HCI Design Studio Final Project:
BubbleBreaker
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I took CS 247 with the hopes of gaining experience designing user experiences and interfaces. The class was focused on group project facilitated studios, and I was assigned to a studio focused on bursting echo chambers. After diligently diving into the needfinding portion of the design process, we realized that people ultimately do not want to break their own echo chambers, even with traditional social incentives at play and even at events designed specifically to do just that. Accordingly, we asked the question: what if someone paid you to break out of your bubble? Our design process took off from there, and what we came up with was BubbleBreaker.
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Reflections on User Experience Design Process:
Throughout this course, I came to appreciate the many different functions that prototyping can serve. After hearing from incredible speakers like Tom Chi, I learned the traditional trajectory that prototypes should follow, and in applying this knowledge, our team managed to create a product people wanted, understood, and liked using. For example, at the beginning of the design process prototypes should dive into the hardest questions such as, would you accept or give money in the service of breaking people out of their bubbles. As you can see the initial prototypes used to address the questions were little more than paper proof of concept. Nonetheless, it allowed us to ground our claim that people might in fact do this. The next question involved asking whether people would participate without a charismatic confederate prodding them along resulting in the bare bones marvel prototype you see depicted in the third image above. Lastly, we dove into the nitty gritty of user experience design to determine a UX that didn't trivialize or reduce engagement among participants. What we ended up with can be seen in the video above.
Throughout this course, I came to appreciate the many different functions that prototyping can serve. After hearing from incredible speakers like Tom Chi, I learned the traditional trajectory that prototypes should follow, and in applying this knowledge, our team managed to create a product people wanted, understood, and liked using. For example, at the beginning of the design process prototypes should dive into the hardest questions such as, would you accept or give money in the service of breaking people out of their bubbles. As you can see the initial prototypes used to address the questions were little more than paper proof of concept. Nonetheless, it allowed us to ground our claim that people might in fact do this. The next question involved asking whether people would participate without a charismatic confederate prodding them along resulting in the bare bones marvel prototype you see depicted in the third image above. Lastly, we dove into the nitty gritty of user experience design to determine a UX that didn't trivialize or reduce engagement among participants. What we ended up with can be seen in the video above.