Building persuasive artefacts to stop overthinking
In the Persuasive and emotional design studio, our facilitator gave us an assignment where we were assigned fellow student, we were instructed to understand them and their bad habits and we should build a persuasive product from scratch for changing a bad habit of a fellow student based on research. After interviewing the user, the bad habit my user wants to overcome is overthinking.
Building an Understanding of the user and the context
I understood user problem after interviewing user, she has issues related to overthinking, she believes that overthinking is triggering other problems in her life. To understand the overthinking problem in depth, I have conducted interviews with 8 other participants .basically each interview lasted between half an hour to one hour. Methods I chose to interview were a semi-structured interview of open-ended questions and few structured interviews with leading questions. Interviews gave me the new perspective to the problem, in few cases I have found similar patterns and in rest completely different Patterns. I have segregated data into drives, motivations, blocks, believes and feels. I also found few pressure points where drives and blocks were same and interconnected.
Mapping of drives and blocks: I have mapped all Drives statements and blocks statements collected from interviews.
Drives: The common drive I have observed among all participants to get rid of overthinking is to find the balance between overthinking and underthinking, they believe the optimal thinking is necessary for survival but when thinking exceeds its limit they need balance. The other common drives to overcome overthinking are
- To be confident.
- Fearless, risk taker and good decision maker.
- Maintain mental peace
- Free from illogical assumptions.
- Improve focus and concentration.
- To have a healthy personal and professional life.
Blocks: Blocks are things which stop people from achieving their goals and making people continue to overthink. Most common cause of overthinking I observed among all participants is “log kya kahengey? (What people will say?)” And loneliness. I have observed blocks occur because of two factors from the research, internal factors and external factors. Internal factors which cause blocks like
• Low self-confidence
• Management issues
• Loneliness
• Bad experiences
• Insecurities, inferiority issues, trust issues.
• Comparison, Ego issues, and Self-judgment.
• Assumptions and expectations.
External factors which cause blocks are
- Family issues
- Financial issues
- Others behaviour
- The communication gap between people.
- Responsibilities to be taken care of in life.
- Surroundings, spaces and environment trigger overthinking.
- Judgmental statements by others.
- Ill-treatment by others.
Persuasive flow
In Persuasive and emotional design studio I got introduced to cognitive biases and PET tools. Studying cognitive biases helped me in understanding my user better and her cognitive biases realted to overthinking . I have made maps to understand overthinking cycle of the user and came up with the persuasive flow to balance thoughts and thinking.Persuasive flow to break the overthinking loop, the map shows how user thoughts get transformed into overthinking with triggers .
Persuasive flow to stop overthinking
- Stop and observe the thoughts
2. Filter your thoughts whether it’s necessary to think about it or not
3. If thoughts are constructive channelize them for good actions and work on it by reflecting upon those thoughts.
4. If thoughts and thinking pattern are negative or useless thoughts, if it is taking you nowhere then break the loop of thoughts.
5. Break the loop of thoughts by distraction, meditation, mindfulness and by focusing on the present.
6.Through consistency and rigourous practice of above techniques,we can control over thinking.
Artefact ideation and iterations
According to my research people overthinking can be stopped either by reflecting on thoughts and distracting thoughts.so I have come up with the idea of a mobile APP called balance, which helps the user in achieving desired goals by distracting them by using gamification, playing meditation games and concentration games. Another feature of APP is to reflect, reflect thoughts by writing them in the same APP. Later I came up with two concepts and finalized them, the first concept is Zen frame and the second concept is horns music cap.
Final Artefacts
Artefact 1: Zen frame
Use scenario: overthinking which occurs when people are lonely and preferable for people who realize that they are overthinking.
Zen frame looks like a thick photo frame, it is a digital smart board which has a voice, I have used Monk avatar to stop overthinking. It works with artificial intelligence and thermal sensor technology.it also consists of the speaker which plays meditation music. Monk is like a virtual wise man, which helps users to stop overthink by making people reflect on thoughts and distracting them from unnecessary thoughts.it senses the presence of people in the room by thermal sensing technology.it detects the user’s voice by voice recognition technology, it can be synchronized with Google calendars and other planning APPS.so whenever user is idle and starts overthinkg, Monk assigns tasks to user ,it also reminds to work on daily goals and monthly goals instead of overthinking.
Monk works with AI, it is fed with a lot of data, and it depends on deep learning, so it asks so many questions to the user to give proper solution and advice. Zen frame also provides a feature to flush useless thoughts, which gives user sense of power and feeling of overcoming overthinking. It also helps users in meditation, instructs users to do exercise to stop overthinking like yoga, breathing exercises. Virtual monk helps the user to reflect on thoughts, he asks user thoughts and enters that data into the journal. Zen frame keeps the environment of using positive and gives positive Zen vibes, it takes the user from overthinking zone to Zen zone.
Usecase scenarios:
Artefact 2: Horns cap
Use scenario: Preferable for people who do not realize the state of overthinking.
Horns cap works with brain sensing technology, the sensors in the brain detects the state of brain and thoughts; it detects the overthinking state of users. When sensors detect overthinking pattern then horns will come out of the cap, as users overthinking increases their horns size will increase, horns cap has also coping mechanism to deal with overthinking by using music therapy. There will be earphones inside the cap; it plays the soothing and calming music of nature to reduce overthinking.
Horns cap is for people who do not know when they are overthinking, it is like jerk and external trigger to stop people from overthinking. I have used element of sound like car horn sound(less decibels) to distract them and keep them aware of overthinking, it all happens inside the cap with help of ear phones present inside the cap.It stops people getting into the loop of overthinking.
Conclusion:
Persuasive and emotional design helped in understanding the user better. Persuasion is all about bringing behavioural change and helping users in decision making. It takes time to change bad habits but taking small steps towards change by persuading behaviour might help in achieving long term goals.