02.26.2018 | Stage 3 | Generative Research
Process documentation for Interaction Design Studio II, taught by Peter Scupelli at Carnegie Mellon University. Team comprises of Zach Bachiri, Devika Khowala, Hajira Qazi, and Shengzhi Wu.
2.21.17 Workshop with Austin Lee and Jae Kim
Last Thursday, Austin Lee and Jae Kim came from Microsoft to do a workshop with us on Artificial Intelligence. Our first task was to pick a context and then design an intervention using AI based on technology that exists now. Our team decided to focus on tipping and how some immigrants are unaware of or confused by the tipping culture in America. We initially made an AI agent that recognizes the location of a user and pushes a notification that says, “It seems you are in _____ restaurant. It is customary to tip at these restaurants; would you like us to calculate the amount for you?” If the user responds, “yes,” then they are asked to enter the bill total. The agent will then provide a range of tip percentages and the corresponding amount. In the longer-term future, we imagined a wearable device that would detect the heart rate of the user; it interprets that as satisfaction with the food and then prompts the user to tip a certain amount based on that level of satisfaction.
We spoke with Austin about our topic after the workshop, and he suggested that we design a solution that is “bi-directional,” as oftentimes Americans need to be educated about immigrants as well. We spoke to Peter and Bruce about this, and they agreed that it is important to address both sides of the interaction, and that it would be worth asking both groups (international students and Americans) what they would like the other to know about them and their culture. Peter mentioned that it might be a good idea to focus on specific contexts in which there is a (potentially confusing) exchange between Americans and immigrants, and identify points of intervention in that specific context. They also said we should consider what would incentivize Americans to want to learn about the immigrant experience. These are all considerations we will carry forward throughout the generative research phase.
Generative Research workshops
We decided to run three generative workshops, each one building on the other. The first workshop would help us narrow down specific scenarios that are particularly difficult for international students and identify preferred states. The second workshop would then ask users to generate interventions for those specific contexts using technology. The third workshop would refine and narrow down the concepts that were created in the second workshop.
Our first workshop will be held on Tuesday, February 27th. We will have a list of different locations in which difficult interactions might take place (such as a hospital, restaurant, classroom), and arrange the places on a table. Users will then collaboratively use Post-Its to write out difficult scenarios in each of those places, which will create a mapping of places and scenarios. We will then ask each individual user to use voting dots to mark their five most difficult scenarios. We will select the five most “popular” scenarios for the next activity.
We will modify Stacie’s “Defining Stakeholder States and Bridging Gaps” matrix to have users identify the root cause of each of the five problematic scenarios—knowledge, skills, motivation, environment, and communication. Users will then use Post-Its to write preferred states and then work on identifying technologies that bridge the gap.
