design-platform-blog

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I have started considering how I am going to layout out my supporting documentation in the form of a publication. Initially I was thinking that the grid systems could be similar - to emphasise an overall visual language. But after more exploration, I feel like this may limit my parallax design as print and digital mediums are so different from one another and the quantity of text i’m working with in the print document is a lot larger. Still figuring it out. 

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Evolution has wired our brains for storytelling – how to make use of it

Now all this is interesting. We know that we can activate our brains better if we listen to stories. The still unanswered question is: Why is that? Why does the format of a story, where events unfold one after the other have such a profound impact on our learning?

The simple answer is this: We are wired that way. A story, if broken down into the simplest form is a connection of cause and effect. And that is exactly how we think.

We think in narratives all day long, no matter if it is about buying groceries, whether we think about work or our spouse at home. We make up (short) stories in our heads for every action and conversation.

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This article articulately describes the importance of narratives in our cognition of information, how it governs who we are and establishing personality through story telling. Here are some quotes/random thoughts I found useful: 

In telling the story of how you became who you are, and of who you're on your way to becoming, the story itself becomes a part of who you are.

“Life stories do not simply reflect personality. They are personality, or more accurately, they are important parts of personality, along with other parts, like dispositional traits, goals, and values,”

the default mode of human cognition is a narrative mode.”

Storytelling is is a way of making sense of the world around us.

“Life is incredibly complex, there are lots of things going on in our environment and in our lives at all times, and in order to hold onto our experience, we need to make meaning out of it,”

“identifying lessons learned or insights gained in life experiences, marking development or growth through sequences of scenes, and showing how specific life episodes illustrate enduring truths about the self,”

Being able to spin a good yarn has social value. 

author,” when people begin to bundle ideas about the future with experiences from the past and present to form a narrative self.

two themes in people’s stories that tend to correlate with better well-being: agency, or feeling like you are in control of your life, and communion, or feeling like you have good relationships in your life.

storytelling, biases, personality differences, or emotions can lead different people to see the same event differently.

“Any creation of a narrative is a bit of a lie.” “What really matters is whether people are making something meaningful and coherent out of what happened.���

Organizing the past into a narrative isn’t just a way to understand the self, but also to attempt to predict the future.

There is evidence that finding some “unity” in your narrative identity is better, psychologically, than not finding it. And it probably is easier to just drop those things as you pull patterns from the chaos, though it may take some readjusting.

A life story is written in chalk, not ink, and it can be changed. “You’re both the narrator and the main character of your story,” Adler says. “That can sometimes be a revelation—‘Oh, I’m not just living out this story, I am actually in charge of this story.’”

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Narrative vs Information

After spending the weekend at Semi Permanent, and hearing many inspiring talks from successful people within the design industry, I have been considering ways in which I can merge present my information in the form of narrative. I’ve come across during the researching stages of my project. 

Narratives offer increased comprehension, interest, and engagement. I want to make the experience of my parallax website feel personal, and to do this I need to explore the responses of users to designs incorporating illustrations and photography to investigate which resonates most with them.  

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This article provides a good framework for the written component of my research journal. It outlines how crucial sense of touch is in child development, the subjective nature of touch, 

The sense of touch develops before all other senses in embryos, and is the main way in which infants learn about their environment and bond with other people. This sense never turns off or takes a break, and it continues to work long after the other senses fail in old age. Throughout life people use their sense of touch to learn, protect themselves from harm, relate to others, and experience pleasure. Interestingly, positive touch from others is necessary for an individual’s healthy development. Despite the presence of all other life requirements, without this positive touch infants will fail to thrive. Compared to the other senses, touch is very hard to isolate because tactile sensory information enters the nervous system from every single part of the body. As a result, very little research has been done on touch. However, recent studies have attempted to map how the sense of touch works and how a simple stroke of the skin can alter an individual’s health and behaviour.

In the context of neurobiology touch is defined as “the special sense by which contact with the body of an organism is perceived in the conscious mind” (Gardner). One’s sense of touch allows an individual to determine an object’s size, shape, weight, texture, and temperature, and whether the object causes pain or pleasure. In this way, touch allows an individual to learn about the environment and change one’s behaviour accordingly.

Experiential touch

All peoples’ brains are similar in the broad arrangement of these sensory neurons, but “the details of the somatotopic map characterize each individual and are determined largely by experience” (Gardner). The types of touches that a person experiences throughout his or her life affect the architecture of his or her brain, which in turn affects that person’s interpretation of and response to different types of touch. A general statement about neuronal communication is that “repetitive activation of a pathway strengthens those synapses, making it easier to pass information forward” (Gardner). Thus, the more often a person experiences a type of touch, the better able to interpret that information his or her brain becomes. However, if there is a lack of touch the sensory neurons will not be activated and the synapses in that neuronal pathway will never strengthen.

Physical, mental and emotional development of children and touch

Through its effect on the development of neuronal pathways and communication, the amount and type of touch an individual receives can greatly affect that person’s behavior and health. Starting at the turn of the twentieth century, psychologists and doctors have discovered that affectionate touch is necessary for the physical, mental, and emotional development of children. For example, doctors throughout the first half of the twentieth century were puzzled by a phenomenon called failure to thrive syndrome. In hospitals and orphanages the majority of infants and children did not develop normally and/or died, despite being given proper medical care, good food, and a clean environment (Hatfield).

Touch experiment with monkeys

The desire for touch is stronger than any other desire, and implies that mother-infant bonding is more dependent on affectionate touch than on the fact that the mother provides food to the infant. (monkey experiment) 

The touch deprived monkeys in Harlow’s studies all experienced stereotypic abnormalities in their development and behavior. These monkeys engaged in self-clasping and rocking behaviors and were disinterested in their environment. They avoided socializing with other monkeys, were timid, and disliked being touched. When they did interact with other monkeys they were very aggressive. They had difficulty finding sexual partners, often were unable to mate properly, and abused their mates and offspring (Hatfield). In the years since Harlow’s studies of monkeys others have conducted further studies on the affect of touch deprivation on development. The current consensus is that adequate affectionate touch is necessary for an individual’s proper development.

Causes from lack of affectionate touch

There is strong evidence that a lack of affectionate touch causes depression, violence, memory deficits, and illness. The question is how something as simple as touch can affect one’s body so greatly. One possibility, referred to as Attachment Theory, has to do with the relationship between affectionate touch and parent-child bonding (Hatfield). If a child does not receive adequate affectionate touch because his or her parents are emotionally neglectful, then the child and parents will not form a proper emotional bond. The lack of bonding will, consciously or unconsciously, cause unhappiness and a lack of trust on the child’s part. As a child grows older this will manifest itself as an inability to relate to other people, which will cause further unhappiness and stress. 

Touch and stress

Affectionate touch lowers an individual’s stress and anxiety levels, while touch deprivation raises stress levels (Hatfield). With stress comes an increase in the levels of stress hormones, such as cortisol and norepinephrine, in the blood. Chronically high levels of cortisol prevent normal brain tissue development in children and damage existing brain tissue, especially the hippocampus (Field). The hippocampus is involved in memory and learning, so this might explain why children who do not receive affectionate touch experience learning difficulties.

Chronic stress also wreaks havoc on one’s immune system. Immune systems weakened by stress may contribute to the poor health and abnormal growth seen in children who experience extreme touch deprivation (Hatfield). Finally, the stress caused by touch deprivation might eventually change an individual’s brain chemistry so as to cause depression, although the exact mechanism is unknown.

Touch and stress relief 

Affectionate touch “is associated with enhanced learning, language processing, improved problem solving, increased physical recovery speeds” (Hatfield), decreased stress, physical growth in infants and children, less cardiovascular disease in adults, and a decrease in pain experienced by those suffering from chronic diseases such as arthritis or fibromyalgia (Field). Massage therapy, a form of pleasurable touch, is gaining acceptance among the medical community as an effective treatment for a multitude of physical and psychological problems.

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Touch - David J. Linden

The way we perceive a sensory event is not determined simply by the physical parameters of the sensory stimulus involved. Our perception of a sensory stimulus is crucially dependent upon our expectations, as they have been formed by our life experience up to that moment. Where there’s a mismatch between expectation and sensation, it’s a sign that something weird is happening , and our perception of that sensation is fundamentally altered. 

Context is key in sensory experience. 

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Touch - David J. Linden 

Pain and emotion

Touch maps are not permanently defined for one’s entire adult life.

One group of fibres called A-alpha, carries very fast information from special sensors embedded in the muscles, joints and tendons. These signals enable you to form a mental image of where your body is in space. This ability, called proprioception, makes it possible for you to sense position/movement/touch.

Two touch systems on the skin:

A-beta fibres - convey touch information with high spatial and temporal resolution to differentiate different stimuli [pain/fast signals]

C fibres - caress system. Produces a diffuse, emotionally positive sensation on only the hairy skin. Conveys both crucial social information that’s necessary for the proper emotional development of newborns and the social touches later in life that are critical for the development of newborn of trust and cooperation, in both humans and other animals.

It may be that temporal integration produced by having slow signals is actually better for making decisions based upon emotional touch:

- Choices made more deliberately, based on a longer touch stimulus.

- Prevents misinterpreted casual touch for a socially motivated caress.

The important role of social touch in developing and reinforcing trust and cooperation in a wide range of bonding situations, ranging from babies to adults and from colleagues to lovers. A caress communicates that you are safe. You can trust the person administering it, just as you trust your mother, who first caressed you. He or she is not a threat.

= c tactile system (caress) -> drives responses -> social bonding.

Autism - perceived pleasantness is reduced.

We can thrill to the touch of performers on the screen as we might caress on our own skin. neural info -> Emotional brain. Watching someone’s arm caress activates the brain to induce similarly to own caress.

We humans are tuned to the crucial features of emotional touch not just in our own tactiles experience but also when observing others. We are highly sensitive to reading such signal between other people. This is an important feature of social cognition, helping us to track changes in affiliations, coolitions, and status without our social groups.

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Touch - David J. Linden

Biological Touch 

Artistotle believed our acute human touch sense accounted for the superior intellect of our species. 

When we use tactile information to play instruments/make love/do anything, streams of information from a variety of skin sensors are blended and processed in our brains so that by the time we have conscious access to them, they are in the form of a unified and useful percept. 

Touch information is subconsciously combined with inputs from vision, hearing and proprioception (a sense of where our bodies are located in space from nerve endings in muscles/joints) to form rich nuanced perception. 

The skin is an interface between our internal and external worlds - the locus of touch - a protective barrier. 

Two types of skin: Hairy - increases efficiency of evaporative cooling and Glaborous - without hair. 

As a symbol, fingerprints have a deep emotional and spiritual resonance. There’s something fascinating about them - they’re an external mark of human individuality written in an obscure artistic code. 

Tactile guided tasks require a rich stream of information and expectations about the physics of our bodies and the outside world. Without fine grip control, we would have been unable to develop tool use and, very unlikely, human culture as we know it. 

The regions that are magnified in the cortical map (touch map) are those that have a high density of mechanoreceptors in the skin, particularly the merkels which subserve fine discriminative touch. (tongue, hands, lips). 

Information converges from skin to brain. 

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Touch - David J. Linden

Here are the touch points (lol) of a book I’ve been reading which are relevant to social touch, and it’s importance in our development from children, to our sense of self and so on. 

Social touch

Interpersonal touch is crucial for us to reinforce social bonds between parents and children, siblings and sexual partners. It helps us to foster emotions of gratitude, sympathy and trust. Emotional touch centers are neutral crossroads where sensation and expectation collide allowing for powerful effects of life, history, culture and context. Activity in these brain regions determines whether a given touch will feel positive or negative dependent on context. 

Touch and emotion in relation to metaphors in abstract psychological concepts. e.g. Warmth - security, trust, absence of threat. This part of the book goes into a study of people’s perceptions of others depending on exposure to textures and temperatures. 

Increased touch predicts for better sport performance as it builds trust and cooperation. 

There is a lot of reference to the use of social touch in the animal kingdom for developing trust and forming social bonds, as well as establishing a social hierarchy. 

Most touch communication does not take place between strangers - in most cases it’s a more intimate form of interaction and (our perception of it) depends on contextual elements to interpret the emotional meaning/intention: 

* Gender       *Power Dynamic      *Personal History 

*Cultural context.       *Social Situation

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Strategic UX: The Art of Reducing Friction

A focal point of my project is UX, I would like to explore how to best conduct UX practices and use this research as a section of my research journal.

In user experience, friction is defined as interactions that inhibit people from intuitively and painlessly achieving their goals within a digital interface. Friction is a major problem because it leads to bouncing, reduces conversions, and frustrates would-be customers to the point of abandoning their tasks. 

Spotify recently introduced a new Touch preview feature that leverages tap, hold and swipe gestures to reduce friction in discovering and liking songs. The strategic design decisions these companies have made have exponentially accelerated user adoption and engagement.

Mastering the art of reducing friction through a combination of design and engineering creates a significant competitive advantage, especially when driving early user adoption and growth.

User research: Designing a product with a full user journey in mind is important in order to pinpoint where friction is helpful and where it is harmful to both user and business goals. 

http://www.dtelepathy.com/blog/business/strategic-ux-the-art-of-reducing-friction

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The Power of Human touch

I’ve been reading a few articles which place emphasis on the medical application of human touch in nursing premature new born babies which have to go through over repetitive procedures with minor pain at the beginning of their lives. 

The exposure to this pain can have significant consequences, deficits and delays for the child as they grow up. Research backed up that the pain can “increase incidence of attention deficit disorder, anxiety and stress disorders, hyper-vigilance, exaggerated startle response, and altered biobehavioural response to pain”

Human touch is an effective pain relief for heel sticks (needles inserted into the heels of the baby) with reduced crying time, less breath-holding, reduced heart rate and respiratory rate and a more concentrated oxygen saturation as a result.

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For my final university project I would like to visually communicate the meaning behind touch and the importance of it in order for us to grow up with a healthy social understanding of the world around us. 

Touch is the first of our senses to develop. It provides us with our fundamental means of achieving contact with the external world. Social touch is a non-verbal means of expressing thoughts and feelings. Touch also promotes the formation and maintenance of social bonds. Touch is the unsung sense - the one that we depend on the most and talk about the least.

I have been thinking about how to design an engaging project, that interests people and makes them think about their surrounding world - questioning how they take touch for granted, are they getting enough, do they have relationships in their life which strengthens the social bond through touch? 

There are three kinds of touch, social, pain and sensual - for this project I want to have a focal point on social touch but also research into pain and sensual for the written component of this paper. 

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Reflection

Now that we are finished it’s so much easier to look at things we could improve, things we didn’t do so well on or things that we were really good at. 

To start, here is an overview of Vault. 

Vault is an app for ASB bank. ASB are big on being innovators and leading the market. They are also a bank with one of biggest databases of tertiary students in NZ. This makes them a perfect partner. Once you have set up an account with Vault you create a group called a ‘Squad’ which consists of all the people you flat/live with. From there you can enter ‘expenses’ which save settings as to who is paying bills, how much is each person paying, who the bill is paid to, when the bill is paid, whether it is an ongoing payment or a one-off and whether you are wanting to pay manually or via direct debit.  We have made the app very visual with graphs and charts so all information is displayed clearly and in an easy to read and understandable format. We have also included little quirks like ‘nudging’ a squad member who hasn’t paid an upcoming expense. This allows a reminder to pop up on their phone without having a confrontational argument. 

Looking back on things we could improve on:

As with all projects with a time limit there are always things you can improve. If I was to go back again I would like to improve the Squad pages. I believe out of all the pages these are the least clear but also the least realistic. There is no way you would be able to join a shared bank account just by scanning in a unique QR code. However we added features like this because they apply to our youthful market and it is something they recognise and use in other apps. Perhaps though this just needs some more research, as yesterday I was told about Clef (https://getclef.com) which is a secure authentication feature. It can be built into any app or website and is like the new version of QR codes/passwords/tokens but is ultra secure. 

I would also like to focus a lot more on the ‘Top Up’ function as I think we overlooked this feature hugely. It took us many hours, days and serious talks to try and figure out what we wanted from the app, what we could realistically do design wise and what would be plausible in the real world. One of these things was looking at how many people could share an account, how these people were authenticated, if they all had to be from the same bank etc etc. With all this I think we overlooked how necessary it is to actually Top Up the shared account with your own money from a personal account as this is necessary before paying any expenses from within the app. This perhaps even needs a page on its own. I honestly can’t believe I didn’t realise this until last night. 

What we did well:

I think our end screen designs look reasonably realistic as a trustworthy banking app. 

I think there is a good amount of elements that were designed by myself as well as designed by Nikki. Basically that the screens don’t look like it is all one persons design. We adopted elements of each others work well. 

The amount of in-depth thinking we did as to what we could and couldn’t achieve with a banking app in New Zealand. To be honest we almost spent more time trying to figure this out than designing. 

What we learnt: Having both worked with the same partner all of last year I think both of us had to learn to adapt to another persons working and designing and communicating style.  We learnt a lot about constraints of banking apps in NZ as well as other banking, payment and bill splitting apps that exist around the world.  This is also the most technical app/website/project either of us has worked on and so this needed a completely different UI to anything we had done before. There was also a MAJOR focus on UX.  Overall I am happy with our final screens and how the project went.

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Final screen designs - our main pages. 

Vault is a bill splitting app which simplifies your expenses all in one place. Pay your monthly expenses in one tap. It’s ideal use in for people who are flatting together so you can see who has paid what into your shared account and once everyone has paid their share on an expense the payment is sent to the payee. 

Add people to your squad by scanning their QR code.

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Simon’s User Test of final app

These were the instructions I told Simon

Login with the pin 36495

Top up your account

Add an expense

Add an ongoing payment (this was a little difficult as our testing site doesn’t allow for typing in a form)

Change the date of the payment

Add a reminder for 5 days before your bill is due

Complete the Form

Find out more about your Electricity Bill

Pay the bill

Look at your statement

Edit the Settings for your Electricity Bill

Scroll down and change the reminder from 2 and 5 days, to just 2 days. 

Complete the Form

Look at your Squad

Scan in a new Squad member

Find your QR code to join someone else's squad

Look at your notifications

Feedback: 

The Squad area is very difficult to understand/navigate. The current icon for ‘Squad’ is an icon commonly used for ‘User’ and so it doesn’t look like multiple people. We need an icon with a group (or 3 people) in it.  Also the three icons (in the Squad area) to swipe between pages aren’t clear and you have no idea what they lead to. Here written buttons would be more appropriate.  Also the ‘Top Up’ icon and the ‘Statement’ icon don’t fit the look. They are not in places you would expect to find them. If Topping Up is the most necessary thing you need to do to make this app work then the button needs to be a lot more obvious. Although with this being said they were easy enough to find because a). the top up button has ‘Top Up’ written underneath it and b). When being told to ‘look at your statement’ there aren’t many other icons/buttons on the screen and certainly not ones that look like they would lead you to a statement.  Other than that the rest of it was very straight forward and easy to understand. 

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This is a walk through of our final app designs. 

When setting up a new expense, the user is able to select the percentage or amount paid. Once percentage is clicked, the payment is automatically split evenly and you’re able to edit the payment ratio. This is especially useful if you’ve got someone in the flat who takes far longer showers than everyone else! 

For our expense page it shows the user as the last one to pay, but if someone is taking their time in making a payment, you’d be able to send them a reminder by clicking the icon underneath their photo - which would instead be a bell providing more incentive to pay by avoiding annoyance. 

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Our finalised designs.