UXPA Boston 2018: 10-Minute Student Talks

Psychology & UX (Sean Higgins, Northeastern)

• Designers have perhaps co-opted psychology without the background, principles
  • Signs
    • UX teams without any UX researchers (shortage of researchers and mentors)
    • More people are “doing UX” but less user-centric design is being done
• Do small test samples obviate need for rigorous testing?
  • Science demands statistical significance
  • Can we craft an appropriate form of research?
• How do we create symbiotic relationship between scientists and designers?
• Are heuristics/checklists distracting people from engaging in research first?
  • This would be “design-centered design,” not “user-centered design”
• We need to balance the art & science

Ethical implications of the chatbox user experience (Jennifer Siegel, Bentley)

• Inspiration? Humans love yelling at robots.
  • 2001: AOL “SmarterChild” bot… users take out frustrations verbally
  • Do we take this behavior for granted?
• 10-15% of interactions with “conversational agents” are abusive
  • Given exponential increase of interactions, that’s a serious number
• Can we understand the human behaviors that chatbots expose?
• Hedonomics vs. Schadenfreude
  • Hedonomics: Creating delightful human technology
  • Schadenfreude: Joy when learning of pain of another
    • Research: When your rival team fails, your reward center triggers
• Maybe being mean to a robot isn’t a big deal?
  • Research: venting does not reduce emotion, it normalizes it.
  • Also: we can offend those who overhear us
  • Children learn from mirroring
    • Baby learns iPad easily, but then tries to interact with magazine by taping, swiping, etc.
    • We’re not designed to process conversation in different ways… e.g. person vs. Alexa
• Significant implications for gender dynamics
  • Many virtual assistants are female
  • Culture identifies warmth, kindness with female voices
  • Could reinforce notion of women as subservient
  • Female avatars receive more harrassment than male avatars
• How do chatbots respond to abuse?
  • Many try to use humor to brush it off (“I’d blush if I could”)
  • Google Home doesn’t engage with abusive messages (“I don’t understand”)
  • Potential to directly confront abusive user: “I will not tolerate, here’s a link to learn more”
• Recomemndations
  • More diverse teams, personas
  • Reinforce that chatbots are not human
  • More research into chatbot interactions affecting real-world behavior
  • Identify the broader-reaching impacts, “the larger user experience”
    • Design chatbots that defend those who can’t defend themselves

Brand in the age of UX & IxD (Hoshedar Bamji)

• Brand - think color, type… but a lot more
• Great brands have character, personality, associated values
  • experiences/associations with organization’s products, services, identity
• UX process doesn’t typically include step for “brand”
• Design thinking, too… how will experience affect the brand?
• In tech today, teams are smaller, have faster cycles
  • Less capacity to consider brand?
  • UX has become the “brand”
• Need to consider offline & long-term online engagement
• Success of new experience = past experience + new expectations
• Orangina
  • associated with shaking motion (because it has pulp)
  • now incorporating shaking experience into other user experiences: advertising, dispensers, “loading” designs, hover feedback (microinteractions)