skype. bringing out the conversation: + spaces filebringing out the conversation with spaces 3...

Bringing out the conversation with + spaces

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Skype.Bringing out the conversation: + spaces

Anton LöfNikolaj Dam Roadley-BattinMariano Velamazán

Project report of course 5ID079 – Service Design, 30 ECTS creditsFirst year MFA programme in Interaction DesignUmeå Institute of Design Umeå UniversityIn collaboration with Skype, London


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Contents

Abstract ................................................ 1Research ...............................................2

How and why ................................2The two groups ............................2Findings (conclusion) .................3

Ideation ................................................5Concept gateway ..............................5Evaluation and testing ....................5Final design .........................................6Conclusion ..........................................7References ...........................................8


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Abstract

This document presents a summary of our design process for the project Skype, bringing out the conversation.

To begin with, we present our insights from the Ethno-graphic Design Research; five weeks of field work and interviews full of learning outcomes for us.

Secondly, since we were all very interested in exploring new methods of working and brainstorming, we describe our ideation process and the techniques that we chose to go through it.

After that, we explain how we chose the final idea very much based on different feedback from our presentation.

Finally, we offer a description of our final design focusing on the interaction design and the interface design.

Anton Löf

Nikolaj Dam Roadley-Battin

Mariano Velamazán


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Research

How and why

Interviewing and observing people can be complicated, as there are many aspects to consider before having the initial contact with people. In our case, we found it necessary to discuss who we were interested in talking with and how we would approach the interviews. Rather than going for University Students, we decided to focus on groups with a shared interest who met weekly. The scope was quite broad, as we realised we couldn’t be too picky about who we wanted to talk to, as we were demanding a rather short notice and needed to talk with at least a handful of people the first week. We contacted our personal network and reached out to organisations who were in charge of cultural centers, music schools, youth clubs, etc. Luckily Studiefrämjandet were able to set us in contact with a group of Role play gamers who were part of SVEROK (Swedish Board Game Organization). The second group was found via Hamnmagasinet youth center, who informed us that the most active group was ‘Vi unga gycklare’, which was a group of jesters meeting 1-2 a week. Having these well defined groups, we then formulated a research question we would use to structure our questions and interviews:

“How do private codes and group dynamics occur in groups?”

Knowing the question and groups we were about to interview, it was then required from us to reflect on how we would go about conducting the interviews. Our per-sonal opinions were to approach the interviews with an open mind and not try to force Skype related questions. It was important to get to know them as people rather than users. We had two sessions with each group, where the first interview was done in a focus group format with a duration of roughly 2 hours. The second session was conducted as a more individual talk, as we then could ask for personal reflections on topics from the first interview. In general we kept the interviews semi-structured, as we wanted the format of the interview to feel natural and not scripted.

The two groups

The Jesters are from the beginning a small group of friends that used to hang out at a local café. They all shared an interest for contemporary circus, juggling, acrobatics and fire shows. They would meet, drink and talk. At the moment the jesters have turned into a formal organization partly founded by the municipality’s youth program. They have meetings every monday for official

members in a local youth activity center called Hamnma-gasinet. Every Thursday they have open evenings be-tween 18.00 and 20.00 where most members gather and share techniques with each other and anyone that wants to join. The focus is to have an open space where people can come and play. This open policy is something they stress and point out as an important part of their work. We talked to three core members of this organization. Li-nus the acrobat (25) is the chairman of their organization and one of the original members. He takes care of most administrative tasks and the one “pulling the strings”. Alrik the diabolo expert (22) is not an original member but is very active in the group as a part of the board and he takes a lot of responsibility when it comes to com-municate official statements and responding to requests online. Jonas the fire and staff guy (33) is an old member that used to “pull the strings” but got a bit tired of it and is now more acting as the old timer, always present.

The Roleplayers are a group passionate about traditional roleplaying games (RPGs). They all found each other through their interest of playing board games. The group mainly consists of four stable members (we talked to three) that meet every week. Friday nights at 18.00 in a booked room at a local culture house. Stefan (30) func-tions as the group’s leader and gamemaster (controls and organize the game being played). He used to play differ-ent kinds of boardgames and had the interest of start-


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ing up a new group with people more focused on RPG games. Stefan does not necessarily see the other mem-bers as friends but as a necessity for being able to play the game he wants to play. Per (26) was often at the regu-lar board game nights and was up for trying something new. Dan (24) is a student from Finland that reaches out to the culture house where he knew people were playing games trying to find a group of people to play with. They are open for members to join, the only demand is that you commit to play with them every week.

Findings (conclusion)

We aimed for getting to know them as deeply as pos-sible so we interviewed each group twice and in almost all cases as a group and also each member individually. We stayed with them learning to do some acrobatics and playing a short role play game in order to share their interests and be closer to them.

During the interviews, concerning group dynamics, we were surprised of how intimate some answers were, how much they opened themselves in front of us and how honest they were (we think) telling us their private stories. We also grasped a bit of their group dynamics; we wanted to know what is it that keeps them together over the years. It called our attention how important routines

were for them as well as a minimum commitment with the others. We also had the chance to have a glimpse of their different views on the same topic and some small conflict points between members. We observed some unwritten rules in both groups and both groups consid-ered themselves as “open”. Finally, we think that there were different roles played by the different members and that those roles changed over time for different reasons.

Concerning asynchronous communication, we had some insights about their patterns and purpose of use. For example, how often, why and what for they used e-mail, Facebook, Skype and other applications like Dota 2, Snapchat and so on.

After the interviews were finished, each of us individually analyzed all the material. We found some key aspects common to both groups: the need of being a group, friendship, common interest, leadership, commitment, and communication.

From that we got a view of the group and a view of the individuals that we wanted to present. We did two videos presenting each group trying to summarize our most important findings. We also extracted some key sen-tences from the interviews so that people (the rest of the class) could get an idea of the character of each person individually. Finally, we organized a co-creation workshop

in order to get more keywords relevant to our next phase: ideation.

Wactch research summary video clicking on this link.

http://youtu.be/gOQ4dRagv48


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The Roleplay Gamers

The Jesters

Stefan PerDan

LinusJonas Alrik


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Ideation

Four methods were used to structure the ideation, as it was important for us to explore different methods to learn about their pros and cons. The four we ended up trying were: A Heuristic Ideation Technique (Tauber, 1972), 6-3-5 (Rohrbach, 1969), Lateral thinking (Lateral thinking) and Forced conflict (Forced Conflict). A ben-efit from these methods was that we managed to think beyond the brief and explore inspiring thoughts. Instead of being fixated on the topic of asynchronous communi-cation: Feeling & Expressing, we wanted to dive in to our data and exhaust our minds from all possible ideas.

When the ideas started to come short, we moved on to categorizing the ideas into meaningful topics. We quickly did an affinity diagram (Rogers, Sharp and Preece, 2011, p.286), knowing that some categorized naturally would overlap and had to be relabeled as we moved on. The ini-tial categories spanned from emotionless communication to enriching the group dynamic. But it helped to create an overview of the core of the individual idea, which was an important step towards choosing four ideas for our concept gateway presentation.

Concept gateway

Four ideas were presented at the concept gateway with the purpose of getting valuable feedback before cut-ting potential ideas. The ideas were presented with a low fidelity, as a way to emphasize the core of the concept rather than the aesthetics of the UI.

Time and space conditional messages was one of the three categories that we brought with us to the concept gateway. Within this category we had two ideas, that differed in how users were supposed to engage with time and space. The first idea looked into how groups could benefit from knowing when their members are at cer-tain locations. Our example was a group of friends, who all went to the same grocery store, could benefit from knowing when someone was at the store. Our second idea in this category was more focused on the sender and how time and location could be used to make messages more personal: watch the first uploaded video clicking on this link.

And the second idea in this one.

Group visualization was the second category, which fo-cused on how group dynamics could be embedded into text messaging. The video questions why conversations

are just a list of bubbles, and we propose ideas on how to move away from the traditional interpretation of mes-saging: watch uploaded video clicking on this link.

Reactions was the third category, which explored how both receiver and sender could react on their messages. In our video, we are showing a simple example of how gestures could be implemented into the skype platform to allow the receiver to quickly react upon received mes-sages: watch uploaded video clicking on this link.

The concept gateway was used as a demo where we could test our concepts. Between every video we asked a few questions, provoking the participants to share their opinions. We had follow up tutoring with internal tutors and Skype, which initially led to our decision of focusing primarily on the first idea in the Time and space condi-tional messages category.

Evaluation and testing

To explore or initial idea and take the project further we created a series of scenarios and use cases for the time and space conditional message concept. Through low fidelity evaluation prototypes and discussions with

https://youtu.be/tcQn8rxDzvY

https://youtu.be/tcQn8rxDzvY

And the second idea in this one.

https://youtu.be/M5rCDGCJxpE

https://youtu.be/jkJOnYuVaWs


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From ideation to digital prototype.


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students and tutors we did then explore parts of our scenarios. e.g. to choose a location manually or have an automated detection from skype asking you to create or link a space to a group of friends.

We created multiple paper interfaces (smartphones) with different approaches to a manual setting of a location. We gave them to other students to try them out, we explained a scenario and asked them to openly reflect around the experience.

[pictures of mockups/prototypes]

We used the facebook messaging application to simu-late an automated message to an already existing group of friends. One group member invited a fake ’skype-chatbot’ to the group chat while everyone in the group were at the same location. One group member acted as the chatbot from a distance sending a message explain-ing that skype had detected that they usually met at this place and asking if they wanted to save it as a regular place for this specific group.

From these simple experiments we got a couple of useful insights. It raised questions around privacy and more detailed settings for adding friends to groups or places. How do you handle groups where some want notifica-tions and some people wants to avoid them. From the

fake chatbot did we learn the importance of language and tone.

We developed, reworked and changed our initial con-cepts through sketching and long discussions, testing our new solutions by simple hand-drawn wireframes made into interactive mockups usig the proto.io tool. This led up to our final design: an added function to the regular skype interface.

Final design

We know why most people use skype today. It is to keep in touch with family and friends far away. Skype is not necessarily used when you actually are going to meet them. Our concept builds on the geolocation informa-tion, the patterns of you and your contacts movements. Suggesting that you notify or contact your friends when you happen to be in ‘close’ proximity.

Imagine that you live in Sweden but you used to study in USA. You still have some close friends there but you have lost contact with most of them. This summer you are go-ing back there for a wedding of a close friend. When you land, Skype will detect that you left your regular bubble

and ended up in the same city as many of your Skype contacts. Skype will then notify you that you have a lot of friends here and that you maybe should send out a mes-sage to them, telling them that you are here and would like to meet up. If you choose to accept, you will get the possibility to see roughly how far away your friends and contacts are. Selecting all or a few to send a message to. They can then take the initiative to contact, suggesting a meeting or just wish you a welcome back.

Interface

We were long debating whether to make a standalone application or an added function to the already existing skype. In the end we decided to use the skype frame-work and add our idea to it. Mainly because a lot of the messaging functionality we needed already exists in the standard skype application.

The changes we made were to replace the favorites tab inside the skype mobile app with what we call skype +spaces. The +spaces tab mainly consists of two screens. What you first see is a map of the general area (where you are at the moment). A map that also shows you if you have any contact nearby and roughly how far away they are from you. Here you can zoom in or out to select groups of people (or tap individuals for more precise


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targeting). You can also switch to a second screen where you instead get a list of your contacts nearby. When you selected the people you want to contact you press the ‘notify’ symbol (an old-school bell) to send out a general notification to your selected contacts. After a short ani-mation (to clarify that a notification is sent out) you end up at the original recent tab. All responses you get from the notification will be shown there.

The notification itself should be a generic message that you can (if you want) customize to something more personal. It shows up like a regular conversation only with some graphical changes to the look of the notification. If you are the receiver you get a push notification tell-ing you that your friend is back in town. You can either choose to swipe for a quick response (Yay!), respond to it like regular text message or just ignore it. The quick response originally came from an earlier concept and was transferred here because we felt that it was important to easily respond to this notification. It’s not easy to take contact with someone you not seen in a while so even if you don’t have any suggestions for meeting up, it’s nice to quickly tell someone you are positive to them coming back.

We also added a settings menu specifically for the spaces function. To give more control to the people that want it and open up for a more creative use for our basic func-

tion. You can here manually add spaces or areas where you want to be asked about notification. You can also inactivate certain areas. This gives the user the opportu-nity and power to mold this tool into something unique for them.

You can manually rename and create areas down to a couple of meters and up to hundreds of kilometers.


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A new spaces function within the existing Skype ap-plication.Main screens shown here.


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Notifications with quick responses.


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Conclusion

The ethnographic research of two different groups helped us investigate our initial research question: “How do private codes and group dynamics occur in groups?”. Both groups had informative and valuable insights that helped us analyze and group key aspects into initial con-cepts. Among these the most prominent areas consisted of ‘Time and space conditional messages’, ‘Group visuali-zation’ and ‘Reaction’. Through tutoring, evaluation and discussion the final design was selected and prototyped. The final design is a proposal to skype on how geoloca-tion information can be used to trigger conversations, whenever the user moves outside of the regular routines. It is a tool that empowers the user, by giving the indi-vidual freedom to use the new function in any way they desire. Future actions call for further evaluation and pro-totyping, where especially the geofencing and tracking has to be tested in various contexts.


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References

Forced Conflict. [ONLINE] Available at: http://creating-minds.org/tools/forced_conflict.htm. [Accessed 15 May 2015].

Lateral thinking. [ONLINE] Available at: http://creating-minds.org/articles/lateral_thinking.htm. [Accessed 15 May 2015].

Rogers, Y. Sharp, H. Preece, J. (2011). Interaction Design - beyond human-computers, interaction. 3rd ed. West Sussex: John Wiley and Sons Ltd.

Rhorbach, B. (1969). Creative nach Regeln: Methode 635, eine neue Technik zum Losen von Problemen. Absat-zwirtschaft. 23. Ed.

Tauber, E. (1972). HIT: Heuristic Ideation Technique. A Systematic Procedure for New Product Search. Journal of Marketing 36.1 (1972): 58. Web.

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