Design Mockups Round 1

by Cameron Butt

During yesterday’s seminar, we shared our first round of layout mockups for our object to think with. We received some great feedback (constructive and otherwise) from our colleagues and are going to design a more “interactive” web mockup for next week.

The object, which we are calling Circle, is basically a small-scale photo-sharing social-network tool designed to question some of the assumptions held by existing social platforms. Chris explains it best, so here’s an adapted version of his now famous (in come circles) pitch:

What is Circle and what does it do?

Circle is small-scale. Rather than avoiding your parents like on Facebook, Circle is designed particularly for families and close friends, who form your “circle.” We don’t expect the typical user to have more than ten to twenty people in their circle. Circle is not a space to build a second life; it is merely a supplement to help you keep better track of your first.

Circle reduces information density. By reducing information overload, we want Circle to move away from what Nicholas Carr identifies as distraction. The home screen, the first level, is a collage of profile pictures. There is practically no text. When you click or tap on a profile, the profile window expands, but the main screen never fades entirely from view. In this second level, two smaller images appear: the person’s most recent photograph (as taken with the Autographer, the use of which is one of the constraints for the purposes of this course) and a map showing where that photo was taken. Clicking on the map will produce a larger image of the map (still in context), and clicking on the photo will show the third level of the network: the live Autographer photostream.

On this third level, the photos are updated in real time with a fade transition. This feature is not yet technically possible with the Autographer, but we’re secretly imagining that an actual build would use smartphones and tablets rather than the Autographers, which are still rare devices.

Circle also resists archiving. As new photos are uploaded, older photos are deleted. As Viktor Mayer-Shönberger would say, they have an “expiry date.” Users have the option to select photos to save to their own personal shoebox, where you can keep a limited number of what José van Dijck would call “mediated memory objects.” But circle keeps nothing automatically.

Circle helps you keep track of the people you care about, and it helps them keep track of you. It democratizes the Autographer’s surveillance potentiality, and so Circle implies and requires trust. When used in conjunction with an Autographer, Circle is low-maintanence. If we decide to adapt it for use with less passive devices like camera phones or, one day, Google Glass, that will certainly affect the ways in which it stands out from existing platforms.

So that’s the object, and building it has given us lots to think about.

We initially sought to create something especially for people with early onset Alzheimer’s Disease by subverting the existing notions of memorial archiving emphasized by other social networks (think of Facebook’s Timeline feature). In other words, we wanted to create a space that did not implicitly enforce remembrance. Some of our research shows that existing social spaces designed for people living with AD were not only clunky and memory-focused, but universally became spaces for the caregivers rather than spaces for people with dementia.

But building a space exclusively for people with AD is inherently problematic because of the stigma it imposes. Our preliminary research led us to expect people with AD to reject an assistive tool if it labelled them as a person with a disability. By designing a web app that can be accessed through devices that are already socially ubiquitous—like tablets and smartphones—we figured we could avoid part of that problem. But there is still the question of whether labelling the tool as “assistive” or “therapeutic” for people with AD would be met with resistance from some of our target users. So, paradoxically, if we want the social network to appeal to people with AD, we have to think about marketing it in such a way that doesn’t openly acknowledge its “assistive” or “therapeutic” nature.

When we met with Lisa from MAREP (Murray Alzheimer Research and Education Program), however, she encouraged us to think more about using the tool in a way that facilitated the externalization of memory, rather than minimizing it as we were intending. She wasn’t as concerned as we were about labelling our tool a device for people with AD. In fact, she suggested that more people would use it if we were clear about how it would benefit people with AD. For instance, she saw a potential use for the network as a supplement to “memory albums,” which are created to help AD support workers identify potential triggers for negative personal expression. By openly acknowledging the tool as an assistive/therapeutic device, we would open ourselves to that market. We’re expecting further feedback next week from some MAREP community members living with AD, but I expect it will confirm Lisa’s prediction.

Next, Lisa agreed that Circle would provide an impetus for social interaction, but not entirely as we expected: she imagined that family members could help prompt conversation about someone’s day without applying a potentially frustrating pressure to “remember.” For example, a person might say to someone with dementia “I see you went to the store today” rather than asking “What did you do today?” In other words, by playing up the archival function we would open our tool to a whole range of different assistive possibilities. We would, however, be sacrificing several theoretically provocative concepts.

Needless to say, we’re standing at a conceptual crossroads here. We can see two very clear directions for the product, and I think we’re going to try to strike a balance between them as we put together the interactive mockup for next week.

We’d love feedback if you have it.