IXDA Competition_Eilidh Dickson

Final Year Project: “Life is an act of balance”

going solo on the interaction designpilot year

CIID/DKDS Pilot Year 2009Advisor: Heather MartinExaminers: Bill Moggridge (IDEO) Gillian Cramption Smith (IUVA) Mikal Hallstrup (Designit)

Eilidh

Eilidh Dickson, CIID/DKDS Pilot Year 2009

For my final project at CIID I was interested in investigating how you give people the ability to change elements of their

behaviour, in order for them to feel like they have a balanced life (subjective to the Individual). This could be acheived by

either allowing them to become more aware and learn about their lifestyle habits, so they can make behavioural changes

themselves, or by providing them with tools or services that will actively help them make changes to their lifestyle.

I was especially interested to see if the emerging field of Personal Informatics could play a role in helping people achieve

this. If you could track intangible information about your day-to-day actions would it trigger people to change their

behaviour? I believe this new realm has huge potential to redefine the way in which we interact with the physical world and

gain insights about our actions that make up our daily routines. I am excited that this greater awareness has the potential

to help us to adjust and moderate our behaviour in a number of positive ways.

Currently in our everyday lives we are commonly engulfed in specific contexts, which makes it difficult to see the bigger

picture. I was curious to understand if personal informatics can enable people to pinpoint areas of their life that bring them

personal fulfillment and support them to experience this more often.

An area I saw as an underlying thread throughout the project is addressing the issue of ‘time poverty. People need to feel

connected to people, to places they live, even the food they eat. Traditionally this was much easier to achieve, as family all

lived together, you knew all your relatives and you knew that your food had come from your back garden. These

connections have been weakened because of a fast pace of life. The advance of new labour saving technologies has allowed

us to achieve more in a shorter space of time, yet instead of using the time we save to ‘slow’ down, we are prone to making

ourselves even busier.

Eilidh is an energetic Interaction Designer with a background in Product and Service Design from the University of Dundee

in Scotland. Prior to moving to Copenhagen to study on the CIID Pilot Year she worked on projects that placed strong

emphasis on the role of user-centered design, the value of experience prototyping and gaining inspiration and insights from

real people and the culture they live in.

On completion of her undergraduate degree she started exploring service design within the public sector and became

obsorbed with the idea of designing with - rather than for the user, harnessing their creativity and knowledge to co-create

ideas. She has worked on projects at the London based service design agency thinkpublic and ran a service improvement

project at Wigan Renal Dialysis Unit in the UK.

Eilidh is especially interested in how the use of innovative technologies can be applied to service-orientated systems and is

passionate about using her skills as a designer to help address the complex social and environmental problems that exist

in our society. Eilidh believes in designing services and products that will act as a platform for change and will facilitate the

end user to become involved and empower them to make positive decisions.

Throughout the past year Eilidh has grown a fascination for how design can facilitate behaviour change. For her final

masters project at CIID, she explored what role the new realm of ‘personal informatics’ can have on helping people live a

balanced life. This project not only allowed her to gain a deep knowledge around an emerging area of interaction design but

also to broaden her knowledge and expertise within user research and engagement, service design methodologies, screen

based UI design and using video as a means to test and communicate ideas.

Eilidh is 100% commited to her work and using design as way to create new opportunities and improve peoples lives.

However when she does not have design on the mind, Eilidh loves playing hockey, snowboarding and trying new sports that

involve speed and a little danger – and her new found activity…training for the Copenhagen marathon!

Area of Expertise: Interaction Design, Service Design, Design Research, Scenarios and Storytelling

who is eilidh

what am i interested and inspired by


process overviewdiagram

relatedprojects

At the very beginning of my final project I collected some examples around personal informatics and mapped them out,

purely to understand what was already available. Below are some of the more successful and interesting ideas I collected.

They all focus on very specific areas of an individuals life, that helps them to monitor and control their behaviour.

NIKE +

Nike + is one of the most commercial and well discussed personal informatics tools currently available. The system is made

up of a small chip that you insert into your running shoes, combined with a personal online service. The tangible UI which

is imbedded in the sole of your shoes communicates with your Apple iPod (which has pre-loaded software) feeding it with

information about your running to help you track your training regime. The system essentially becomes a digital personal

trainer. After you have completed your training session you can plug your iPod into your computer and log into your

personal Nike + account. What I think has greatly contributed to the success of the Nike + system is that even though you

have a personal account you are part of a community. Your web based account allows you to provide training tips and

advice to other people and recommend good running routes. By being part of community I really believe that it makes

peoples actions feel more valued.


THE WATTSON

The Wattson is a new kind of home appliance that is networked to a sensor attached to your home’s electric meter box.

Using colours and numbers, the Wattson device displays your energy consumption and stores it on an online database

making it easy for you to manage your electricity usage and therefore save money. Not only is the system hugely informa-

tive and practical… the device also looks great.

GOOGLE POWER METER

How much does it cost to leave your TV on all day? Which uses more power every month — your dishwasher or your

washing machine? Is your household more or less energy efficient than similar homes in your neighborhood? These are

some of the questions you will be able to answer with a new prototype Google are experimenting with. Google Power

Meter helps you become more energy efficient and save money by pinpointing which devices are using specific amounts of

energy. You can even have friendly competition between your friends and neighbours.

LAST FM

Is an online web tool that monitors your music habits by connecting to your itunes or other media software. Every track you

play will tell your Last.fm profile something about what you like. It suggests friends based on your music tastes and

recommends songs from their music collections and yours too.

Dopplr is an online tool used to track your traveling habits. Dopplr members can share personal and business travel plans

privately with their networks, and exchange tips on places to stay, eat and explore in cities around the world. Each year you

get an annual review of all your traveling, including when your travel plans have overlapped with friends and how much

impact you are having on the environment. What I really like about dopplr is the flexibility it provides, you can update your

profile on your personal profile, through your mobile or on other social networking sites, and you can sync it all to you iCAL

or outlook calendar on your computer. It appears to be very seamless.

DOPPLR

My starting point was a curiosity to investigate how design can be used to change people’s behaviour especially within the

context of life balance. This interest was very much inspired by our TUI project at CIID that focused on using RFID

technology to create an awareness of the environmental impact caused by certain food products transportation. On

completion of this project I further investigated it by writing an article on personal Informatics for an online Interaction

Design magazine called Johnny Holland. During this I found out that there are currently a number of personal informatics

tools on the market to help people balance their lives, mainly focusing around health, finances and energy consumption.

Some of these have been a great success while others are just a waste of time. When looking at these examples I was

disappointed by the lack of imagination that was driving the emphasis on these data displays. I was interested in how to

trigger an emotional experience to motivate behavioural change and find a more specialized area that could be addressed

by personal informatics to help people feel more balanced.

After conducting some initial desk research on personal informatics and existing tools to help people balance

their lives, the majority of my time was spent on planning (1 week) conducting (1 week) and analyzing user

research (1 week)

USER RESEARCH OBJECTIVE

My objective for my user research was to gain an understanding of what it means for people to live a balanced

life, what are people’s personal values, what do they need to feel comfortable in their lifestyle, how does this

change depending on what stage of their life they are at and do they use any tools or strategies to achieve this?

To understand how people’s values change at different stages of their lives I conducted research with three

different user groups; students, couples working and families. Within these categories there were also some

extreme users that included an avid sportsman, someone with diabetes and two people that were away from

home frequently due to work. I wasinterested in hearing if people who had more extreme lifestyles had different

strategies to keep themselves feeling balanced.

MAPPING RESEARCH RESPONDENTS

WORKING

STUDENT

LIVING ALONE LIVING WITH PARTNER/HUSBAND

EXTREME USER

HAS CHILDREN

PERNILLEERIC

MARTIN

JON

LAURA

RUNE

AMANDA

RUNE. P

FRANCESSCA

KATE

KRISTIAN

DAVID


my startingpoint

initialexplorations

Amanda Bligh, USA David Kearford, UK Eric Stevenson, USA

Francessca Mustaffi, Italy Jon Wettersen, USA Kate Pilkington, UK

Kristian Kørrup, Denmark Martin Wøldik, Denmark

Pernille Christoffersen, Denmark Rune Bottzauw, Denmark Rune Dittmer, Denmark

Laura Ceriol, Italy

Out of 12 people I conducted nine 2 hour research sessions in person, 2 Skype interviews to the US and one remote

experiment in Italy. During the research sessions I used a number of reflection tools I had designed to help facilitate the

session and provoke conversation. I also had a set of questions on more specific areas, that I adapted depending on how

the discussion evolved. These questions covered areas such as typical daily routines and habits, enjoyable parts of their

day, things they don’t have time to achieve and why, how they manage their time to meet all their priorities, use of

labour saving technology, triggers that make them feel stressed, how they deal with conflicts in their time, what their ‘feel

good’activities are, and how their priorities have changed as their responsibilities have changed.

CONDUCTING USER RESEARCH

Figure 1: Rune using the mapping tool

I used a Card sorting activity where I got people to choose from a list of things they do either on a daily, weekly or random

basis. This was used as a warm-up activity, to get people starting to think about what was important to them. It was a great

conversation starter, as you could then question them on their answers.


RESEARCH RESPONDENTS RESEARCH PLANNING

Figure 2: Mapping tool


I also designed a mapping tool to get people to think about more specific values they need to achieve to feel in control and

what really brings them meaning in life. This exercise was very valuable as it forced people to take a moment and reflect

on what was really important to them. People found the exercise difficult, especially when they started to realize that

they were achieving very few of the things that were important and a priority to them. Although the task was challenging

almost everyone I interviewed found it beneficial to have a moment of reflection for themselves where they could rethink

what their priorities were.

Figure 3: Diaries

During my research a few people also kept a diary so i could gain insight into their routines, sleeping and eating habits.

After completing the diary I questioned them to see if they had gained any value from writing in it each day. People

responded with saying that they felt like they wanted to be more productive throughout their day so they had something

positive and interesting to write in it. This shows that actively logging your activities can lead to increased motivation to do

well.

Figure 4: Emotional timelines

During some of the interview sessions I got people to draw an emotional time line map of a certain period of time that they

decided upon. The peaks in the diagram are when they are feeling out of balance. This allowed me to see that periods of

inbalance are often due to a change or transition in their lifestyle. This often included moving to a new city, leaving home

or starting a new job. Although these are not negative situations to be in, the uncertainty and the anxiety of starting

something new can make people feel out of balance.

The remote exercise in Italy involved an extreme user (Laura, who is rarely at home due to work related travel). I asked

her to keep a detailed diary for one week. Here she recorded her day-to-day activities and routines, including eating and

sleeping habits. I also asked her to reflect on how she felt throughout the day and in the moment while she was doing

certain tasks. If anything made her feel stressed she had record it and the same goes for if she was happy. She also took

photographs of the following:

1. Things that you do on a regular basis that make you feel comfortable and content.

2. Any tools or strategies that help you meet your priorities.

3. Things that you make you feel uncomfortable or unbalanced in your life.

The result of this exercise provided detailed and rich information, with a number of key insights to what it is like when you

are continually on the move.

RESEARCH ANALYSIS

On completion of my user research I created character boards for each person, writing down key quotes and

observations from their session. At this point, I then filtered the information again and selected the most intriguing and

surprising quotes from each respondent. Within these insights three underlying themes were formed. These were:

1. Communication with Family and Friends

2. Food and Eating Habits

3. Personal Prioritising and Planning

Figure 5: A sample of photographs from Laura’s photo diary

Figure 6: Transcription of Interviews

Figure 7: Character board

Figure 8: Mapping out my insights

Figure 9: Understanding what each quote means

Figure 10: Creating How might we statements

Figure 11: Voting on the most interesting insights



Within each of these themes I used the IDEO method of asking what does each insight mean, and then writing “How might

we statements” for them all. At this point there were still a number of areas I could choose to develop, but I decided to

focus on personal prioritizing as this is where I felt most challenged, excited and saw potential to apply personal

informatics to. Some of the key insights in this theme were:

“I transfer work trips to our calendar at home, but only a few weeks before, mainly so Mas [husband] can’t see what’s

ahead of him!” (Kate, UK)

Meaning: People only really use a ‘public’ calendar for really important events that are necessary to share.

“I don’t currently write in a diary as I imagine someone reading it, so I won’t put anything personal in it…….I like the

approach of this diary, I actually find that I want to be more productive just so u can write something positive in it, kind of

indirect motivation”(Eric, USA)

Meaning: Having to actively record you activities allows you to reflect and become motivated to do well.

“I would love to be able to schedule time for reading…….but it sounds kind of dorky….so I would love to be able to track

some of these things I would like to be able to do without having to actually track it” (Amanda, USA)

Meaning: People feel silly scheduling ‘me time’ but are interested to understand what they spend their time on and

when.

“I keep a personal to-do list, I prioritise everything, so when I have been neglecting something I move it up the list, I keep it

on my desktop so I can always see it” (Jon, USA)

Meaning: People need to have a constant reminder of what it important to do otherwise they will ignore it.

“Hobbies are great when they are built into your life, I love it, but when you don’t do it for a while you forget how much you

enjoy it until you do it again” (Pernille, Denmark)

Meaning: People easily forget how important something is and how much they enjoy it when they stop doing it.

“Prioritizing is difficult, it would be good to have ground rules, or a rule of thumb to follow” (Francesca, Italy)

Meaning: People like to be guided in some way when it comes to making personal decisions.

“I found writing in a diary can be really helpful, as it gave me a very good chance of stopping to have a deeper insight into

my thoughts and feelings” (Laura, Italy)

Meaning: Periods of reflection are a positive thing!

Due to an increased pace of life and personal competition with ones self to become ‘someone better’ people

are continually busy, going from one task to the next. This has been heightened by a more prominent use of

technology in our lives, which has resulted in lifestyle barriers that used to exist have been broken; people can

now work anywhere, contact anyone anytime and achieve much more on the move. The result of having this

fast pace of life is that people become absorbed in ‘achieving more’ and detached from what their day-to-day

life looks like and what brings them a real sense of enjoyment. Within their busy lives, people find it hard to

prioritize when making decisions in their own life and would often like to be guided in some way. Some people

use diaries and calendars to schedule (make time for) ‘practical appointments’ but very rarely for personal

activities. Yet they are interested to understand what they spend their time on, especially for things they enjoy

doing, but rarely have time to do. In order for people to have a balanced life on a bigger scale, they have to first

reconnect to themselves, and focus on what they need to be content rather than everything that is possible.

The design challenge is:

How might we create a flexible and customizable platform that will help people to reconnect to themselves,

enabling them to prioritize in their lives by keeping track of and reminding them of past experiences that

they can then use as a reference point to make more informed decisions?

OTHER QUESTIONS I PROBED DURING THE BRAINSTORMING SESSION:

1. How can we create a greater awareness of elements of our lives that bring us enjoyment?

2. How much time we actually spend on these activities?

3. How might we compare what your day actually looks like with what you would ideally like it to be?

4. How can the act of recording these experiences be seamlessly integrated into your lifestyle?

designchallenge

Figure 12: Clustering brainstorming ideas

INITIAL SEED

Out of all the drawings and post-its that were filtered I picked 5 and sketched them out further, thinking of possible s

olutions of how they could be implemented into people’s lives. By the end of this short exercise there was already one idea

that was stuck in my mind. The idea was based around tracking your happiness at different locations through GPS and

inputing who you were with and what you were doing to add a specific context.

EXPERIENCE PROTOTYPE #1

At this point I decided to do an initial experience prototype to test the basis of my idea. For the experiment I recruited 4

people and on a map of Copenhagen I got got them to plot their weekends activities, after giving them step-by- step

instructions to. These were:

Step 1: Write a list of priorities you like to do on (i) a daily basis (ii) a weekly basis.

Step 2: On different coloured post-its categorize these priorities, how do you divide up your time.

Step 3: On the map of Copenhagen mark where you live and work.

Step 4: Plot your weekend activities by writing individual activities you did, at what time and with who. Write these activities

on coloured post-its corresponding to one of the categories you already defined (use the color code you set).

Step 5: Place the post-it on the map at the location of where the activity took place

Step 6: Give the activity a rating out of 5, of how satisfying it was (writing on the post it as well) 1 being low and 5 being high.

BRAINSTORMING AND IDEA GENERATION

After I had formulated my design challenge that I felt was the correct combination of being open enough to generate lots

of wild idea’s, but not so open that I would have no theme running through them, it was time to start brainstorming.

I facilitated a brainstorming session to generate ideas surrounding my design challenge. This was a huge success!! A lot of

creative ideas were generated that proved to be great inspiration and triggered new thinking. After completing the

brainstorm I spent a little time clustering my ideas before going through them. Some the clusters that formed were goal

orientated tracking, tracking with sensors and using tangible objects to visualize behaviour.


furtherexplorations

Figure 13: Ujjval completing the map experiment


EXPERIENCE PROTOTYPE #1 LEARNINGS

1. People are unaware of how much they actually do, or how busy they are, until they actually sit down and think about it.

2. People have very different approaches about how they categorize their time.

3. Using colour to show different categories, very quickly enables you to see patterns in behaviour, especially related to the

home and workplace.

4. Putting priorities into categories allows you to see what areas you spend most time on in your life, and then you can go

to a deeper layer of data to find out specific activity etc.

5. The people who you are with often has a huge influence on the satisfaction of the activity you are doing.

To learn more about these patterns and behaviours I decided to test the experience prototype on myself as well. But

instead of putting a few days on a map, I recorded everything I did each day on a new map. This way I was able to compare

each day individually, and see the patterns and routines that occured.

SCENARIOS

After these initial experience prototypes I could see that there was potential in my idea, especially by the reactions of the

people I had tested it on. My next step was to develop the idea further, for this I first created a simple system diagram of

the service and then started on a detailed scenario, showing how the system would work, the user experience and the

critical touchpoints. During this time I thought of the different stages of the service, how the data would be recorded, any

feedback the user would get, how would the user review their data and reflect on it and how the service could be expanded

in the future. The result was a very detailed and slightly overwhelming scenario!

Figure 14: Detailed scenario

SERVICE BLUEPRINT

After the scenario was produced, i decided to look at the service on a more generic level, and created an initial service

blueprint. This allowed me to focus and establish the key user interactions, the role of the service provider and the touch

points of the service that need to be designed for my experience prototyping and my end communication. I have also come

up with a name for the service (“echo”) and started working on the branding at this point, as i felt this was an important

factor to make my service appear believable! Throughout this process of mapping out my service i was able to continually

develop the idea, seeing where there were holes that needed to be thought out and coming up with new touchpoints that

could add to the over all experience. I was very focused on creating tangible touchpoints throughout the

service, so it wasn’t purely screen based.

Figure 15: Paper based service blueprint


When I felt I had my service mapped out fully, I wanted to start doing more experience prototyping, to test different elements

of the service. I conducted a quick experience prototype to test of few questions I had about my idea. From my first

prototyping session I wanted to learn:

1. How much effort is it to log your daily activities and the goals you want to achieve? Do you gain something from doing so?

2. What is it like to have to quantify your happiness after doing certain tasks, and what is the the most natural way to do it?

3. What does it feel like to receive friendly nudges of encouragement and motivation from the service? Do they work or does

it just become irritating receiving them?


During the experiment I asked Sarah to track specific tasks she wanted to achieve by sending an SMS to the service (my

mobile phone) when she had completed it. At this point, she also had to quantify her happiness and satisfaction by using

a set of cards I had given her. These asked her to illustrate how she was feeling in a variety of ways i.e with words, colour,

icons. While all this was going on, the service was also sending her prompts and motivation by SMS’s to encourage her to

complete her goals!

Figure 16: Experience prototyping kit and SMS sent to the Echo “service” during the experience prototype

After the experiment was complete I interview Sarah to get her feedback on the experience.


1. Receiving messages and reminders worked as a good support line.

2. By recoding what she was doing, it brought things to her focus, she started to realise why she was or wasn’t doing

something.

3. She liked that the service was personal, so she felt more commitment towards it and responsibility for her actions, as it

was something that was helping her.

4. It was easiest to quantify how she was feeling with a number or slider, or sometimes using words to describe it.

5. Seeing what you have achieve is very motivating, and remembering how good you felt when you did it is encouraging to

do it again.

6. Knowing it was a person on the end of the phone and not an automated message made her feel more motivated and

responsible. So how can the service be personal to each user and seem like a buddy or friend?


During my third experience prototypeI wanted to question what motivates people to stick to a program and how would

people react if they are rewarded for it? During this experiment, like the previous one I got Mimi to track certain tasks she

wanted to complete, and alert the service (me!) when she had done so through either an SMS or by leaving a physical note

on my desk. When Mimi was doing well I would give her rewards in different ways…these included:

1. An email with a reward voucher attached to it that she had to print out and bring to me to then exchange it for a gift.

2. A surprise gift and note left on her desk one morning.

3. simple “well done” messages to her mobile phone.

Figure 17: The activity sheet that Mimi filled in (what she wanted to achieve)

Figure 18: Some of the rewards Mimi recieved


theconceptWHO IS IT FOR

Anyone who knows that they have an unbalanced life and are unhappy about it. They want to become more aware of their

habits and understand their behaviour so they know where to make changes. It is for people that currently live a busy

lifestyle and find it hard to prioritize, often sacrificing the things they really enjoy doing, so they can achieve more in other

areas of their life. These people are motivated to do well and want to change!

WHAT IS THE IDEA

Echo is a service that provides a platform for people to self reflect and become more aware of their lifestyle patterns by

helping them pinpoint areas of their life that bring them personal enjoyment and supporting them to experience it more

often.

HOW DOES IT WORK

It works by using GPS tracking and direct reporting (data input) through the users mobile phone to build up a map of how

they spend their time, with who and how happy they are. The data that is tracked and recorded is then transformed into

different visualizations that the person can interact with, reflect on and see opportunities for change in their behaviour.

WHAT IS THE VALUE

Giving people a tool to reflect, allows them to reconnect to what their day-to-day life looks like and understand what they

spend their time on, with who and how happy they are. In turn this allows them to pinpoint areas of their life that bring

them personal enjoyment. By giving people the platform to see these trends and patterns in their behaviour and

opportunities for change they might normally miss, it can help people moderate their behaviour in a number of positive

ways. The service is not designed to control behaviour, but to monitor and display actions in a way that will raise questions

with the person.


1. The system has to be flexible enough to deal with changes in people’s schedules and spontaneous events that may

happen.

2. When a gift was a complete surprise, it was better than knowing you were about to receive something in advance.

3. Big rewards were not expected as part of the service, but it was nice when the little surprises were personal and tailored

to the individual as it makes you feel like the service knows you.

After conducting these prototyping sessions and consolidating these learnings, I made some small changes to some of

the feedback mechanisms that would be used in the service. I then started to think about the final communication of the

service. I created a storyboard for my final scenario, this allowed me to imagine a real person using the echo service as well

as see how many props and service touchpoints I needed to design and produce to communicate the idea in my video. From

this point on the focus of my work was producing the final interfaces and physical artifacts.

Figure 19: Service touchpoints needed for the video

servicestages

SIGN UP

Before the user can start using the service they need to log onto the echo website and decide which subscription they

would like. At this point they will commit to the service and make a payment. Shortly after they will receive a confirmation

email to reassure them that their order has been processed.

IMPLEMENTATION: SET-UP AND SYNC

A few days later the customer will receive the echo start up pack in the post. The pack contains everything needed to get

started including a welcome letter, a URL link and serial number for the smart phone application and offline software, a

membership card and a set of instructions. The user will input where they live and work on a geographical map of their

town or city. They will also make a list of activities they want to achieve on a daily, weekly and occasional basis and then

place these in customized categories, for example ‘me time’, work time and play time. The last stage is to create an

address book of friends, family and people they spend time with on a regular basis. Once this has been done, they can

then sync their phone and computer, so they are ready to start logging their behaviour. At any point the user can go back

to their profile and edit their personal settings.

USE: RECORDING DATA

Through the echo application, the smart phone’s GPS will be activated, seamlessly tracking their location and storing the

information. When the user completes one of their priorities, they can capture their activity by using a simple user

interface, entering what activity they are doing and who they are with from the database of information they have already

created - alternatively they can choose to enter a new activity or person on the move.

REFLECTION IN THE MOMENT, AND ON THE GO FEEDBACK

When the user has completed the activity they then have the opportunity to reflect in the moment. They can rate their

happiness on a scale from happy to sad and can add another level of context by either recording a voice clip or by

tagging the location and event. They can also receive gentle feedback nudges and motivational messages to inform them

of how might they can change their behaviour in real time. These include friendly prompts about activities they haven’t

completed, well done messages, reminders of past happy experiences via MMS when they walk past locations they have

previously tagged and a monthly personal review of their actions.

VIEW DATA AND REFLECTION OVER TIME

At any point the user can view their interactive data visualizations through the echo software, seeing how they have been

spending their time, either on a specific day or on a weekly basis. The data can also be filtered to ‘happiness mode’ so they

can pin point when and what they were doing when they are happiest. More specific data on how well they are meeting

their priorities, when the last did an activity, or spent time with a certain person is also available. This tool for reflection

aims to provide information that is actionable, helping people see patterns in their behavior and therefore able to make

more informed decisions.

EXPANDING: BUILDING A COMMUNITY AND INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL

As the echo service grows there are potential opportunities for people to share their data with friends they trust through

an online platform. This could lead to exchange of advice and suggestions based common interests, or even finding similar

interests with friends, that they didn’t know they had. The service could also be expanded so subscribers to the service

could receive customised maps based on their personal priorities for travel abroad, helping them to carry out their ‘happy

activities’ while in another city or country.

userfeedback


Figure 20: Kate (original user) viewing my concept videos

At the end of my project I was lucky enough to have time to go back to one of my original users to get feedback on my

idea. I let Kate see both my videos I then waited for a response! Originally kate had told me that she “missed time just to

do stuff, like making phone calls to friends and going to the cinema” Hearing her feedback after she watched the video was

one of the best moments of the project:

“the more I watch it the more i want to use it.... I really like the idea of having reminders about non everyday things....and

knowing when you last spent time with someone. It’s also good that is doesn’t control your life!”

The fact that she completely understood the concept with no further explanation was fantastic! It was even better that

she saw potential in the idea and could see herself using it, especially as the solution was based around one of her intial

problems I established during my user research.

APPENDIXPlease now watch two supporting videos to communicate my idea:Concept Video: http://www.vimeo.com/6302822Scenario Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGPmqTJoAmc