11. Final Design Process
Thesis concept & questions
I am creating a couple of daily asynchronous communication systems that improve the connection between parents and children who live far away. We are living in a fast-changing society. We often forget what is important to us and who we are. Social media is playing an essential role in collecting, showing, and sharing our lives and memory. However, regardless of how important memory is to you, your post keeps being pushed away and disregarded. Also, most social media systems just want to add new users, rather than focusing on better relationships between the family, which is the most critical unit in society. It is difficult to find a product that makes me look back on memory and promotes deep relationships and better communication. Therefore, I want to motivate people to keep in touch with their family every day and make them share their daily life. This thought leads me to think about an idea: What if I could contact my parents every day? I have two design questions: How can I improve the connection between parents and children who live far away? How can I motivate the user access their memories with family more often?
Research
- Family relationships
Through the research, I learned that the truth in conversation is not that important. If you open your mind while you have a problem with your loved one and you first acknowledge the other person’s claim, you can easily solve the problem without hurting your and your lover’s feelings. In a book “Feeling Good Together,” an eminent psychiatrist, David D. Burns, M.D., insists that empathy, assertiveness, and respect are three critical conditions for good communication. If you learn to look at others more positively and realistically, you can easily resolve conflicts and make a rewarding relationship. He also suggests ‘one-minute practice’ to diagnose where the relationship was wrong. In ‘one-minute practice,’ one person becomes ‘speaker,’ and the other becomes ‘listener.’ The speaker speaks his or her feelings for 30 seconds. The speaker says whatever he or she wants, and it pours out the emotions in his or her heart. The listener sits quietly and focuses politely on the other’s words. When the speaker finishes, the listener rephrases what the speaker’s said, and the listener confirms the speaker’s feelings (Burns 49).
- Digital media
I, as a designer, would like to inform people about the harmful effects of existing technology and motivate people to bring a better tomorrow by reminiscing. In “When We Are No More: How Digital Memory Is Shaping Our Future” a renowned historian Abby Smith Rumsey states that people today feel overwhelmed by information due to social media and the World Wide Web.(Rumsey 14). Moreover, social media is popular these days. People share and showcase their life on Facebook, Instagram, and so on. It is easy to take a picture wherever and whenever we want because most people have a smartphone. However, we never look back on the photographs. The development of technology has disregarded and devaluated our precious memories. The precedent with the opposite view of this phenomenon is a director and entrepreneur Cesar Kuriyama’s project “One second every day.” Kuriyama shoots one-second video of the highlight of each day and edits them together into a montage. It allows him easy access to his past experiences.
Prototyping
I made a prototype that a couple of asynchronous communication devices. A parent uses one device, and another is used by a child who lives far away from parents. It is a digital photo frame generally with a mounted web camera. Only at a specific time (the user can set the time), it turns to a video mail communication device. It records video automatically for one minute at the specified time and sends the video mail at the specified time. For example, I am in New York; the device will automatically play a video mail from my father at 10:00 pm New York time. After that, the device starts recording for one minute and sends it to my father. Then, father’s device will play my video mail at 10:00 pm his time, and the father’s device will record his message for one minute. This series of recordings is repeated every day.
I am testing this concept with my parents. My mother said: “Keeping in touch with my son on a daily basis makes me feel we are close to each other even though we are far away.” “It seems that our intimacy has increased because we can share each other’s daily life.” “I don’t want to show my face, I look older on the screen than I am, but I like to watch your face.” “Do I have to do it all at the same time? Sometimes I forget, and sometimes I’m busy.” My wife also joined this experiment with her parents and told me that she wants to share what she sees now with her parents.
Through the asynchronous daily communication, my parents started sharing their experiences, hobbies, my hometown, and working place. I noticed that my father never smile and always looks serious. My mother showed my elementary school near our apartment while she commutes, and what was happening at home. Also, she recorded at her workroom because she spends a lot of time for making it. She told me a story about her piece. However, I mostly laid down on the bed because it is a late night, and my mother doesn’t like to see my tired face. Based on the findings of the experiment, I made a new prototype. I wanted to make a daily task suitable for daily routines with simple interaction.
I got an idea when I noticed that my mother checked her hair first few seconds of the video many times and my father never showed me the smile. It is a camera which is located on top of the mirror. People usually check their appearance in front of the mirror before they go out from home. When a user is in front of the mirror, the camera notifies him or her “Share your smile to your parents.” When she smiles, it starts recording for seven seconds. The camera sends the video to his or her family member’s email inbox automatically. For the feedback, many test users told me their parents would love this product. But, one participant told me this is a fake communication because it sends only smile.
Thanks to the advance of technology, we can easily connect with others no matter where we are. We can just turn on the phone and find the person and press the call button. It couldn’t be easier than that. However, I do not keep in touch enough with essential people in my life with many excuses. There are a lot of communication products and services, but those companies do not consider seriously about how to enhance the communication between people. I would like to nudge people to strengthen the connection rather than forcing them to call more often. With this product, you can start your day with a smile and send your greetings to your family every day.
The next step
I am going to create a mobile application or product because my family records at home, at new places, or while we commute. Therefore, I need to consider three different things: 1. Provide a daily question or conversation topic to lead a deeper communication and to discover and preserve the memories. 2. Find an attractive way to keep up this connection every day. 3. Choose the best time to send the message.
Thinking about a daily question or conversation topic can lead a deep conversation and be helpful for preserving the family history. The history will be a bridge to connect the different generations. Plus. I am looking for motivation for keeping up daily communication. Therefore, I am trying to come up with an idea about using different ways of game theory. For the last, my mother complaint about recording at a specific time limitation. Now the recording time is flexible so that they can share their vivid everyday life. I need to decide the best time to send the voice mail. I am going to test out this issue for the next step.
Production plan
I am thinking about making an mobile application. Therefore, I will decide a platform: Swift or HTML (Javascript) web application. My plan is that making and testing paper prototype until early January. Building an application until early March. I will keep iterating the application after building the application.
References
- Burns, David D. Feeling Good Together: the Secret to Making Troubled Relationships Work. Vermilion, 2009.
- Csikszentmihalyi, Mihalyi. “Why We Need Things.” History from Things: Essays on Material Culture, Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000, pp. 20–29.
- Kuriyama, Cesar. “One second every day.” Cesar Kuriyama: One second every day | TED Talk, www.ted.com/talks/cesar_kuriyama_one_second_every_day.
- Lorenz, Taylor. “Teens explain the world of Snapchat’s addictive streaks, where friendships live or die.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 14 Apr. 2017, www.businessinsider.com/teens-explain-snapchat-streaks-why-theyre-so-addictive-and-important-to-friendships-2017-4.
- Rumsey, Abby Smith. When We Are No More: How Digital Memory Is Shaping Our Future. Bloomsbury Press, 2016.
- Zichermann, Gabe, and Christopher Cunningham. Gamification by design: implementing game machanics in web and mobile apps. Oreilly & Assoc. Inc., 2011.
