Much of my field research revolved around the idea that technology is becoming more and more present in our lives, distracting us from time with family, friends, and tasks at hand. As such, many of these ideas center around the fact that increasingly technology is becoming more and more intrusive into our daily lives and we want to minimize the impact that they have with our daily routine and familial interactions.
Here 12 brainstormed models for mobile platforms to follow to reduce the general “noise” in your life:
- aggregates your newsfeed so you’re not bombarded by different social media platforms
- periodically sends notifications from social media platforms in bursts so that you’re not bombarded by them all day
- keeps track of which users you speak with the most / have set to a special status so your phone only notifies you of them
- varying levels of vibration, since right now it’s more or less on or off
- master noise reduction for different applications, since it’s either all volume or no volume
- built-in flux (screen brightness, redness) that can be turned on or off and adjusted on a scheduled basis - interferes with sleep less
- custom permissions that prevent malevolent apps from acquiring and using user software without their permission (not intrusive, but still can be dangerous)
- make it easier to shut off annoying notifications as they happen
- parental tracker notifications for phones under the same plan registered under kid’s names
- a master “smart” notification tracker that only lets frequently used apps push notifications through
- a smart system that tracks when there’s a high volume of passive activity (e.g. just listening to music without actually interaction) that prevents notifications from going through
- a mode to allow noise notifications but no vibrating
I took the "notification aggregator" idea and ran with it. Basically, I wanted an application that caught all push notifications apps would use to notify you in real-time and give you the option of either getting all notifications in real-time, unencumbered by the notification aggregator, all notifications from that app in batches throughout the day, or whether or not you wanted to turn off notifications for that app in general. You can also do this for specific users as well.
I asked my landlord to come help me out.
I discovered that:
- paper models are pretty hard to navigate, whether you’re used to real phone screens or not
- the concepts that you realize are the focus of your application are not necessarily the focus that the user understands it to be - e.g. my test subject thought that the sole purpose of the app was to aggregate a main newsfeed, rather than control your overall level of notifications.
- the flowchart of how the screens worked together logically were unclear to my user at the time, and he eventually asked for clarification.
As such, without my interaction, my user probably would not have understood the main point of my application! Which is, obviously, very disconcerting. However, after he understood, everything became very clear; I’m not sure how much of this attributed to my model being a confusing paper model vs. the design itself being confusing. To be honest, it was probably an amalgamation of both.
This was really fun though! I did learn a lot about the differences between a biased and an unbiased perspective, however. It was interesting to see the shift in focus on what my application was meant to do vs. what the user thought it was meant to do just based on interacting with it alone.
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