By S M Arqum Shafi Uddin

Imagine a culture where daughters were thought to be a burden on the family’s name. Imagine a culture where sons’ education was more valued than a daughters’ education with the reason that the daughter will get married and will not have to work, hence wasting the money that could be spent on the son. Imagine living in a country where poorer parents sell their daughters to make a little money. Well, such cultures exist in a third-world countries, and I come from such a country.

From a young age, I have been surrounded by a multi-cultural society. I got to learn and understand cultures extending from all the way in China to Brazil, with all the countries in between the two. Some cultures I discarded from my likings as they failed to compliment the things I stood for. Some cultures seemed reasonable to me, so I borrowed beliefs from such cultures and added them to my beliefs. No culture seemed perfect, but most of them believed in equality in education.

Growing up, my mother told me stories about her mother; these stories were not always pleasant. My grandmother got married when she was only 14. She had her first child when she was 15. She never even got the chance to take a glimpse at a school, leading her to be illiterate. She was forced to act mature and adult-like when her brain was on the verge of development.

My grandmother never understood independency and never thought of it until my grandfather passed away when my grandmother was 35. At that time, my grandmother was a mother of 11 children. She was lost in a world trying to demoralize her, including her own siblings. She was illiterate and had no way of making any sort of income. But with a lot of disrespect, her siblings threw a couple of pennies at her so that she could survive.

Attaining any means of help that she could, she tried to educate the men in the household, holding the mentality that they would support her when they grew up and started making money. She did not invest too much on my mother or her other two daughters. Do I blame her? Maybe, and maybe not, I can’t really decide.

I don’t know if I could ever really understand what she went through, and neither can you, but what I do know is that such cultural influences still exist throughout the third-world countries and many people are blinded by these silly beliefs that they choose to hold which leads to loss of immense talent that females possess. I believe that education is important. It is needed for independence and women especially need it to stand on their own in times of unexpected hardship.

A blind world was originally published in Var City UW on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Ever since I was a little girl, or in a sense much younger than I am now, news and politics had never sparked my interest. The idea of taking my free time to watch old people who didn’t look like me, share the same values as me, or didn’t even consider my community in their interests just wasn’t something I felt mattered. But when I rethink about this at my age now and growth from this mindset, I now understand that this way of thinking is false.

This realization occurred to me when my brother, who has a profound interest in politics, held a conversation with me about how “not caring” for politics and news is illogical. I should care as many of the people involved in government are now people who we can identify with. Suggesting that they have the same concerns for what needs to change, not only within the government, but within society.

Some political members who have been recently elected into Congress and have secured my engagement include representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayannna Presely and Rashida Tlaib. They are the “firsts” elected within their democratic party, meaning that they are some of the first women to achieve what many would consider impossible or unheard of. They are the representation; what many young women and people of color (POC) have been waiting for, for so long when asked who they aspire to look up to or support in politics. They are their voice for the issues that need to be addressed and reconstructed.

With my newfound appreciation regarding politics I have managed to actively engage with the political discourses on my own time and via social media. This has led me to observe other people’s own involvement in politics. Many people, as we all may know, have different opinions and beliefs about certain politicians, policies, etc. This then leads to the discussion of how social media, in its advancement in terms of its technological standpoint, has come. We now as a society have become quite dependent on social media, whether it be from our phones, apps, computers, television, etc. It has managed to be embedded within subjects like politics. In some instances, this then alludes to the notion that many people around the world retrieve their information from their respective social media accounts/ apps which are personalized to their own interests, what they like and what they dislike. But does this bring into the question that this might result as a restriction?

Twitter and Facebook are notoriously known for a variety of aspects, but something they both have in common is that they are both worldwide information platforms. This means that they can be used for either retrieving information or posting information that are critical for users to encounter. Twitter specifically has grown to be one of the most used social media apps, whereas Facebook remains on top with a percentage of 79% (Adults in the U.S.). With the increase in social media usage during this time, it is no wonder political discourse now relies on these platforms in terms of trying to approach their audience by connecting with them via online. Gone are the days (how frequent that is) where it was necessary for political members to hold events to assemble supporters in voice of their speeches (this only works in favor of the Presidential race).

Social media has made everything much more convenient in terms of campaigning and political communication. Scholarly articles I am referencing in this article such as Gunn Sara Enli, Eli Skogerbo, have indicated that members involved in politics rely on social media platforms in order to communicate directly with their supporters and voters. Social media has also been able to depict either positively and or negatively politician’s political image. Meaning that social media is able to craft and display an online image of what a person sounds like by the things they say in videos/ posts, looks in terms of their characteristics and qualities they attribute, and along with their behavior, how they present themselves online to the rest of the world.

With the aid of social media politics, as well as political communication, has become much more centered with the characteristics of political members. In Personalized Campaigns in Party-Centered Politics by Gunn Sara Enli and Eli Skogerbo addressed a main motive for using social media as a form of measure for politics. A motive used for marketing purposes; this means that political members would use social media as a way to “increase visibility” of their own image and or their own parties and policies. This then suggests that social media has become a strategy to promote politics. We see this all the time in advertisements on timelines and during commercial breaks which are often times sponsored by certain political members. These promotions are especially for the interest of young voters who have the tendency to use social media much more than older generations. To capture their attention by promoting their ideals and motives on online platforms like Facebook, Twitter, etc. An example of this can be seen with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC).

AOC has managed to increase her popularity, as well as her political image, by her online presence on social media app Twitter. How Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Beat Everyone at Twitter in Nine Tweets, an article featured on The Guardian by Max Benwell provides the following information regarding her interaction rate compared to other political members:

“Her interaction rate, which averages out overall interactions per tweet…is 2.8%… may not sound like much, but put it in perspective, Donald Trump’s is 0.2%, Barack Obama’s is 0.4%, Hillary Clinton 0.2%, and Bernie Sanders 0.09%”

These statistics are able to provide a basis of how far women of color have come when it comes to political engagement via social media. AOC acts as a voice and a leader to challenge many other political members online. And unlike other politicians, she is able to reach to a much younger audience as she represents our interests and what we may want and hope for the future of our country. Below is a screenshot, from Max Benwell’s same article:

Benwell states in his article that this image was shared via Twitter to AOC’s audience to provide a representation of her determination and dedication during the elections, “…it was her primary win in June that first gave her a national platform, and this tweet set the tone for how she was going to operate.” This then can be referred back to the main argument in how social media is able to operate as a platform for political members, by shaping and reinforcing their image to their followers. How we as a community perceive them as a person by the things they share and say online.

This was how I was able to be so much more involved in the news, especially during this time as social media really does have the power over certain people in both good and bad when it comes to their political image. There will always remain a bias when it comes to some and what they choose to follow on their own respective media accounts, but it’s always worth to listen to what the other side has to say about certain topics. Technology is constantly evolving to allow us new ways to “keep up with the times”. I find it so much easier and mobile to follow the news via social media, so it’s no surprise that this would be the way in which political members transfer their time and energy to shift to this alternative platform to engage with their audience.

I was introduced to Alexandria via media, which ultimately allowed me to divest my interests in her via social media and her online presence which resonated with me. But it ultimately was also because I got to see a POC woman representing me and my community and what we want and value. Representation is very important when it comes to politics. Alexandria and the other women in congress are just the first step to a much better and hopeful future for POC and women in America. The only thing that seems to be advancing faster and with no intention of slowing down is the social media storm within politics.

Social media’s influence in politics was originally published in Var City UW on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This article is by Anna Schmitz. Anna is a Junior studying Human-Centered Design and Engineering at the University of Washington.

Rays of sunlight glint off of your kitchen light fixtures. Yellow sunrise floods your house and a stray draft twirls a stem of leaves on your countertop fern. You would have taken time to appreciate this remarkable weather on a Friday morning, but your calendar argues otherwise. Work and commitments seem to be unavoidable. You quietly make breakfast in your pajamas like a routine; you turn on the stove, cook, push the lever on the toaster, wait, and breakfast is ready.

Plenty of us are on autopilot until 9:00AM, blindly assembling meals and packing for the day without thinking. Hardly anyone reflects upon this because memories from routines are weak. If you’re a creature of habit, an essential part of a smooth morning is predictability. You know exactly what your alarm sounds like, how to shut it off, what each appliance does, what each of its buttons and knobs do. And that’s by design. The crux of modern design is to keep things as “simple as possible”. Designers are taught to only add what is necessary and neglect decoration. This applies to apps, phones, buildings, cars — perhaps any built system.

As per the design industry standard; the simpler, the better.

All the while, say you leave your house in the morning and head to work. You’re thrown into a meeting that derails — the team goes off-topic and it’s going much longer than expected. Or if you’re a student, you’re suddenly slammed with assignments and your bus home was late. For both, perhaps this Friday was a little bumpier than usual. You’re frustrated and exhausted, only wanting to return home and rest. Still, how do you react?

Setting simplicity as the standard for functionality teaches us that everything else should be simple. Due to a person’s reliable routine, they expect the day’s events to follow predictably as well. Although, for hardly any working person or student, that’s never the case. We are taught that challenges will be plenty in academia and industry. Somehow, that thought still isn’t very comforting. Instead we dive back into our smartphones to scroll through a predictable app that is comforting.

If the real world is so complex, why don’t our design standards reflect that?

Today, designers tend to assume the worst in users. Designers never design to challenge them. They assume that each person is a routine-loving robot, an emotionless and senseless existence. They assume that users don’t care about “emotional affordances” such as aesthetics, detail, and personality. Rather, everything is flat and white-washed with only as many functional affordances as the designer presumes your short attention span can handle — probably no more than two in total. Is that not a touch insulting?

To the designer’s point, it is true that friction is harmful the majority of the time. Friction occurs when a user encounters challenges between their current state and end goal. A prime example is a Norman Door; a door handle whose design language speaks “pull” while the written sign above it says “push”, confusing the user as to which action to take. No one today has encountered one of those doors and been happy about it.

However, consider every other life event as a form of friction. That derailed-train of a meeting is just one friction-filled meeting over the course of many meetings you’ll have in your future. That stressful day in class is a few hours of friction that help narrate your entire academic experience. Consider yourself in either situation. In the case of a businessperson, your manager would only say “That’s part of the job.” In the case of a student, your professor would say “That’s how college works.” Both the manager and professor understand that temporary friction means learning. You become more intelligent because of them. The next time you’re in a meeting, you’ll be smarter about keeping the group on-topic. The next time you’re in class, you’ll expect surprise assignments and handle them appropriately.

Friction, in the case of real life, means learning. But the benefits of learning go far beyond getting through one day.

A person’s ability to learn has shown to decrease risk of Alzheimer’s and dementia. People who are accustomed to facing challenges have stronger memory, as their brain forms more complex connections to face those challenges again. The psychological benefits go on, developing a person’s capacity for empathy, higher intrinsic thought, mental resilience, independence, creativity, and adaptability.

Above all — learning takes time. The more time spent learning, the less time one has to devote to routines. Learning forces the body to physically move slower to focus on the task at hand. A person’s thought process deepens. And with enough effort, a person’s lifestyle slows down too. Needless to say, a slower pace of life is something nearly all citizens of industrialized nations have caught interest in today. The current norm assumes citizens follow routines to the minute and evaluate the worth of their lives only in terms of efficiency. However, many of us dream of the time and space to pursue activities that keep us feeling alive — hiking steep mountains, sailing to new places, learning a new language, immersing in a new culture, cultivating a small business — whatever gives a person purpose and flow.

With the degree of simplicity that designers enforce on citizens today, it’s clear to see that more efficiency and streamlining aren’t going to lead us to a more resilient and humanized lifestyle.

In this case, friction might hold the key to helping people think more deliberately about their lives. It’s plain to see that humans have always been learners. We’re curious, strategic, observant, compassionate, and keen — why not use all of those qualities to our advantage? By re-introducing small pieces of friction in design, in a strategic time and place, we can teach people to problem-solve on the fly. We can teach people to pause for a moment and think. Even if such a barrier was a simple as solving a passcode or riddle, it at least introduces the idea of pausing — something that we might feel more inclined to do purposefully in the broader scale of our lives.

Using friction purposefully in design, we can induce mental resilience and cultivate “living in the present”.

An example might be a car with a deceiving security system. Suppose it unlocks with a click from your key, but every once in a while, it chooses something else. Perhaps it occasionally wants you to scan your fingerprint on the passenger side, and other times to enter a passcode near the driver’s handle. The conditions to enter the car can change, keeping you on your toes to try and outsmart the car. The car challenges you, and you expect that — you are emotionally more prepared to be challenged, and physically more prepared to act accordingly.

To be successful as a new design principle, an essential aspect of friction-on-purpose is approachability. As such, friction has taken a rather undesirable connotation today, being associated with user’s negative feelings. However, this mindset assumes that a user doesn’t enjoy a bit of challenge, presented in the right way. The strategy of friction-on-purpose is to introduce game-like or enticing features that imply how an extra step will pay off in their future. By introducing this concept slowly, from a variety of media including digital devices, transportation, built objects, and the built environment, we can introduce society to an entirely new possibility. They may glimpse into a world that is just as optimistic and productive, but more nurturing of the values that make it human.

Students in Human-Centered Design and Engineering all learn the same mantra that I have — create only what humans need, nothing more and nothing less.

The implication of this statement is to begin the design process as simply as possible. We begin with scoping questions: Who are we discussing here? What are they trying to do? What challenges do they face? How can we make that action easier? In thinking so simply, it can be easier to ignore the larger societal challenges at stake. For example, a commuter may state that they want an easier way to talk on the phone while sitting in traffic. The obvious challenge is to make phone calls easier. This sounds like a simple design prompt, where the likely result from a designer is a shiny new gadget or app. But in reality, this user isn’t just looking to talk on the phone more — they’re lonely. In truth, sitting in traffic keeps them starved for human attention and contact.

Friction-on-purpose can lend a hand here. Rather than make the experience smoother, we can create such a device that makes it more difficult to talk on the phone, such as a feature that locks the phone while driving. This way, the person has to bring another person in the car for company. Then, the two people can engage in a face-to-face conversation during the bleakness of traffic, and perhaps invite other passengers along. In resolution, no one is lonely and everyone has gleefully forgotten about phone calls.

In the classroom, we can introduce philosophical problem-solving in the early stages of the design process. After the initial challenge of a user group is identified, students should be encouraged to keep digging and look beyond the context of the original problem. They should be encouraged to lean into other fields for expertise — perhaps the nuance of psychology or technicalities of computer science — based on knowledge gaps respective of the topic. Design is a fluid field that impacts society on an extremely large scale, blending into disciplines designers rarely interact with. By finding the grand roots of an issue and taking large-scale action by inducing friction where normally wouldn’t think to, we can develop techniques that mitigate the existence of the original challenge in the first place. Put into practice, a new design standard may instead prioritize the needs of human curiosity, community, creativity, resilience, emotion, and patience above efficiency and profit.

If friction-on-purpose doesn’t catch on, so be it. In the broader scheme, it’s challenging to develop widely-accepted design principles, and this novel idea is sure to pick up resistance. Instead, this technique may be used as a form of critique, as a curiosity that is approachable for the average person. It would describe an alternate reality where societies’ goals are entirely different, to invite more creative minds to think about adding experiential value back into the average person’s lifestyle.

It’s an excellent time to be thinking about this. Younger generations will soon head into industry with the opportunity to carry free-thinking ideas. Planting the seed about inducing friction to change the speed and depth of how people think could be entirely possible.

Now is a better time than ever to think critically about futures that we want to live in.

In summary, it’s difficult to break from routine. How you rise from bed in the morning, silence your alarm, and begin making breakfast can undoubtedly provide comfort. As with so many other daily routines, we can be critical about whether or not they have to remain routines. Challenges that we face in work and personal lives will certainly come, but we can use our built worlds to prepare us. Small points of challenges, friction, and intentionally slower processes can help people reflect, enjoy, and remain resilient. We can use friction to induce growth that will last long into the future and cultivate the minds of many generations.

Design for Friction was originally published in Var City UW on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“I think it’s deeply important to recognize the many, many ways that tech is used in different fields because the current narrative of tech tends to exist solely in the context of large tech companies,” Linda said.

Linda Vong is not pursuing a Computer Science degree to become the “next big buck”; she is not thinking about building the next viral app, video game, or social media platform. Instead, Linda is hoping to leverage her technical education for educational equity, representation, and social impact.

“When people think about a CS major, we often think of the stereotypical white, East Asian, or South Asian guy from a higher socioeconomic background. We think of the guy who spent all his time as a kid in a basement either playing video games or coding them. We think of the software engineer at one of the big tech companies. This story, while valid, is incomplete, and there is a great need to share more stories. People often dismiss CS as a potential field of study because they can’t relate with the narratives so often told about CS, so it’s important to remind folks that a person studying CS can be anyone from anywhere, and the role of a computer scientist can be anything, including making positive, ethical, community-based impact.”

Linda paid homage to her parents' post-war journey from Vietnam to the United States. They eventually raised Linda and her two older sisters as Chinese-Vietnamese-Americans in South Seattle. Today, her father is a retired English-Language Learner teacher and her mother is a web developer for the City of Seattle. Coincidentally, she developed interests in both education and math at a young age.

Early in college, she decided to pursue a major in Computer Science and a minor in Education, Learning, & Society to learn more about “educational technology.” She also realized how her upbringing in a predominantly Asian-American neighborhood and education in majority-white classrooms contributed to her complicated relationship with society.

“I am passionate about asking questions regarding equity, inclusion, and justice for myself and others to explore and address, individually and collectively. I believe that by surfacing and asking these questions, I can start and influence some difficult yet necessary conversations, which can then lead to broader cultural shifts and a more equitable world.” Linda said.

Linda’s journey towards Computer Science was not the most ideal experience. When she was told her mentor about her decision to enter CS, she recalls being told that the department would “let [her] in because [she’s] a girl.”

“I laughed it off, but I wish I hadn’t. It’s not OK to say something like that.” Linda said. “I was admitted to the program. I want to believe that I earned my right to be here, but remembering off-hand comments like that from time to time makes me question what many women and people of color often ask themselves: Am I only here as a diversity token? I felt like it dismissed any possibility that my work and knowledge and capabilities might be enough.”

She became more upset when she read an article titled “Why Women Don’t Code” by a current CS lecturer at UW. Linda expresses that she found many of his ideas to be problematic and damaging.

“I had already decided on applying to CS by the time I’d read the article, but if I’d seen the article before really making up my mind, I probably would have second-guessed the major entirely. This makes me think that some potential future CS majors might read what this person with considerable authority — a faculty member — has to say about women in tech and dismiss CS as a field of study as a result.” Linda said.

“When I was admitted, it was disheartening to think about how I would be entering a department that was continuing to employ an instructor who held views I thought to be harmful. Beliefs are unlikely to only exist in thoughts and never manifest in behavior. It also surprised me that despite its talk about valuing diversity and inclusion, the orientation for new CS majors didn’t mention anything about the article or lecturer. If you don’t acknowledge the problem, you can’t address it.”

Gender is not the her concern in the CS major. Linda is also shaken by the “humanities-shaming” culture in STEM.

“I’m hoping it’s mostly joking, but so many CS students belittle their non-STEM course requirements, and there’s even this convoluted sense of superiority many feel over other majors, STEM or not.”

For Linda, intentionally taking classes in both STEM and humanities allows her to develop different lenses to observe, ask questions, and solve complex problems. “STEM classes are super technical and many don’t push students to contextualize their skill sets in considering potential unintended consequences — something I actually learned from a Human-Centered Design & Engineering course — or in building explicitly for positive impact. Humanities classes allow you to learn about the state of people and communities and how they got to be that way — they help you become more culturally-informed and conscious. These classes can be more interesting to me a lot of the time for those reasons.”

One piece of advice she has for students is to take “Education (EDUC) 251: Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity” — a class Linda calls “life-changing” by helping her develop her “sense of identity, agency, and voice.”

Now a Sophomore at UW, Linda claims that her greatest achievement so far is her “personal growth in learning about [herself] and [her] role in society.”

“I went from being more passive when I saw something wrong happening to actively speak up and call things out. If you don’t call someone out for being disrespectful, then they’ll keep being disrespectful. If you don’t ask the questions, then they won’t get asked.”

Linda is currently developing a Registered Student Organization (RSO) that focuses on the intersections between ethics and Computer Science. She continues to play an important role in seeking to improve the culture in and outside of her classes and also offer mentorship to other young women in STEM.

Changing the way we think about STEM classes was originally published in Var City UW on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Issue №1: The Future of Tech was originally published in Var City UW on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Growing up in a STEM family, Jacqueline Marquette was prepped to be an aeronautical engineer ever since she was a kid. As a young girl, she excelled in Math and Science, watched the retro space cartoon,“Cosmos”, and played with airplane models from her father’s Boeing office, all in which became the inspiration behind her early STEM career.

Jackie always knew that she wanted to study engineering, but it wasn’t until a high school trip to Lockheed Martin where she saw her career aligning with the stars.

“At Lockheed Martin, I had the chance to tour the factory and see the projects that the engineers are working on. I also had lunch with the engineers and get to know them on a personal level. The trip really inspired me to go into human space travel!”

Jackie’s love for human space travel earned her a Direct Admissions to the Aeronautical and Astronautical (AA) Engineering major right after high school — a selection only for 10 to 12 stellar high school graduates around the world. Despite being able to have priority access in competitive STEM classes, this is only the beginning of her journey. She further launched her career by participating in leadership positions in her first two years of college.

“I am currently the Community Outreach Coordinator at Society of Women in Engineering (SWE). My role is to expand SWE beyond the UW campus and work on a local scale. We connect SWE with K-12 schools and inspire younger girls to become engineers.”

As an officer of a female-led national organization, she feels the need to encourage future generations of women to close the unequal STEM gap.

“There is a a sheer majority of men in my STEM lecture halls including my professors. When it comes to team activities, men and women would only group with friends of the same gender,” she said “Being a woman or a man shouldn’t be barrier in teamwork and in leading one’s desired profession.”

In the summer after her freshman year, Jackie was a Material and Fabrication Intern at Boeing with the help of the Alliances for Learning and Vision for Underrepresented Americans (ALVA) program at the University of Washington — the program aids underrepresented post-freshmen engineers to acquire a summer internship.

In her application, Jackie went through a strenuous process of sending in her resume, writing an essay, and having a “nerve-wrecking” interview with representatives from Boeing and the College of Engineering. In the end, her hard work paid off: she and 14 other freshmen entered the company of their dreams in the summer of 2017.

“As a Material and Fabrication Intern, I worked on the product development in a smaller Boeing office in Mulkilteo, Washington. My team and I worked on developing new materials for the engine nacelle, which is like an engine casing. This includes coming up with better high-temperature materials and acoustic properties because the goal is to make a cheaper and quieter engine nacelle. We were also the bridge between the Research & Development and the manufacturing stage. Here, we analyzed the R&D and implement the necessary research onto a new design of a plane.”

Her internship allowed Jackie to work on side projects. “I was part of an intern-only design project where we designed a new freighter plane. I was the propulsion lead in which I focused on the engine and engine nacelle.”

One of Jackie’s takeaway from her Boeing internship is her determination to actualize a future in human space travel. To her, the excitement behind sending humans to Mars is more than just about the hype; it is also a trajectory that opens to new forms of humanity.

“In the 1960s, we had a Space Race where we sent people to the moon; there was a great momentum in space travel and it was also a time when the number of people in STEM skyrocketed. However, as political leadership changes and more social priorities to focus on, the Space Race died down due to the lack of funding. Now in popular culture, you have characters like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos who are reviving this mission in their companies, SpaceX and Blue Origin respectively; I’m very intrigued by the idea of sending people to Mars because I believe that humans will eventually have a place in space. This project is the next step for people and should be America’s focus.”

With an AA degree to look forward to, Jackie is on her way to building the space travel dream a plausible reality for all: “There is a difference between sending people to space and sending people to space safely.” One of her biggest aspirations is to be working with the space crew and designing habitats on Mars.

This summer, she will be rejoining Boeing (again!) as a Sophomore Intern in Oklahoma City!

Jackie Marquette and her race to Space was originally published in Var City UW on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This article is written by Abby Huang who is an Informatics Junior at the University of Washington

New Technology will come with new techniques of political advertising, and with it comes unpredictable responsibilities and ramifications that demand the cooperation of many stakeholders. In 2017, the United States of America formally accused Russia of interference in the 2016 presidential elections; a landmark discovery that immediately resulted in several rounds of sanctions against Russia. However, when it came to addressing how exactly the Russians were able to infiltrate American politics on this new front of social media, not the lawmakers, tech billionaires, or the general public were prepared. The series of events and decisions that unfolded brought to light an important case study of how an increasingly polarized political environment no longer moderated by television, introduces new risk to consider.

The most recently filed indictment in July from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of collusion between Trump, his associates, and Russian interests, made Russia’s intervention during the 2016 U.S. presidential elections undeniable. Detailed reports cited Facebook, the largest social network of over two billion members, as the major and critical platform to the Russian operation (41 times compared to Twitter’s 9 mentions in the 37-page indictment). Following Facebook’s disclosure of foreign ad purchases and the findings of hundreds fake accounts, it became clear that Facebook’s unparalleled powerhouse of information distribution was used by at least 13 Russians and 3 Russian companies in a scheme to subvert the democratic process. Facebook had unwittingly become the biggest driver of Russian messages, ensnaring millions of participants in its social experiment. The list of offenses grew, including cyber attacks on 21 state voting systems, hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) servers and subsequent leaks of Hillary Clinton’s emails before the November elections. This article will focus on analyzing the elements of risk involving Facebook’s tools and it’s platform that allowed Russian infiltration of U.S. politics as it did, bringing into question some of the glaring insecurities and susceptibility of our destabilized electoral systems.

In 2016, the once majorly anticipated presidential run of Hillary Clinton became undermined by a series of discrediting campaign of disinformation, email hacks, and pro-Trump messaging. In parallel was a seemingly inexplicable rise of an unlikely prospect, shaking up traditional politics in the two years leading up to the elections. Donald J. Trump burst into public eye as the first presidential candidate since the collapse of the U.S.S.R to controversially admire the deeply unpopular and undemocratic agenda of the vindictive Russian leader Vladimir Putin. His desire to do business with Russia despite international criticism of how Russia was handling human right affairs, led to the start of a very mutual understanding between the two (Frenkel, et al). What ensued was a series of contact with Trump’s associates during the campaign involving a range of Russian intermediaries, including oligarchs, diplomats, former military officers, and suspected agents. Experts describe the engagements as “loosely coordinated effort[s] by Russian intelligence both to get insight into the campaign and to influence it.” Donald Trump, now President of the United States, has repeatedly dismissed any possibility of collusion throughout the campaign and investigation, proclaiming it an unfair, “witch hunt.”

It is important to understand the motivation behind Russia’s interest in the election in the first place. Mr. Putin was a former K.G.B. officer with a known resentment for American “superiority” and nostalgia for Russia’s lost power. He was irritated by The United States’ support and funding of democratic movements and anti-Russian forces throughout the 2000s. When Russia started invading Ukraine in 2014, American’s condemnation of his practices led to the Kremlin’s particularly open hostility towards U.S. relations. One of the biggest proponents of democracy in Russia happened to be Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state: “[Russians] deserve the right to have their voices heard and their votes counted, and that means they deserve free, fair, transparent elections and leaders who are accountable to them” (Shane, et al). Since then, Putin has openly expressed his exasperation with the polarizing American “democracy” and a domineering Hillary Clinton. In the background, Russia had begun practicing a sort of cyber warfare in hacking and influenced operations throughout Eastern Europe, before launching their attack (Shane, et al).

While Facebook had always been present in the dissemination of political information, the growing interference from Russian forced Zuckerberg to consider more dangers of such an embedded platform. In 2014, Putin-mandated a St. Petersburg company called the IRA (Internet Research Agency), which began manipulating the Facebook platform to create fake accounts based on stolen identities from social media accounts. The group then used those to populate and promote Facebook pages rallying angsty users around social and economic issues. One such page called “Woke Blacks,” cited Clinton’s supposed hostility to African-Americans as a reason to abstain from voting. It was an operation composed of 80–100 competitively compensated, young Russian employees who worked round-the-clock shifts to copy and create propaganda that emulated disturbed Americans with remarkable efficiency. (Shane, et al) They operated with explicit instructions to tarnish and criticize Clinton and other candidates while bolstering the support of divisive candidates like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. A pattern of angry, corrupt or crazed Clinton memes emerged while Trump was portrayed as resolute, honest, and capable candidate. The Russian operation also boosted other divisive candidates such as Jill Stein, from the Green Party to deter even more votes away from Clinton (Shane, et al).

Facebook’s first acknowledgment of the potential misuse of their tools wasn’t until 2017. The initial $100,000 they found spent on ads appeared negligible compared to the tens of millions committed by the Trump and Clinton campaigns. But the Russians’ impact came from the viral spread of triggering propaganda, which was free. Resulting investigations discovered their reach amassed to 2,700 fake Facebook accounts, 80,000 posts, in which many of them shared an impeccable resonance with the well-defined target audience. The estimated number of reach by Facebook grew to a shocking 126 million Americans, considering that 137 million real people ended up voting in the 2016 presidential election (Shane, et al).

Starting in 2015, the Russians’ IRA “specialists” used a combination of stolen and rerouted PayPal accounts to pay for Facebook ads to promote viral posts, which totaled up to hundreds of thousands of dollars on outreach efforts. The operation became increasingly well-staffed and prioritized, seeing at one point over $1.25 million a month was being spent under the direction of a CEO who met frequently with Putin (WIRED). In the summer of 2016 the IRA evolved its efforts into organizing and coordinating political rallies within the US, pretending to be activists themselves. From several time zones away, they orchestrated large attendances by promoting their made-up events through a network of fake Facebook accounts and partnering with admins of other well established groups or communities. Rallies were held in multiple cities like DC with specific agendas such as convincing crowds that Hillary Clinton would turn the country over to Sharia law. At such events, there were actors who were paid to make specific demonstration or hold controversial signs of misattributed quotes.

In an official September blog post, Facebook disclosed 3,000 advertisements posted on the social network between June 2015 and May 2017 that were linked to Russia. The Washington Post confirmed that the subsequent ads came from a Russian company called the Internet Research Agency. CNN later reported that a portion of those ads were geographically targeted to reach residents of Michigan and Wisconsin, in which less than 1% of the closest defeats were key to securing Trump’s victory among the Electoral College. Trump defeated Clinton by a narrow margin of 10,700 and 22,700 votes out of over 4.8 million total cast, respective in both battleground states (CNN).

A Buzzfeed analysis discovered that in the three months following the elections, the top fake election news stories on Facebook had more engagement than the top stories reported by long-time established news sources such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post. The IRA’s efforts had undermined the very foundation in which consumers get their information. By September 2016, even widely followed and respected public figures like the Pope were sharing

discrete forms of disinformation created by the IRA (Madrigal). Facebook’s platform had additionally enabled the business of fake news even further by allowing them to profit from the viral sharing. Not only was the campaign’s engagement extensive throughout the U.S., its opportunity via Facebook had begun to inspire other manipulations. In the days following up to the critical election, the same reporter had traced at least 100 pro–Donald Trump sites to a town of 45,000 people in Macedonia where a group of teenagers were making money off posting about the election. These children were unknowingly furthering the Russian’s original initiatives that helped Trump overwhelm Clinton’s hold on winning (Madrigal). A separate study from the Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, found that a verified six of over 470 publicly known Russia-linked Facebook pages had been shared 340 million times. Given these figures, simple multiplication puts the potential shares of this propaganda across billions of pages (Madrigal).

To this day, it is not proved nor disproved that there was collusion between Russia and Trump’s presidential win. Heated disagreement from expert pundits to analysts to voters are unsure of what the actual impact of the meddling resulted in. Whether or not it caused voter suppression, changed individual’s votes, or played a role in the difference of less than 100,000 votes in three swing states, what is known is that the percent of Republicans who view Vladimir Putin favorably has doubled from 11 percent to 25 percent, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center. Meanwhile, another October 2017 poll showed that 63 percent of Democrats and just 38 percent of Republicans said they saw “Russia’s power and influence” as a significant threat to the United States” (Shane, et al). What’s important now is to learn what can be done from the situation and apply it to the future decision-making and strategy at, not only Facebook, but across the sector.

This portion of the paper will look at the specific risk exposure Facebook should consider over this period of time.

Operational Risk: The risk of direct or indirect inadequate or failed internal processes by people and/or systems (can be external). In terms of people, with multiple counts of employees and leaked companies memos discussing the company’s disregard of safety and responsibility as Facebook pursued exponential growth. The management of people at Facebook has become a risk in question as Facebook is experiencing a change in retention and attracting the top talent to avoid such scandals. More and more people are considering leaving the company that was once widely considered the place in Silicon Valley where nobody wanted to leave. In terms of people, before official hearings where the result of evidence could properly be addressed, Facebook’s chairman and C.E.O., Mark Zuckerberg, had over and over again publicly maintained that the amount of Russian content that had been disseminated on social media was too small to matter. But subsequent investigations from other organizations and on their own part, discovered evidence that he had gravely, again, misunderstood the gravity of the situation — with estimations of up to 150 million Americans being exposed to the Russian propaganda on their platforms. In terms of addressing inadequate systems or break down of automated systems, Facebook has been under fire for more stringent monitoring of abusive content while also balancing the line between not intruding on political freedom of speech.

Strategic Risk: Facebook faces different risks from the rapid speed of disruptive innovation enabled by new emerging personalization technology that may outpace their means of managing them without making significant changes to their business model. It’s powerful business model based on its ability to gather personal data and effectively target ads to remarkably specific demographics has made Facebook very successful. Facebook made $40 billion in revenue in 2017, of which $39.9 billion was from their digital advertisements product. However, with the onslaught of scrutiny from multiple fronts about whether or not their algorithm for bringing custom, desirable, albeit filtered and easily manipulated, news to users may require reconsideration of the strategy that made it so profitable.

Program Risk: Facebook’s most successful programs like News Feed and ad sale products to even “I Voted” buttons have to be assessed for their range of impact, good and bad alike. Current algorithms are dependent on shares over comments and likes, and prioritization of emotionally responsive content, like videos and photos, caused virality and unprecedented growth of engagement. Facebook has the power to bring new traffic to sites by 70%, owning media distribution (Madrigal). For example in 2015, Breitbart went from a Facebook page of 100,000 to 1.5 million likes over the course of a year, eventually outperforming the New York Times interactions by millions in July. The key metric for Facebook’s powerful engagement tools is by aggregating interactions to predict and push homogenous content onto users under the premise of personalization. This, however, eventually perpetuates a “Filter Bubble,” as described by Eli Pariser since back in 2011 (Madrigal). There is substantial risk in how a curated set of facts can deter public debate and how this formula for engagement can be manipulated. This is the opposite of what users want when they look to Facebook to openly connect with the world, and it may no longer be the acceptable standard for it’s predictive models. Facebook’s platform had hyper-engaged what was originally a weak following into a powerful political force. Since 2012 Facebook has demonstrated its ability to impact electoral politics when a team composed of researchers from University of California, San Diego and Facebook published a study arguing that Facebook’s “I Voted” button design had led to a substantial increase in youth voter engagement and participation of the 2012 general election. Facebook has to be more transparent with how they will responsibly use as well as restrain this power in the future (Madrigal).

Activity risk: The action of posting fake news which Facebook then automatically promotes has created a complex struggle with what activity it will show, allow, and enable. Cases of unmanaged activity risk ranges from selling unlicensed guns to broadcasting live killings, to giving social media fame to anyone. The company’s business depends on people being highly engaged with what is posted on its sites, which needs to be assessed further, especially to reduce foreign manipulation (Frenkel, et al). Facebook has since hired 3000 people worldwide to help monitor content and review reports of harm or harassment. It has also changed its advertising policy so that any ad that mentions a candidate’s name goes through a more stringent vetting process.

Reputational: Facebook’s brand seems to be dealing with numerous scandals surrounding exposure of personal user data, abuse of their tools for political corruption, distrust of internal employee with many executive level people who are leaving due to disagreement on how to handle the problems that Facebook keeps failing to mitigate. Others include: loss of trust over its ability to handle user content and the spread of hate speech that led to real genocide in Myanmar. The resulting bad publicity has damaged Facebook’s reputation, leading to the #DeleteFacebook campaign and depreciating faith in the CEO. Zuckerberg and company officials were demanded to testify before Congress in the fall of 2018, under public pressure.

Asset: Facebook has seen its stock drop nearly 40 percent from July of 2018 (CNBC).

Regulatory: Facebook’s constant run in with Congress proved to have substantial risk when it sold user data in the Cambridge Analytica scandal who fined them and set the stage for stricter regulatory changes and scrutiny. This will affect the way Facebook manages content, user data, and also how they produce and deliver upon new products.

Macroeconomic Risk: Uncertainty in volatility and political leadership in national and international markets holds Facebook subject to constant, large-scale response and mitigation in order to prevent misuse of their platform, as well as anticipation of new requirements. This extra cost and surveillance can limit their growth original opportunities.

Conclusion

In many ways, Facebook in it’s short history as an enterprise has made significant efforts to address the different types of risks it has faced across many risk categories. However as always, with new technology, processes, and culture shifts comes a need to renew risk assessments of existing protocols to best mitigate and also take advantage of the risk presented. Anticipating risk isn’t always a bad thing — and in the case of Facebook, taking the time make sure their execution is aligning with their business goals will help them get back on track while they are under acute speculation from not only their customers, the government, and the world. The analysis and recommendations here are meant to prepare and complement the fixes that Facebook are facing, in their journey through this patch of uncertainty.

Facebook on Russian Election Hacking: A Risk Analysis was originally published in Var City UW on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Letter from the Editor

I still remember the moment when I welcomed the Google Home in my living room. Like many enthusiasts, I was enticed by the idea of being able to talk to an artificially intelligent device. When my package arrived, I was quick to open the box like a kid on Christmas Day. I nervously rummaged through the instructions just to find out that I only needed to say “Hey Google” to bring it to life.

Then, magic appeared. The newborn blinked and uttered its first words.

It was the same “wow” feeling I had ten years ago when I swiped to unlock my first iPhone, like fireworks that opened my eyes to all the promises of technology. My conversation with Google started with simple jokes, rain-checks, and music requests. Now, when I come home from school on a rainy Seattle day, I don’t have to drag clumps of dirt across the house to reach the light switch. Instead, I can simply say, “Hey Google, turn on the lights.”

Months after, I was transformed by this AI infant. I somehow started losing parts of my conscience: time became a series of meetings, spacial reality diminished, and my sensory repertoire re-organized to experience new forms of reality. Our relationship was either a blurred line between human and technology or a fusion between man and machine.

Blaise Pascal once said,

“What is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either.”

If Pascal could sit with us today, would he have asked,

“What is man in the face of technology?”

This question became the inspiration for Var City’s first issue. Although eight stories will not fully actualize the extent of the future, it is our goal to keep the conversation driving beyond classroom walls. From an analysis of Biometrics to a commentary on existential crisis in User Experience, our stories are written by the design and tech community at the University of Washington.

I tremble with joy as I write my first open letter as the proud Editor-in-Chief of this publication. To my readers, I hope this first issue will bring you new perspectives and fruitful conversations regarding the future of technology. To everyone who has been a part of this journey, I would like to thank you whole-heartedly.

Yours truly,

Var City UW

This article is written by Lukas Sexton, Alison Buchanan, and Sondra Yancey, who are graduate students at the Department of Human-Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Design Problem

Design Question:

How might we help increase the physical safety of students involved with direct student services in low resource and under-served classrooms?

Design Prompt:

How might we make schools safer?

We began this process with the following premise: Schools are overcrowded, and understaffed. Teachers lack the necessary resources to help students academically excel while simultaneously being tasked with managing the physical safety and mental well-being of a wide range of students. We were particularly interested in exploring safety concerns revolving around students that need extra support in the classroom. These students access direct student services such as the Counseling Center or Occupational Therapist etc.

Objectives:

1. Conduct research to better understand the problem.
2. Design a solution in the form of a physical tool that increases the safety of elementary students accessing direct student services.
3. Test and iterate our solution into a higher fidelity prototype.

Research Questions:

1. What are the specific concerns that teachers think when a special education student is escalating behavior?
2. What are other safety concerns that teachers have?
3. What are pain points within the direct student services that create barriers for students and teachers to get help prior, during, and after escalated behavior takes place?
4. What resources are available for teachers and staff when they are feeling overwhelmed in an understaffed classroom with special education students?
5. What environmental factors lead to a child having escalated behavior?

User Research

Students with disabilities are often given tactile toys to help them focus.

Our initial target users were elementary school staff, teachers, and students interacting with direct student services. To help answer our research questions our team conducted interviews, auto-ethnography, and in-person classroom observations. We felt that these mixed methods would give us insight into the frustrations teachers face on both a daily basis and during emergencies.

Phone Interview (n=2)
We interviewed a school Occupational Therapist (OT) and a Kindergarten Teacher (KT) over the phone for about 30 minutes respectively. The OT expressed frustration over classroom layouts leading to a distracting and overwhelming classroom environment for her students. She emphasized a desire to find a better way to communicate directions and lessons to students. The KT mentioned that her students with disabilities are often given tactile toys to help them focus. Both the KT and the OT expressed concerns about students in the class falling over or tripping which is especially troublesome for students who have less control of their limbs or have difficulty maneuvering due to vision issues.

Autoethnography (n=2)
Our first participant, a third-grade teacher, provided us with a written journal gathered over two days. She reported incidents of students fighting, bullying each other, throwing balls at each other, and leaving the classroom without permission. This participant expressed frustration over lacking the time or tools to manage her students adequately. A different third-grade teacher, our second participant, took photos of safety concerns on her elementary school grounds. For more details, please see Figure 3 or the Appendix.

In Person Interview (n=6)
In a separate school, staff discussed a variety of other safety concerns; such as student hygiene. Teachers were also concerned about students leaving through many of the exit doors and unauthorized adults entering the school. The school counselor noted that she had seen an increase in self-harm as a coping mechanism for students. She has also noticed an increase in students that do not have the skills to regulate their own emotions. She described to us the methods she uses to teach students how to name feelings, develop empathy, and self-soothe. She mentioned she wanted a “parent kit” to pass on follow-up instructions to parents. All teachers acknowledged they have a good school support system and can rely on each other for help. For example, they have a dedicated safe space classroom, also known as the “Turn Around Center (TAC),” with an open door policy that allows students to choose to ways to calm down; such as using stretchy fabric, elastic bands or a weighted blanket. Please See Figure 5 for more details.

Direct Observation (3.5 hours)
We observed a 3rd-grade classroom filled with distracted or emotionally disruptive students professionally kept on track with the lesson plan. None of the children observed that day had any escalated behavior, but if they had chosen so, they could have voluntarily visited the Turn Around Center (TAC) for a few minutes. In the TAC, we saw students enter on their own and choose a 5–10 minute activity. The teacher gave one-on-one help with a student’s work while providing positive verbal reinforcement.

Students in the Turn Around Center calmed down using tactile tools such as stretchy fabric or elastic bands.

Redefining the Problem

After conducting our research, we triangulated our findings and found common themes across participant data. The majority of our participants identified elementary school students’ inability to recognize and regulate their emotions as a huge safety concern.

Goals
Teachers and counselors noted that they teach emotional regulation frequently in counseling sessions and the classroom. Their ultimate goal is to help students learn to use these strategies on their own.

Barriers
Counselors noted that emotional regulation reaches beyond the classroom setting. Students look to their parents for guidance, but often times parents are not properly prepared to deal with their child’s emotions or are unable to regulate their own emotions. Counselors make an effort to schedule appointments with parents to provide guidance on how to address emotional health. Unfortunately, parents struggle to find the time to come to these appointments.

Needs
Counselors and teachers wanted a way to pass on their knowledge and resources to parents. They lack a tool that continuously engages parents in their child’s emotional development.

Ideation

Updated Design Question:

“How might we design a tool that helps counselors engage parents in addressing their students’ emotional health?”

Pivot
After analyzing our results, we found that physical safety wasn’t as big of an issue as we thought. Instead most teachers and staff expressed concern about student’s emotional regulation and the need to involve parents to be a part of the solution. We also found that teachers in both high and low income schools had access to a surprising amount of resources and felt supported by their community.

Narrowing our Scope
With our ideas and insights, we formed a list of design requirements for our solution to narrow our scope. To ensure that we kept our personas in mind, we used a Value Proposition Canvas to identify our persona’s goals, pains, and gains within our problem space. We also used a Business Model Canvas to think deeper about our users, allies, and resources (see Appendix for details).

Before coming up with possible solutions to the design question, our team utilized design methods to help identify and reframe essential components. We used the technique “Scenario Mapping” (Figure 6) to help us better understand how our future solution might fit into our users’ workflow. With this in mind we brainstormed with prompts to warm-up our idea generation skills; for example “What would a solution to this problem look like in the 1800’s?”

Design Requirements

1. The solution should encourage parent engagement on a regular basis.
2. The solution should create a dialogue between parents and children about emotional regulation.
3. The solution should not be cost prohibitive, as it should be designed for users with varying levels of income.

Sketching

With our design requirements in mind, we had a group sketching session. Each of us produced six sketches of a possible solution. We then used a viability- feasibility matrix to identify our top three most viable and feasible solution ideas (please see Appendix).

Parent Input

To further help us narrow down our ideas, we realized we needed to get some input from parents as they had become a more dominant stakeholder in our refined design question. We made a quick video pitching three of our top ideas to see what three parents liked and disliked about each option (see Appendix).

All three parents were enthusiastic about the emotional card game, but we discovered many similar products existed on the market already. For inspiration, we re-visited our initial user research, and as a result, we decided to explore interactions involving emotional cards and physical components incorporated together.

Back to the Drawing Board

Our team had one more group sketching session and finally decided on an emotion identification tool with a tactile “Pull” component. We felt that this met the goals of all three of our personas as it serves as a vessel for counselor information, and provides an engaging, tactile experience for both parents and children. As seen in Figure 9, we created our prototype nicknamed Emotional Defintion Dude (E.D.D.).

Prototype

Feature 1: Emotion Identifiers

Each face represents a different emotion and is attached to a string that hangs out of the box. Once a user identifies their feelings, they pull on that string.

Feature 2: Elastic Bands

Bands are attached to the end of the string to create resistance on the line when users pull on the emotional identifier from the other side.

Feature 3: Emotional Prompt Card

Hidden inside the box are cards attached to strings. When a participant pulls on the string, their Emotional Prompt card is revealed, and once they let go, it will promptly get tucked back inside. For this prototype version, the cards are intentionally left vague so that participants can tell us about the content they would want on the card.

Testing

Because our solution included several stakeholders, we ran usability tests with two separate user groups: parents and counselors. First, we identified our research questions then worked to answer them by conducting usability testing (see Appendix).

Usability Research Questions

1. Is it easy for users to discover how to use this product?
2. Can users successfully access the resource cards?
3. Does the task flow make sense?
4. Is this something users would use?
5. Is this something users find valuable and engaging?
6. Wat kinds of reactions to the product are common across both user groups?
7. What kind of emotions and content would users like to see on/in this artifacts?

Counselor Testing Results
The counselors could picture parents using E.D.D. to engage with their child and discuss emotions. They were concerned about the box’s sturdiness and noted that the band resistance was too tricky. Overall the counselors found the interaction to be “fun” and “novel.” They thought this would translate into children using the prototype. Counselors requested there was a more extensive array of emotions than what we presented on the prototype.

Parent Testing Results
Parents found it natural to use this prototype. They liked the idea of physically engaging the child in an activity that might help both the parent and the child cool down at that moment. Parents used the prototype as an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the feelings the child had, reinforce positive behaviors, and encourage thinking about how the child’s actions affect those around them.

Overall, parents liked the tactile nature of the prototype. The parents decided they would want the prototype to present a physical pathway of choices for how to handle an emotion when a string is pulled. They thought this might help establish a mental path for their child to remember for the future. Parents wanted their children to get some reward for interacting with the prototype and were concerned that without this, the older children would memorize the cards and would not want to communicate with the prototype.

The parents used the prototype as an opportunity to:

Gain a depper understanding of the child’s feelings.

Reinforce positive behaviors

Encourage thinking about how the child’s actions affect those around them.

Iterations and Further Steps

Adjustments made
Based off of our user testing results, we iterated our prototype and made the following changes:
1. Added visual elements such as instructions with icons on the prompt cards.
2. Personified E.D.D. and adjusted the elasticity of the bands to make them easier to pull.
3. Put the cards in plastic holders, which allows users to swap out content and attached them to
the string to create a pathway of step by step prompts for users to follow along. This
interaction breaks up the information and may

Future Iterations

1. Explore the possibility of integrating technology and designing of accessibility.
2. Turn the interaction into a game — make positive emotions the end goal, and provide rewards when the child reaches that goal.
3. Create more negative emotion strings to help the children deal with harder feelings.
4. Test product with children & parents from different socioeconomic backgrounds.

Measurements Of Success
We believe parents and children will successfully use E.D.D. to facilitate conversations about how to name and deal with emotions. We will know this to be true when the child’s frequency of being sent to the counseling center to deal with emotional outbursts decreases by 50%.

Acknowledgements

To the many participants and educators who donated their precious time to collaborate on our User Centered Design project, we wanted to say “THANK YOU!” The perspectives that were provided to us by Subject Matter Experts (SME) were crucial in our decision-making process. Therefore we are grateful to have received positive reception about E.D.D. amongst SME; as one teacher stated:

“I (would) love E.D.D. as a tool to help parents focus on healthily helping their kid process emotions at home.”

Helping Children Emotionally Develop: A Design Thinking Case Study About Creating A Tool To Assist… was originally published in Var City UW on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hey there,

We’re excited that you want to write for our online journal and we love to get you featured!

Please read through the instructions before submitting:

What we publish

We pride ourselves in being UW’s first-ever Design and Technology journal that empowers our students to share their knowledge with the UW community.

We accept original articles related to design and tech. Don’t have an idea? Here are some kickstarters:

• Opinion articles about technology’s latest trends (i.e. Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, API, electric cars, autopilot, sustainability etc)
• Learning curves / Teaching tips / Things you learnt in your journey
• Inspirational stories about a tech professional or yourself
• Interview with a tech professional
• Have a smashing UX Case Study? Share with us
• Personal story (i.e. your journey navigating through the tech industry)
• Your Top 10 list (or Top 3, 5, n…)

We love to hear your creative voices too! You can submit a :

• Short story
• Poetry
• Photojournal

Publish your story

1. You must be a UW student
2. Send your article in the form of MS Word/Google Doc to varcity@uw.edu using your UW-NetID. Attach all relevant images in the form of PNG/JPG/JPEG.
3. Congrats! Our team of experienced editors will polish your work and submit within 3–5 business days.

How To Write For Var City was originally published in Var City UW on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.