the

person can interact with, reflect on and see opportunities for change in their behaviour.

What is the Value?

Giving people a tool to reflect, allows them to reconnect to what their day-to-day life looks

like and understand what they spend their time on, with who and how happy they are. In turn

this allows them to pinpoint areas of their life that bring them personal enjoyment. By giving

people the platform to see these trends and patterns in their behaviour and opportunities for

change they might normally miss, it can help people moderate their behaviour in a number of

positive ways. The service is not designed to control behaviour, but to monitor and display ac-

tions in a way that will raise questions with the person.


SERVICE STAGES

Sign Up

Before the user can start using the service they need to log onto the echo website and decide

which subscription they would like. At this point they will commit to the service and make a

payment. Shortly after they will receive a confirmation email to reassure them that their order

has been processed.

Implementation: set-up and sync

A few days later the customer will receive the echo start up pack in the post. The pack contains

everything needed to get started including a welcome letter, a URL link and serial number for

the smart phone application and offline software, a membership card and a set of instructions.

The user will input where they live and work on a geographical map of their town or city. They

will also make a list of activities they want to achieve on a daily, weekly and occasional basis

and then place these in customized categories, for example ‘me time’, work time and play time.

The last stage is to create an address book of friends, family and people they spend time with

on a regular basis. Once this has been done, they can then sync their phone and computer,

so they are ready to start logging their behaviour. At any point the user can go back to their

profile and edit their personal settings.

Use: Recording Data

Through the echo application, the smart phone’s GPS will be activated, seamlessly tracking

their location and storing the information. When the user completes one of their priorities,

they can capture their activity by using a simple user interface, entering what activity they are

doing and who they are with from the database of information they have already

created - alternatively they can choose to enter a new activity or person on the move.

Reflection in the moment, and on the go feedback

When the user has completed the activity they then have the opportunity to reflect in the mo-

ment. They can rate their happiness on a scale from happy to sad and can add another level

of context by either recording a voice clip or by tagging the location and event. They can also

receive gentle feedback nudges and motivational messages to inform them of how might they

can change their behaviour in real time. These include friendly prompts about activities they

haven’t completed, well done messages, reminders of past happy experiences via MMS when

they walk past locations they have previously tagged and a monthly personal review of their

actions.


View data and reflection over time

At any point the user can view their interactive data visualizations through the echo software,

seeing how they have been spending their time, either on a specific day or on a weekly basis.

The data can also be filtered to ‘happiness mode’ so they can pin point when and what they

were doing when they are happiest. More specific data on how well they are meeting their pri-

orities, when the last did an activity, or spent time with a certain person is also available. This

tool for reflection aims to provide information that is actionable, helping people see patterns in

their behavior and therefore able to make more informed decisions.

Expanding: Building a community and international travel

As the echo service grows there are potential opportunities for people to share their data

with friends they trust through an online platform. This could lead to exchange of advice and

suggestions based common interests, or even finding similar interests with friends, that they

didn’t know they had. The service could also be expanded so subscribers to the service could

receive customised maps based on their personal priorities for travel abroad, helping them to

carry out their ‘happy activities’ while in another city or country.

To view my project demo video or user scenario video that will visually demonstrate the

concept please go to http://www.eilidhdickson.co.uk/thesis.html



FEEDBACK

Figure 26: Kate (original user) viewing my concept videos

At the end of my project I was lucky enough to have time to go back to one of my original

users to get feedback on my idea. I let Kate see both my videos I then waited for a response!

Originally kate had told me that she “missed time just to do stuff, like making phone calls to

friends and going to the cinema” Hearing her feedback after she watched the video was one of

the best moments of the project:

“the more I watch it the more i want to use it.... I really like the idea of having reminders about

non everyday things....and knowing when you last spent time with someone. It’s also good that

is doesn’t control your life!”

The fact that she completely understood the concept with no further explanation was

fantastic! It was even better that she saw potential in the idea and could see herself using it,

especially as the solution was based around one of her intial problems I established during my

user research.

web: www.eilidhdickson.co.ukmail: [email protected]: +[44] 7845822854

CIID Final project report

Technology

Transcript of CIID Final project report