Learner Experience Design

In class documentation and reflections, Spring 2017. Instructor: Stacie Rohrbach

Please see my separate article on readings and research notes!

Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Class Reflection

The first class consisted of two activities that showed how we, as humans, engage with each other to obtain a goal. The first activity we were given a “bingo board” and instructed to approach each classmate and ask only single question from the board and if the response was a “yes”, we write down that classmate’s name. Stacie framed the goal as being the first person to obtain all “yes’s”. The constraint forced us to speak with everyone in the class, surely stepping out of some people’s comfort zones, and the questions prompted some profiling. (Admittedly, I approached students with accents and asked if they grew up in other countries). The second activity had us pair off and compete in a trivia quiz related to the design field.

Similarities: Both games had us compete for low risk prizes (a dove bar and milano cookies respectively.

Differences: However, the participation and content difference caused contrast in the energy of the room. The trivia quiz repeatedly displayed on the projector how many teams responded, as well as the high scores, thus encouraging us to strive to be the very best. Working with partners also helped me become more excited, often groaning or cheering as our placement rose and fell. In fact, having a partner made me feel it was more appropriate to show my fervor without others chiding me for narcissism. Because my partner and I came from different backgrounds, together we had more confidence in tackling questions— it was helpful having a second opinion. While it was not an inhibition in our partnership, it is interesting to note social expectations yet again: because we used my phone to answer trivia questions, I noticed my partner hesitated pressing the answer more often. Despite the fact that both games competed for low risk prizes, I believe the tools and group dynamic caused the second game to be more competitive and energetic.

We also briefly touched upon “what constitutes an experience?” We defined it as the presence of mind and body and engagement of the 5 senses.

Topics/Terms Worth Looking Up

• Gillian Crampton Smith
• Liz Sanders
• David M. Kelley
• Richard Buchanan
• 1985 Apple commercial
• Mind mapping
• Muriel Cooper

Thursday, January 19, 2017

The Class

We had a presentation from our client today (name and information are kept confidential). They presented the research and insights they’ve found thus far to provide context on where we can take our project. It was quite refreshing to hear about their approaches, as many were similar to the ones I did in my internship last Summer with Mint. In fact, our client also belongs in the financial sector, so I’m excited to apply academic research I’ve done for Mint for this client as well; Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely would be a good place to start.

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Drawing from the reading insights, we broke off into groups of 3 to tackle various prompts applying the reading topics.

Note: It’s interesting to think about how we remember/digest the readings and which parts resonate with us, whether it’s images, anecdotes, or abstractions. It’s helpful to know which methods work for ourselves!

Working with Christie and Ash, we tackled the “blockbusting” problem listed in the first paragraph below:

After the first stab at the prompt, we discussed “Conceptual Block-Busting”, a concept coined by Author James Addams, who identifies ways of questioning your usual approaches. I find merit in this, because I had previously thought the “design process” was the superior and most efficient way of tackling problems. Since working with people from other fields, and even other designers, I’ve found that there exists many strategies that work for others’ that are all valid. In fact, the challenge of being a team player and leader is bringing out the strengths in those various mental models and channel the energy towards a common goal.

The pink shows our revisions/rethinking of the problem space given the additional approaches.

During our process, we reached a point where we thought we’d exhausted all ideas. However, Stacie came by and probed us to realize there were still areas we hadn’t considered, especially when thinking about touch points of the interaction. It seems there is no easy way to know when you’ve considered all your ideas, and you just have to keep on doing it!

Thursday, January 27, 2017

Problem statement model; the first half is similar to an approach I used this past summer at Mint. The second half is a way of framing the problem as a learning opportunity.

I worked with Allison and Justin to create this table tackling one of the prompts for our client project.

Using strategies from Tuesday and our readings, we took a stab at unpacking the perspectives of various stakeholders in the client project prompts. To do so, we listed:

• Each of their problems
• Why they are important to them
• What they could be doing to contribute to the problem
• What they could do to address the problem
• How they could bridge knowledge gaps.

Through discussion with our group, I made a connection back to a discussion I had with Mark Mentzer earlier in the week. He was describing experiences in past projects, in particular, introducing patient-administered pain relievers in hospitals— a shift from having nurses handle all the pain-relieving injections. The way Mark explained the problem sounded like a learning challenge: the nurses had to learn a new way of managing their tasks and learn to teach patients how to administer pain-relievers. What stood out to me was Mark’s insight on the nurses’ perspective:

How do we frame the change so they don’t feel their losing control? After all, nurses’ prior knowledge has taught them that their job, they value, lies in servicing the patient.

Mark addressed the challenge by explaining that the time freed up from self-administered pain-relievers gave nurses more time to do other tasks, such as tending to a larger amount of patients or spending more time developing personal connections— providing emotional comfort that machines cannot.

Similarly, in addressing the stakeholders’ perspectives, we found that each group had certain sense of value or power that they wanted to maintain. After talking with Stacie and reflecting, I realized that any person more or less has a sense of worth (value or power) that they have or want.

If we are introducing changes into a system that disrupts that source of worth, then we must find a way to convince the person the change provides new opportunities of value.

Tuesday, January 31, 2017

We began class discussing salient points from the readings. In particular, we considered what is important for learners?

• It’s important to understand the skill level of learners, because novices and experts learn topics at different paces. Sometimes there needs to be “scaffolding”, like training wheels, that ease a learning curve.
• Understanding motivational sources also helps us frame the topic, although ultimately we hope to bring out intrinsic motivations in people who initially only have extrinsic ones. Although! There’s also been stories about intrinsically motivated activities becoming no longer enjoyable.
• Learners should have a safe place to fail, especially novices, so they’re not afraid to try new things. This reminds me of my friend’s New Year’s Eve Facebook post about having back-up plans for goals.
• Giving affirmation of learning achievements is also helpful so learners know if they’re on the right track. (I will admit that in my experience, I end up relying on affirmation before moving onto the next step and should learn to “just do it” and trust the process.)

Connecting these topics to financial literacy, we outlined some challenges of financial literacy:

• Not many intrinsic motivation
• It’s such a dense topic that many people don’t know where to begin
• Terminology can be confusing or intimidate people
• Money is abstract, so a lot of information may not map easily to existing mental models
• It’s just difficult!

Learner Types:

class notes on four quadrant types of learners. There exists two axis: concrete to abstract, and then actively to reflectively

• This categorization is coined by Bernice McCarthy in the “Learning Theorist” 4MAT system. It primarily applies to K-12 learning, but many themes relate to learning and teaching at large.
• Ideally, we want to be able to cycle through the quadrants when we are learning or tackling a project— each quadrant has its benefits and drawbacks. For instance, in past projects I often get caught up in details that I get stuck and can’t move on. In those instances, I’m starting to learn to “just do it”.
• To be honest, I’m not quite sure what kind of learner I am?? I feel like I tend to be systematic and analytical. I also love logic and philosophy (structurally sound and valid arguments make me so fiery and happy), although I’m also known to be an energetic (and sometimes quite emotional) person. At the same time, I am not as fond of programming and mathematical logic; instead, it’s socio-political thoughts and ideas that I am always thinking about— so perhaps that makes me more concrete than abstract? I know I’m not signing my life away and it’s natural for people to move around, though it is helpful to be able to pinpoint the kind of learning I prefer for this class and beyond.

Thursday, February 2, 2017

Intrinsic/Extrinsic

Stacie clarified how in academia, many terms we learn are extremes while in real life, many things exist as in-betweens. It’s difficult to pinpoint instances where students exclusively have extrinsic or intrinsic motivations (and absolutely no trace of the other); however, it’s important to recognize factors that are intrinsic to achieve the best learning results.

4 Learning Quadrants Activity

I worked with Amanda and Gilly to apply the 4-quadrant learning to one of the client’s prompts. Doing the activity revealed holes in our understanding of the audience and as a result, provided a direction for us moving forward.

I also learned that moving onto another quadrant is helpful if the group feels we’re running out of ideas, because often topics we propose in later quadrants can infer decisions in other ones.

Our brainstorming for the 4-quadrant learning stages.

This activity helped inform questions we’re thinking about moving forward.

There were many topics we brainstormed where we realized the user could prefer various approaches simply depending on their personalities. In response, Stacie explained that we’d likely stay away from “one-size-fits-all” systems exactly because of the varied preferences. Our challenges, questions, and next steps are as follows:

• Which information is most appropriate for which mediums?
• How do we help the user feel comfortable giving out their personal information? (building trust)
• Are there categories/trends of various preferences that we know the users have?
• What constitutes “deep understanding”?
• Go back and do an analysis of the user research information
• Do a competitive analysis— understanding what works and doesn’t work in existing systems

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Now that we’ve formed our teams, we took time to review the learning topics we’ve covered these past three weeks: block-busting, mental models & memories, and the 4 quadrant learning cycle. We used those approaches to first, list out what we know, which problems exist? And then corresponding those points, we listed what do we need to address? What are the research questions?

This method helps us ensure we address the problem space from various perspectives and teases out topics that may otherwise seem broad to us. (e.g. what constitutes a “meaningful exchange” between our client and their customer?)

Mental Models

Afterwards, we shifted gears and did an exercise on mapping each others’ mental models. We each sketched our mental model of: Pittsburgh International Airport, CMU in relation to Pittsburgh, and CMU School of Design. Some trends we saw included:

• Maps/physical orientation for places— esp. CMU in relation to Pittsburgh
• Variations between first and third person in PIT
• More abstract and diagrammatic structures for SoD. It’s also obvious which ones were drawn by undergrads and which ones were drawn by grads based on which parts of the program were emphasized. (The undergrads were more likely to include the products, communications, and environments concentrations).

My sketches for “Pittsburgh International Airport”, “CMU in relation to Pittsburgh”, and “CMU School of Design”

When starting with our respective teammates, Stacie recommended doing a similar exercise so we can understand each other’s mental models.

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Starting today, my public class reflections will be sparse as we are beginning to tackle the client project. The information is currently confidential, but hopefully it can be made public in the future!

Thursday, February 16, 2017

A tidbit

In persuasion class, an English PhD came in to talk about his consulting work in teaching civil discussions within organization members and how to effect change from that. Listening to the process, it sounded like a learning problem, specifically learning a hard skill that takes time to practice and sustain. Some salient skills they used include:

• Giving participates the power to encourage each other to speak by saying in the beginning, “we want everyone to participate, so if you notice anyone not speaking, please encourage them to say something”
• The example above also seems to take advantage of the power of authority, as this was directed by the moderator
• Keeping surveys and instructions as brief as possible — a 3 hour discussion is more engaging than a 10 page pamphlet
• Encouraging the organization to continue these discussion facilitations moving forward
• Having the organizations effect action from the new perspectives the members have learned from each other (applying skills to meaningful contexts)
• Interestingly, organizations sometimes prefer to have the consulting company come back even though the consultance’s goal is to teach the organization those skills. That is because the organizations want someone to point the blame if anything goes wrong in touching these socio-political topics

Another tidbit

I realize I have a tendency to want to understand every single aspect of a problem conceptually before diving into to realizing an idea. In the past, it has scared me; it makes me think we’re getting attached to an idea without understanding the big picture.

However, when tackling large, complex problems, it will be inefficient, if not impossible, to understand the whole picture at once. Thus, it’s important to dive down part by part and then figure out how to synthesize those parts at the end of the strategizing.

We took the first stab at understanding a part of the client project today by identifying a single learning goal and thinking about:

• What assumptions can we make?
• If we take those assumptions, what are the blocks preventing the user from achieve the ultimate learning goal?

It is at those blocks that we discover learning goals and think about ways to teach and sustain proficiency in those skills.

Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Understanding by Design — good book! Six facets of understanding.

• We have 3 more weeks to flush out the extent of ideas until spring break!
• After spring break, we’ll be doing some speed dating to test our ideas.

Where we are right now; where *my* head is

The learning process has recently revealed an opportunity for improvement in the way I’ve worked. I tend to be very analytical from above, and try to understand every part of the system. While it has previously worked for smaller scale systems (admittedly I did trip up in the branding project with Kristin) it’s impractical to try to do so in such a large and complex system. Instead, it’s important to dive into a facet of the system to make and reflect, and then come back up. That making can likely influence the analysis of subsequent parts of the system. By going narrow and then coming back up to go broad (Intuit!) one can unravel a complex system step by step without becoming overwhelmed.

Our team is currently following this approach as we’ve broken down our over arching prompt into smaller, measurable learning goals. We are currently investigating each measurable learning goal one by one to think about ways we can teach and sustain those skills. In thinking about what information needs to be taught, we begin conceptualizing kinds of tools or services necessary. We’ve considered potential medium in communicating the idea, whether through a visualization, a disclosure document, or enforced actions.

Nevertheless, my high-level over-arching brain can’t help but wonder if we’re covering enough of the problem. I don’t think that question should inhibit our making at a small scale; perhaps I can keep it in mind as we tackle a few more learning goal subsets. I also wonder if we’re looking to validate our previous ideas in our newer ideas instead of “actually” drawing connections.

Understanding by Design— What Constitutes Mature Understanding

6 Facets of Mature Understanding

Class Examples

1. Can explain: Show understanding of characters’ backgrounds and motivations. (also a bit of interpretation)
2. Interpret: Particle Matter Campaign— used story telling to unpack difficult topic; story-telling, narrative to teach topic. Could be interesting to poke people through form than long-winded instructions.
3. Application: Learning meditation— initial explanation is very explicit; expected to carry those techniques into other parts of life. Ex: currently learning about tackling difficult relationships, and applying meditation techniques to aid process.
4. Perspective: Design crits— can see different interpretations and approaches of other people.
5. Empathy: Fire house trailer!
6. Self-Knowledge: Comparing to other models to understand where oneself lies.

Tuesday, February 28, 2017

In-class activity— Unpacking motivations. Also start thinking about things to buy!!

Key reading reference: Rules of Play by Katie Salen Tekinbaş and Eric Zimmerman

It’s hard to think about motivations without thinking about games. Thus, we took 10 minutes of class-time to play musical chairs and discussed our observations.

The observations, more or less chronologically:

1. Initial reaction— past experiences affect initial engagement. For example, I’ve loved musical chairs, plus the idea of playing play ground games at college appeals to me. Thus, I was really eager to get started, whereas others groaned with annoyance.
2. Setting up— Certain people stepped up to help direct set up of the game, evaluating the physical space and thinking about what’s possible in this environment (affordance of space).
3. Rules— because of the limited space, we set up rules before playing to ensure safety. Certain rules, however, are more helpful to explain along the way. Ex. When someone says “let’s just start playing the game, you’ll understand as you play along”. It’s important to note when it’s better to learn by theory or learn by doing.
4. Healthy Competition— Familiarity with the group affects how comfortably we show our feelings and intentions. In a group of strangers, we may be inclined to adjust ourselves to fit the general mood so that we don’t stand out. Meanwhile, since our class has already familiarized ourselves with each other, certain people were comfortable just showing lack of interest.
5. Expectancies— What you believe the outcome will be (believe I can) affects your mindset in participating.

Magic Circle

Notes

The idea of the magic circle can also be describe as “flow”. It’s the concept that at one point, the user will cross over from being a spectator to a participant; being inside the magic circle is what it means to be engaged. An activity that brings you in the magic circle can be anything from play, learning, leisure, a hobby, etc.

It’s interesting how easy we are able to become invested as children, and much harder as adults— likely partially due to social pressures. But that scarcity is what makes it more wonderful. In your everyday life, think about when/why you crossed!

Thursday, March 2, 2017

What topics have we learned so far that have resonated with us?

1. Blockbusting— (Adams)

• different perspectives/levels of scale
• starting point/end poit → filling in the gap
• scaffolding

2. 4Mat System— (McCarthy)

• Why, what, how does it work, what it?
• learning based on a scale of processing (active to reflective) to perception (abstract to concrete)

3. Cycle of Practice/Feedback— (Ambrose)

• Practice → Observation → Targeted Feedback → *repeat*

4. Content-Challenge-Activity-Feedback

• *up and down hill of showing new content, plateau, and old content*

5. Six Facets of Understanding

• Knowledge acquisition
• Skill acquisition
• Schema and shelves— this is why Apple’s changes are slight each time, so we see connections of what we already know. If they suddenly changed everything at once, the user would be overwhelmed

6. Goals/Values/Expectancies

• Differ based on audience/context

7. Motivation

• “magic circle” — process of entering/exiting immersion
• how do you make that transition of being a spectator to a participant?

So how do these models fit together? Which models would anchor well as an entry point for our project direction? Which ones need to be though about over long term and others step by step?

Quick Reflection

I quite admire Lucy’s attention to detail, especially in establishing visual hierarchy in her work. I value that craft in visual communication, because even in strategic / consulting jobs, is important. If anything, it’s even more important as an aid to communicate abstract, complex ideas to people who will likely have different schemas from me.

Moving forward, I will start by being more meticulous in my note taking and brainstorming across classes and projects. I will invest in a concise but robust collection of writing materials to help me achieve this.

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Wow, post Spring Break!!

I think I’ll just be sporadically jotting down behavioral/team-working skills I learn here, as project-specific reflection exists in our private team documentation.

It’s interesting to note that even though the “next-steps” we set for ourselves at the end of each meeting/class time are helpful guides, we often end up veering a bit or not being able to do all of them. It’s not due to laziness; rather, in the process of doing, we come across questions that shift our direction or even become a block.

Recently, those blocks for me tend to be questions regarding scope. I’m sure this relates to my desire to understand the nooks and crannies of a system. I’ll wonder how the existing model work when the topic may be too complex to describe (thus requiring us to make assumptions and have it confirmed later), or to what extent of capabilities should we design for. The advice for the latter, which applies to most of my work, is to design a few things that work well. The larger context of the system is important to keep in mind when presenting next steps; but in the context of a mass consumer product/service, it’d be difficult to design everything at once. Instead, it’s important to

1. Gather consumer feedback upon releases of a few strong ideas
2. Revise based on feedback
3. Expand the system accordingly.