Reminiscing through Doodling
Fosters mindfulness and gratitude through a persuasive embedded game design.
On a Time crunch? Read my Medium article here! ✨
Project Overview
When was the last time you took a deep breath and genuinely appreciated the small things around you? Would you like to do it more often?
Mental health requires upkeep and flexibility but is often neglected.
Dedicated to:
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Current busy students who may struggle to take care of their own well-being
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People making big life changing decisions
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Working professionals experiencing the monotony of the 9-5
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Anyone!
DOMAIN
Persuasive Design
UX/UI
PROJECT TYPE
Project at Carnegie Mellon University
MY ROLE
UX Researcher
DURATION
3 months
TEAM
Charlene Chen
Alana Rogers
Alicia Ng
Roong Vorasucha
Yvonne Huang
Subha Ramkumar
SKILLS
Literature Review
Focus groups
Think-aloud usability testing
Remote research
Prototyping
Service Solution
snickerDoodle
Choosing a prompt
How to doodle
How to make a guess
Click here to view our prototype!
Research Process
10+ Literature Reviews on on how gratitude and mindfulness can improve well being
30 User Interviews gave us deeper insight into how difficult it is to be mindful
Expert Consults: Talked to a psychologist and social worker on current practices and gaps in fostering mental well-being
3 rounds of Prototyping: gave form to our ideas
15 Think-Aloud Usability Testings: validate assumptions, helped us identify improvements and new insights
Evaluative research
Generative Research
Expert consults over Zoom!
Generative Research
Where we started exploring
We embarked onto our problem space by conducting generative research that consisted of literature reviews, user interviews, and expert consults.
We also used New Metaphors to help research participants articulate their implicit thoughts and reflect on their lived experiences. We conducted a focus group of 15 participants (ages ranged from 23 to 54 and covered a spectrum of gender identities). Through this focus group study, we were able to gain insights on people’s overall feelings about their work and life, which helped us identify the needs and challenges that people have.
Click to view Figjam!
In addition we explored a design tool called The Thing from the Future, where we "come up with the most entertaining and thought-provoking descriptions of hypothetical objects from different near-, medium-, and long-term futures." Distancing from playing this game provided us the psychological buffer to think creatively. We initially wanted to focus on creating something that would help users notice the small things in their lives as a means of bringing about positive feelings to improve wellbeing. After this activity, we realized that we had many ideas that were instead related to recalling positive memories as a means of promoting wellbeing.
With the gathered initial knowledge, we pitched 3 ideas.
Though we received the most feedback about Idea 1, but we worried that a “bio-game” would require using input sensing technologies that would be beyond our tight time frame. Another caveat with biosignals is that it can be surprisingly difficult to design experiences aside from physical exertion that can actually cause significant changes to responses like heart rate. Idea 3 also relied on an extensive time delay to experience and evaluate.
We decided to pursue Idea 2, and to hone in on a storytelling and recall element. We wanted the game to provoke personal reflection by strengthening neural pathways that form positive memories; a light-hearted Pictionary about sharing stories.
Evaluative Research
From Ideation to Action, Identifying Hidden Opportunities
Our team used the Tarot Cards of Tech to help us "think about the outcomes technology can create, from unintended consequences to opportunities for positive change". As a means of future visioning, this encouraged us to think through the potential consequences of our design as we've conceptualized it, and to iterate on our concept based on the insights we gain.
As we learned in Persuasive Design, we intentionally intermixed our Pictionary prompts with on-topic (relating to gratitude, fostering nostagia and mindfulness) questions and off-topic ones. This encourages fun, light hearted participation and creates a sense of safety, as an explicit approach could detract from an honest, genuine experience.
Prototyping Iterations
As a team, we created low fidelity, medium fidelity, and high fidelity prototyping iterations of what became known as snickerDoodle. With each iteration, we conducted 5 Think-Aloud usability tests with our target users to gather feedback. We then incorporated that feedback into the next round of prototyping.
We started off by parallel prototyping our own versions of snickerDoodle.
Then we began designing our lofi prototype and conducted 5 usability tests.
We iterated and created mid-fidelity prototypes. We conducted a second round of usability tests.
High fidelity prototypes.
Research Impact
Game Overview
Our solution is snickerDoodle, a Pictionary-inspired guessing game that you play with your chosen circle i.e, friends or the general public. Players draw and write based on the game’s prompts and then guess what the other players in the app have drawn and written about. These intermixed prompts change daily and are designed to invoke feelings of gratitude upon reflection while drawing and writing. We utilized persuasive techniques; they are discussed in detail below:
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Obfuscation with Misdirection: We wanted our users to not be driven away by an explicitly conveyed intention and instead be incentivized by the usual rewards of a gaming experience.
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Intermixing: In order to keep the prompts from all being related to gratitude and thus making the intention plain or gaming experience monotone, we decided to intersperse the gratitude invoking prompts with other fun prompts.
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Social Proof: Users are incentivized to play more and see what others they know are drawing and writing.
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Self Affirmation: Self-Affirmation as a barrier to external threat is something we utilized to strengthen players’ identity of self. By reminding them of what they have (using prompts like “your favorite toy from your childhood” or “best thing about your high school years”) not only do we invoke a sense of gratitude but also a sense of security thus ensuring psychological homeostasis.
Usability Testing
Method
We conducted 15 usability tests both in person and via Zoom. We shared a link to the prototypes with our participants, and deliberately did not disclose the game's true intentions until the debriefing. Depending on fidelity limitations, we would Wizard-of-Oz some functionalities and use paper and pen for the doodling section.
Goals/Objectives
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Understand whether the UI and the game rules had a logical flow
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How would a user's drawing change if they were drawing anonymously for the world versus for people in real life who know their identity on snickerDoodle?
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Prototype different formats (drawing, choosing pre-made images, taking photos, etc.)
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Do users want a way to chat or communicate with others?
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Social media features: chatting, subscribing to posts, 24 hr delays
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Is the prompt doodling timed? If so, for how long?
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If we obfuscate the intentions of provoking gratitude, how effective is our game?
A participant and I during a usability test.
What We Learned
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Not Sticky Enough:
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We initially had a 24 hour wait for users to see stories behind posts, which we then changed to 3 hours before removing it completely. Our original intention was to prevent app addiction by limiting immediate gratification. However, we learned through user testing that this feature deterred people from coming back.
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More Emphasis on Gratitude:
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Some users wondered if the onboarding could be more explicit so they had a better idea of the game's purpose. It seems that an explicit approach may be more likely to backfire if the intentions are on more sensitive topics (e.g. if the game is about dismantling racism vs. a generally positive topic such as mindfulness).
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People are unpredictable:
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Earlier in our designs, we were deciding between creating a game where people could only play with friends or to only play with complete anonymity within a community of strangers. It was a mixed bag. Some liked the anonymity that comes with sharing with the world while others liked the safety and context that sharing with friends provided. With this in mind, we gave players the choice to reveal different aspects of their identity through drawing and storytelling to different social circles.
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You don't need to text to communicate:
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In order to avoid turning snickerDoodle to be another Social Media app, we decided to remove the ability to have full conversations. Instead, we added a "Send a Cookie" feature to both send and receive cookies in your cookie jar. This feature was well received.
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Send a cookie to show support!
We added a recall feature, showing players the drawings they had seen previously and asking if they can remember what the drawing represented and what the story behind it was to add another layer of reflection.
A future iteration would be for the game to send players reminders of their drawings in
contexts when they would most benefit from mindfulness.
Explicit approach may be acceptable for a game about mindfulness
Giving users the option to post doodles to their close friend circle or anonymously to a community allows a greater sense of safety and self expression
Nostalgia can be a positive vehicle for conscious gratitude
Retrospective & Takeaways
Pivoting with Future Research
It is highly crucial to still evaluate the impact of our prototype, and we took a few stabs using Projective Testing, as advised by Professor Kaufman during our high fidelity testing rounds. We used a type of projective testing called the House-Person-Tree Test, where we guided the participant to draw a house, tree and a person. Then, we asked them a series of questions and follow-up queries such as “Who lives in the house?” and “Is the person who lives there happy?” We then looked for descriptions that matched what we were looking for, any mentions that tied to qualities of positivity, happiness, gratitude or nostalgia. During the sessions we tried this test, the participants were generally positive.
Of course, this test has its limitations with measuring attitude/behavior change, so in future iterations, we would also consider using a detailed survey as our approach to evaluative research. Perhaps we could use GQ6, a quick self report scale that measures dispositional gratitude after users play the game. If the survey is too direct, we could intermix it with questions unrelated to gratitude to avoid social desirability bias.
Evaluative research is a necessary component of our designs and we would heavily consider how to measure our game’s effectiveness through a Projective Technique or through a questionnaire. Considering how our intervention is long-term we would need to run these tests after an extended period of game play to measure its effectiveness.
If we had more time, I would:
Conduct diary studies to better understand internal emotions over time, conduct more user testing to avoid sample bias
Expand and test out different forms of self expression other than doodling
Delve deeper into evaluating snickerDoodle's effectiveness and efficacy on well-being, perhaps via surveys
Takeaway 1
I enjoy taking risks and testing the waters.
I initiated testing our app's efficacy with Projective Testing. Though it felt slightly strange at first (because of how subjective it can be), I enjoyed expanding my comfort zone and trying something new. I've learned that a research method only becomes more natural once you've practiced — trying is always the first step.
Takeaway 2
Sometimes narrowing can be more expansive, and being more expansive can be more narrowing.
Our problem space, mental wellbeing, started off incredibly broad. We had the liberty to drive any direction. When we started to narrow our idea down, focusing on fostering gratitude and mindfulness, we began to think of more concrete solutions. With this insight in mind, we could even iterate by focusing specifically on students or working professionals instead of catering to the whole population. Sometimes less is more, and targeting a specific demographic can be far more effective.
Participant doodles taped next our poster!
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