Assignment Two: Needfinding, POVs, HMWs, and Prototypes
Introduction:
The Team:
Carah A.
Katherine E.
Minh-An Q.
Julia A.
Studio Theme:
Health
Problem Domain:
Promote mental health and help people to manage stress. Our initial needfinding revealed an
interesting tension between the necessity of communal support and the desire for anonymity,
which we explored in greater depth this week:
Initial POV:
We met Tyler, the flight attendant. We were amazed to realize that he counseled passengers
because people wanted to share their problems with someone and liked that they could remain
anonymous. It would be gamechanging if we could make a similar resource that people felt
comfortable honestly confiding in accessible to more of the population.
Additional Needfinding:
Based on our identified needs in stress management and community support, we conducted
four additional interviews this week. We sought to compare our mostly Stanford-centric results
from Week 1 with experiences at other schools and in the high-stress professional world. Our
findings are below:
We talked to Clare, a sophomore at MIT. Though Clare felt that the mental health resources at
MIT were inadequate, she had an overall positive view of mental health on campus. She felt
supported by MIT’s housing system, which makes arriving students get to know people around
campus and apply to particular halls, incentivizing people to bridge gaps based on similar
interests and create networks.
We also met Janna, a freshman RA at Carleton College. A lot of her job involves listening to her
residents’ problems and “reassuring them that their struggles are common without invalidating
their feelings.” She said that resources at Carleton promoted a combination of “self-care”
techniques and community/support-based solutions, but that she preferred individual-based
solutions because she often slipped into the attitude that “my problems are mine, and talking
about them makes them someone else’s.”
We talked to Carole Pertofsky, director of Health and Wellness Promotion at Vaden. Carole
teaches courses like “Happiness” to Stanford students in order to promote healthy behaviors
and student well-being on campus. She said that one of the most harmful mentalities she
noticed at Stanford was the valorization of “work hard-play hard,” which caused people to feel
shame about more peaceful and solitary activities like movie-watching, resting, or small
gatherings of friends.
We met Bang, who spent the summer before his senior year as an intern at a consulting firm.
He struggled to think of differences between his techniques to cope with the stress of his job
and the techniques he employed in classes at Stanford. He found that drinking with friends was
an ideal social activity because people tended to be more honest and open up more, which
allowed him to form deeper connections with people, and the people who opted into drinking
with his group tended to be open to meeting new people and having a good time.
Revised POVs and HMWs:
POV #1: Clare
First, we met Clare, an MIT sophomore. We were amazed to realize that she found emotional
support at school from her residential community because of MIT’s housing arrangement (same
hall for four years, placement on the basis of mutual interest, age diversity). It would be
game-changing if we could give people at Stanford automatic access to similarly effective
support networks.
Sample HMWs:
-How might we encourage and train communities to become active support systems?
-How might we improve the draw system at Stanford to give people a strong sense of
community?
-How might we more effectively bridge gaps between under and upperclassmen to increase
dialogue?
POV #2: Janna
Second, we met Janna, an RA at Carleton. We were amazed to realize that she prefers to
address stress through personal action and a focus on self-care because she feels like sharing
her problems with friends burdens them. It would be game-changing if we could encourage her
to reach out to friends for support by alleviating her fear of bothering them.
Sample HMWs:
-How might we give people a non-threatening avenue to alert their friends when they are in
need?
-How might we create a system where she get support from people she doesn’t know?
-How might we build a system where sharing stress is reciprocal?
-How might we make her want to seek out others and share her problems?
POV #3: Bang
Finally, we met Bang, a Stanford student who spent last summer working in consulting. We
were amazed to realize that he valued environments that involved drinking because they
provide easy ways to quickly form community due to people's’ lowered inhibitions and
willingness to be social. It would be game changing if we could remove alcohol from the
equation and still allow people to socialize and form communities with lowered inhibitions.
Sample HMWs:
-How might we reward people for giving up their social inhibitions?
-How might we bring unexpected people who want to socialize together?
-How might we cut down on small talk and make people connect to each other immediately?
From these HMWs, we selected three to address and attempt to resolve in more detail:
-How might we encourage and train existing communities to become active support systems?
(POV #1)
-How might we give people a non-threatening avenue to alert their friends when they are in
need? (POV #2)
-How might we give everyone access to a community where they feel enough affinity to people
around them that they’re comfortable sharing their struggles? (POV #1)
Prototypes:
The Reciprocity Quiz:
First, we tried to address the problem of guilt in sharing problems with friends. We assumed that
people were discouraged from sharing their problems with their friends because they felt guilty
about needlessly adding stress to their friends’ lives and being a “bad friend.” We assumed that
these feelings were universal enough that across relationships, both parties would want to share
but not want to burden the other; however, if the relationship were based on mutual sharing,
then neither would feel like a burden.
(Minh-An running the quiz)
We decided to simulate academic stress through a low-stakes Quiz Bowl trivia quiz with two
players. We wanted to test this dynamic with people who had a pre-existing relationship but to
control the timing of the reciprocal interaction, so Julia played the quiz with Paulina, a friend of
hers. Each participant was asked a few questions, with the caveat given before the quiz that
they could hand one of their two “tokens” to the other player in order to pass the question to
them. The other player could then use that token to do the same. In the first few rounds, neither
player “passed” their questions, though both received questions that they did not know the
answer to. Eventually, Julia opted to “pass” a question to Paulina. Once Julia demonstrated the
option, Paulina used it in two following rounds, eventually losing all of her tokens, which forced
her to answer the final two questions on her own.
(the subjects are friends)
The prototype validated our assumption that people would be more inclined to reach out for help
in a relationship if they observed a precedent for doing so. In order to successfully encourage
users to take advantage of options for reciprocity, we would have to prompt one or all of them to
“break the ice” and begin sharing their load and asking for help. But, once Julia had reached out
to her, Paulina became willing to use the pass option, which she said made the quiz less
stressful overall. Additionally, Paulina’s distress at losing her tokens and being stranded
demonstrated that mandating reciprocity can be problematic if one party is still unwilling to ask
for help or one party genuinely needs more help, so a more successful model would keep
people aware of dynamics but not force support to be a tit-for-tat relationship.
(Sample quiz question, which Paulina passed to Julia)
Debunk the Duck:
Stemming from the HMW statement of: how might we give people a non-threatening avenue to
alert their friends when they are in need, we wanted to create a system where all members of a
group could monitor other people’s moods and check in on each other. From our need finding
interviews last week, we discovered a tension between wanting community support as well as
anonymity. We assumed that people would be more willing to share openly and honestly if they
remained anonymous. We also wanted to test the assumption that anonymity would relieve
some of the stress people felt about burdening their friends if they shared about their struggles.
In order to test this, we created an anonymous Google Doc that people could freely edit. The
Google Doc had a simple prompt: ​On a scale from 1-7 please rate your mood. (1 being the
worst, 7 being the best.) If you want, you can write a brief comment to explain--please do not
give identifiers. After rating your mood, feel free to give encouraging comments on other’s
mood. We then sent the doc out to a couple dorm lists. We specially sent the document out to
dorm lists because of their strong sense of community. This document can be found through
this link: ​http://tinyurl.com/hdydwey
We received 22 responses from all years on the Google Doc. We were surprised at how
thoughtful and honest the responses were. Many people expanded the prompt to share stories
and intimate details about their life, suggesting that people appreciated having a space to vent.
In addition, we were surprised to see that every single mood entry had encouraging comments
from other users. It was interesting to see how willing people were to take time from their day to
support a complete stranger.
The prototype validated our assumption that anonymity allowed for an easier way for people to
share their mood and provide support. Some people who filled out the document even went up
to Carah saying that reading over the comments made them feel better.
In the future, some people also expressed the desire to meet strangers they were taking to, so
having the option to de-anonymize yourself could be useful.
Stress Vacation:
We attempted to use the idea of getting away on a “stress vacation” to create an experience
where user is consciously seeking community and self-reflection as a way of combatting stress.
Carah texted and Facebook messaged friends and asked them for a 30 min time slot in which
they were free to take a “stress vacation”.
Playing the role of the app who sets up the stress vacation for them, Carah asked her
friends to meet her outside of Roble and then she would tell them where they were going on
their stress vacation. When they arrived, Carah revealed that they were going to Windhover and
asked them to go about the next 15 minutes acting however they believed a “stress vacation”
was supposed to look. Carah followed and observed. It was interesting that the first instinct of
the 2 friends was to immediately check in with each other as they walked, asking each other
how their days had been. One acknowledged that she was stressed and overwhelmed with
work and the other asked her to share more of what was stressing her.
At Windhover, they ran into the other friend from the chat. She had gotten out of class early and
chosen to go to Windhover for a break of her own.
The two friends relaxed while Carah kept track of the time. Carah alerted them when the time
was up and they seemed surprised at how fast the time had flown but decided not to extend the
vacation and left Windhover. They later voiced a desire for being able to extend the length of the
stress vacation, but the time extension varied with the more stressed friend wishing for an hour
and the other wishing for 45 minutes.