I dedicated most of this week to the beta prototype. I’ve put in place the main pieces that have the most pertinence to my thesis’ area of interest. I only lack the translation of the last scenario of the alpha prototype which is primarily focused on the Personal Insights section.
Here is a video walkthrough of the current state. I recommend viewing it in full screen.
I will be turning my focus back to the written component next week.
“Ideally, the United State may arrive at the point where employers and employees work together to codetermine the workplace environment; however, until American perception of the employment relationship shifts to acknowledge a stronger role for the employee as citizen, this is unlikely to happen. In the absence of cultural change such that American workers are seen as citizens and not just employees, courts or the United States government will have to proactively protect employee privacy.”
– Lauren Evans
On account of an illness a lot of my prior-scheduled user testing sessions fell through. These sessions have been rescheduled.
I have spent the better part of my thesis time over the past two weeks writing content for the written component.
I wasn’t planning on getting started on the written component until—at the earliest—after the current round of user testing. However, I’ve been able to start writing a few sections with a decent degree of confidence. This has been useful in filling my time as I wait and process user testing sessions.
Getting sick.
None.
“Bloomberg reportedly logs every keystroke of every employee, along with their comings and goings in the office. The Las Vegas casino Harrah’s tracks the smiles of the card dealers and waitstaff on the floor (its analytics team has quantified the impact of smiling on customer satisfaction).”
– Don Peck
Based on feedback from my thesis committee, I updated much of the content throughout my thesis website. The main thrust of this update is to narrow and make more clear my thesis statement and consequently re-shape all other supporting content to reinforce the thesis statement.
Noteworthy changes include the Thesis Statement & Abstract, Written Component Overview, Visual Component Overview, thesis website intro page, and the title of the thesis website.
I also bug tested the prototype for user testing and began developing the test cases, questions, and list of potential testers.
Getting feedback and focusing my thesis topic.
Being busy with work. :(
Narrowed my thesis topic and re-wrote a lot of website content—list of noteworthy changes are in the ‘How I Spent My Time’ section.
“Our brains evolved to assess trade-offs best in the face of immediate, physical needs and threats. Should I run from that predator? Absolutely. Unfortunately, we still have these same brains. That’s why the camel crickets in my crawl space make me flip my shit, but giving my kids’ data to Disney World feels perfectly acceptable.”
– John Foreman
I completed the alpha prototype which is a milestone. I can now begin user testing in earnest.
The live prototype can be viewed via the prototype page. Similarly, video walkthroughs of the prototype are now available for each scenario via their respective page in the scenarios section.
Backing off on the fidelity of the alpha prototype, specifically the content. I wish I would’ve been faster with a lower fidelity—more “impressionistic”—throughout the production of the alpha. Hopefully, the attention to content details will save me time in the final prototype.
Adding unplanned scenarios isn’t helping the timeline. I’m now ~3 weeks behind where I wanted to be.
Added a new scenario to the prototype.
“An exclusively technical civilization … is threatened … by the splitting of human beings into two classes—the social engineers and the inmates of closed social institutions.”
– Jürgen Habermas
I was able to knock out two more scenarios this week—scenarios two and three. This means I only lack one more scenario.
A video walkthrough for scenario two is available here and a video walkthrough is available for scenario three is available here. The live prototype is available here.
If I am able to continue at my current clip, I might be able to start user testing this coming weekend.
Elbow grease. Also, being a little bit more quick and dirty with the prototype knowing that I will be making another pass after testing to clean it up.
Not applying elbow grease. Also, trying to get things just right.
Nothing to report.
“Most proposals for enhancing our privacy treat it as an end in itself. Instead we need to be talking about how to best stimulate democracy—a balancing act that laws or market mechanisms can’t achieve alone.”
– Evgeny Morozov, The Real Privacy Problem
I focused my time on completing scenario one of the prototype. Having the first scenario completed is milestone, as it is quite large considering all the possible states and content. It also represents what I believe to be the most socially complex moments and is therefore a paramount scenario for my topic. Completing it also means I have established the framework and processes I will be using for prototyping the remaining scenarios. In other words, I expect the other flow
A video walkthrough of the scenario is available here and the live prototype is available here.
While scenario one is ready for testing, I will be waiting to begin testing until the other remaining scenarios are completed in the prototype.
Elbow grease.
Not applying elbow grease.
Nothing to report.
“It is the whole man The Organization wants.”
– William Whyte, The Organization Man
I fell of the radar. Between a banner fall/winter of personal illness and getting caught up with a busy project at work (see William Whyte quote above), focus on my thesis fell to the wayside from October through early December. I managed to maintain an okay level of bibliographic research throughout, but the work that really needed done—the visual component—went untouched.
However, since late December, I have devoted a lot of energy to thesis work. I have narrowed and strengthened my topic and have covered a lot of ground with the visual component. I have produced sketches and hero screen wireframes and am well into creating the alpha prototype.
I have revised my timeline with a goal of completing all thesis work in the spring quarter. The visual component should be finished by the end of the winter quarter allowing me to focus on completing the written component in the spring quarter.
Focusing almost completely on the visual component has been paramount. Tangible deadlines are being met and my thesis topic is naturally narrowing and strengthening as a result.
Using Axure (especially the new version) to develop the written component is also working very well. I suspect it will continue to serve me well with the upcoming user testing session.
Everything is going pretty well at the moment.
I have narrowed my focus to that of just the participant experience of a system that observes personnel behavior in the workplace. This focuses my thesis more squarely on the issue of how a system can facilitate policy negotiation and communicate respect to the user given the context of such a sensitive subject.
The following is a gallery of UI sketches for the project. They cover most of the hero screens/moments and are grouped accordingly.
The study overview provides the user with a summary of what the study is about, why they are invited, the general schedule of the study, the activities of interest in the study with the ability to select which activities they will allow to be captured. The study overview also acts as the invitation page. This means the study overview is likely the first impression a user will have of the system.
Study Overview, Intro
Study Overview, Intro + Side Navigation
Study Overview, Intro + Progression/Wizard
Study Overview, Timeline/Schedule + Activity Permission
Study Overview, Activity Permission
Study Overview, Activity Permission
Study Overview, Activity Permission
Study Overview, Confirmation
Study Overview, Confirmation
Study Overview, Confirmation
Upon agreeing to participate in a study, the user is given a dashboard. The dashboard provides actionable notifications, a listing of any current studies in which the user is participating, and a listing of their recent activities that have been captured.
Dashboard
Dashboard
Dashboard
Dashboard, Detail on Active Study Card
Dashboard, Primary Navigation Expanded by Default
Dashboard, Horizontal Scrolling Study Cards
Navigating the system is handled primarily via a navigation menu that is invoked, sliding in from the left side of the screen. This menu contains the main sections of the system and potentially recent notifications or activities. A widget at the bottom of the navigation menu allows users to temporarily suspend (or “snooze”) their participation in any active studies.
Primary Navigation
Primary Navigation, Mobile
The system captures user behavior as “activities”. These captured activities are made available in real time for the user to review. Only activities that the user have given the system permission to observe are logged and shown in the user’s activity feed.
The system provides exhaustive reporting for each study. While this feature is primarily intended for consumption by management personnel, I am interested in trying to find a way to make such a view available to all participants that is useful and—more importantly—does not invade participant privacy.
Study Analytics
Study Analytics
Study Analytics
“[I would be okay with [an employee tracking system] if it was deployed for the purpose of optimization or gathering data to mimic in other ERs. But, if it was deployed due to trust issues—if they feel like they have to monitor us that intensely to hold us accountable, I would not like it. Or, if it began to show up as a data point in reviews with my manager—there would be a lot of pushback from the staff.”
– Research Participant, Registered Nurse
This week was focused on gathering and scheduling interviews. I was able to host one interview before the end of the week.
My first interview was with a registered nurse that works in an ER. It went very well. A lot of the design principles (hypotheses) I have developed thus far from bibliographic research were confirmed and further fleshed out.
I need to determine a way to get research participants more active. I would love to have them actually doing some low-level co-designing. It’s not that my first interview didn’t go well, but I think I would like to have a wider variety of output from the interviews.
However, this might not begin to happen until I begin sketching and have refined and solidified my design principles. So, I might want to add in a small batch of co-design sessions sometime between the current round of user research and the usability testing.
I am having trouble coming up with research participants that work in a more blue collar setting.
Nothing to report.
“Control is as much an effect as a cause, and the idea that control is something you exert is a real handicap to progress.”
– Steve Grand
While I continued bibliographic research the a lighter degree, most of my time was focused on getting employee interviews underway. I have developed questions, activities, materials, and a list of potential interviewees. So, this coming week should see at least the scheduling of my initial interviews if not the interviews themselves.
The design principles continue to be a central, grounding, pivotal tool. When I began developing questions for the interviews, I was able to refer to my design principles—which are effectively hypotheses—and easily translate them into a series of questions.
I think my time was well spent translating my questions into activities that I will be able to conduct during the interviews.
Google Docs. I love Google Docs.
This week was generally pretty smooth. Nothing to report here.
Nothing substantial. I continue to massage the schedule, but I have not made any substantial changes.