Resilience ~

ABOUT

As a part of the course, Interaction Design and Media Technology, me and my team were given the design brief of pandemic media. A broad problem space that opened up for questions regarding how the global pandemic drastically has changed human interactions and needs in a wide variety of contexts. Encouraging us to rethink and challenge previous norms, which no longer were adapted to the prevailing situation.

PROCESS

The Double Diamond Design process was used as a framework for the project, consisting of four different phases; Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver. The framework helped us to navigate through the different phases and select appropriate methods. It also provided a foundation for how to distribute our time carefully. Methods deployed in the process were literature review, different ideation supporting methods like brainwriting, body-storming, and cultural probes, to later execute user-interviews, thematic analysis, prototyping, user-testing, and finally different evaluation methods.

UX–CHALLENGES

In response to the design brief, we explored the intersecting space of the pandemic and mental health. The aim was to develop a design concept that seamlessly supported users' increased need of becoming more resilient during the pandemic and help users to acquire skills that would be useful in upcoming challenges too. This notion reflects on one of our main UX challenges –– how to make the solution general enough to not only be applicable in the given context and rather ensure that the solution could continue to be attractive even after the pandemic has passed.

The second UX challenge was to not become “just another app”. We wanted the solution to seamlessly fit into users’ already existing routines, to not add any extra stress into their lives. We also emphasized the importance of not being patronizing or annoying.
 

RESEARCH CONCLUSIONS

There are many different ways to promote resilience amongst people. Mental time travel was selected based on the insights from an astronaut, and his way of coping with uncertainties in space. His tactics to promote resilience also reflected on what echoed in the user interviews. The difficulty to change a fixed mindset, dealing with the constant uncertainties that the prevailing pandemic brings. Mental time traveling felt like a compelling and playful way to support the users’ goals. 

To extend the lifetime of our developed concept it was important to reflect on different ways to integrate it into the users’ everyday routines. The phone is a central part of most people's lives and was thus easy to incorporate. Integrating the idea of mental time travel with the memory filled phone, smoothly fulfilled many of the insights acquired during the process. We wanted to make the concept seamless, user-centered, supportive of activity beyond the digital landscape, multimodal, and easy to use.

UX–SOLUTION

The design concept—Resilience—landed in a fictitious re-design of Apple’s original application, Shortcuts. Users of Shortcuts already have a dedicated community on Reddit, sharing different tips and tricks on how to make life more efficient and smooth. Currently, Shortcuts have a focus on tasks and productivity, but lack a more reflecting and empowering feature. Resilience was thus developed to satisfy the increased need of becoming more resilient during the pandemic and to help users acquire skills that will be useful in upcoming challenges. The concept aims to support resiliency by facilitating an environment for users’ to mentally travel back in time to revisit memories and achievements of the past. Shortcuts act as the central unit that collects memories from different modalities on the phone, to later collect and organize them into different tiles. The different tiles are based on time and location. “1st year at KTH” or “Summer times” are examples illustrating the categorization. The tiles are filled with memories of different forms associated with that time and place. 

The collection of data is based on personalized tags created by the user. Selected memories of different modalities are individually tagged based on preference. “Nostalgic”, “Proud” or “Breakthrough” are examples of tags that could be selected or created by the user. Each input offers the user a set of pre-made tags, to avoid leaving them with a blank slate. The tags are later used to organize cohesive memories that are presented to the user in a thoughtful way. The memories will appear as notifications periodically, but can also be scheduled to occur at a certain time, or accessed on-demand to meet the different user goals.

REFLECTIONS + TAKEAWAYS

When designing our concept—Resilience—we took insights from previous research in the HCI community combined with findings from user interviews and user-testing into consideration. Questioning prevailing norms in how mental health issues should be fixed and instead relied on users' ability to with the right tools develop and strengthen their inner resilience.

In a future where technology takes up more room for each day, it is important to still remember the users’ wants and needs. Digitalization makes most activities more efficient and it opens up endless possibilities, but it’s equally important to consider the effects it has on people. Spending all waking time in front of screens and technologies is not something to strive for. With Resilience we encourage more research and implementations of combined technologies, utilizing both physical and digital means to support a deeper self-awareness and appreciation of the social surroundings.

On a personal level, I really appreciated the diverse nature of our team. Again proving the strengths of working in interdisciplinary and cross-cultural teams. Learning from people with different backgrounds enables a more holistic perspective of the problem. Further, the importance of questioning prevailing norms and the common ways of doing things will be something I’ll bring with me into future projects.

If you’re interested to learn more, please read our process book or my paper : )