Notes from Interview w/ John Zimmerman 9/8

As a way to begin our research, we familiarized ourselves with John Zimmerman’s work on the Reverse Alarm Clock, a tool designed to make the parents feel like better parents — by providing a moment for parenting (a bedtime ritual of setting the clock) as well as making them feel like they are raising responsible kids as well as ensuring they get enough sleep (because they aren’t being awoken by kids in the middle of the night) so they aren’t angry and impatient in the morning.

Reverse Alarm Clock: A Research Through Design Example of Designing for Self

We began by familiarizing ourselves with John’s research paper. A few interesting points emerged for me, that I saved to ask John about in the interview we had scheduled with him.

• Identity construction: how people use products as a way to both understand and construct who they wish to be. The Reverse Alarm Clock examines how a product can enable parents to “enact the familiar role of parenting through their interactions with the product that will move them closer to their idealized identity.”
• Storytelling: how a product can create moments designed to become a part of someone’s life story. The Reverse Alarm Clock places itself within the “intimate setting of the bedtime routine where parents and children build their strong bonds through the nighttime rituals.”
• Moments for Parenting: while the Reverse Alarm Clock is clearly a tool for use by kids, the intention of this research, and design, is in fact to benefit to the parents (by making them feel like better parents). This is achieved experientially — by giving them moments to bond with their kids at bedtime, functionally — by ensuring they are well rested, and thus more patient, and indirectly — by providing a surrogate for them to train their kids to be more responsible. This goal, of making parents feel like better parents, is particularly significant for dual-income parents who often feel guilty about the lack of time they have to spend with their children.

We then conducted a 30 minute expert interview with John on 9/7, which proved valuable in helping us craft How Might We…. statements to take our ideation process forward. Key takeaways from the interview are outlined below:

• The Reverse Alarm Clock research was a way to operationalize theories about attachment — how does value accrue in things? can we situation the thing within moments where stories are made? How can digital things accrue this value in ways that physical things always have?
• Dual income parents feel like bad parents — guilty about prioritizing professional life, stressed and sleep deprived leads to yelling at their kids.
• The challenge of this project was to see the world form the cognitive perspective of someone not like you (a child)
• Helping parents parent through an advocate they can turn to — use of the tool can be different (on different days, different times, emergency cases) but the rules are consistent
• Had to change the frame from fixing a problem — the kid is not staying in bed like he/she is supposed to — to a moment of graduation, a kid becoming deserving of new information — the transition from crib to bed is an exciting time
• Keep parents focused on their long-term parenting goals (to raise responsible and independent kids) and put the tool in alignment with those goals without diminishing the momentary pleasures of using the tool (the bedtime ritual)
• How can you lower the noise level around what people need to do in order to create moments of bonding? For example, how can you make the intended behavior easy/automatic so energy can be spent connecting with a child?
• The problem isn’t that people don’t know — don’t provide information, take the back door into a problem (Edward Bernays — rather than selling books, get architects to build bookshelves knowing that people feel social pressure and will fill the shelves to avoid neighbor’s judment); sell bacon during the depression by getting doctors to talk about the importance of a healthy breakfast of bacon and eggs)
• Build an MVP — a product that does one thing well. Good products can become platforms (later), but trying to build a platform at the outset is setting yourself up for failure
• When speed dating concepts, always test your bad ideas (or what you think are bad ideas) as a way to assess your own judgement about the problem
• Don’t design for the world you want, design for the world that is!

Following our interview, we held a brainstorming session to come up with HMW statements to guide the rest of our design process:

• HMW ease the transition into a bedtime routine?
• HMW create meaningful moments during the bedtime routine?
• HMW create opportunities for multiple parents/ relatives to be involved at bedtime?
• HMW stimulate and facilitate conversations around long-term parenting goals?
• HMW make good parenting decisions easier around bedtime?