KST Affinity
TL;DR
My Role
UX Researcher focus, part Project manager and Designer
The Team
- Daniel Le Compte (MHCI)
- Sarah Hand (MHCI)
- Kraig Fujii (MHCI)
- Preethi Surapaneni (IS & HCI)
- Eric Li (Architecture & HCI)
Timeline
October - December (2020)
Client
Kelly Strayhorn Theater (KST)*
* Indicates project is within a course or client did not employ team
Core methods:
Generative Think-aloud
Contextual Inquiry
Sketching and Storyboarding
User need validation through "Speed Dating"
Experience Prototyping and evaluation
Summary
With COVID-19 forcing all sorts of industries entirely remote, KST had to improvise and adjust to move their
operations online. With this, they reached out to Carnegie Mellon's
UCRE course
to help their process - especially to retain as much of the feeling and connection they had with their in-person theater experiences.
We conducted a thorough research process through Generative Think-Aloud sessions, Contextual Inquiries, and Experiential Prototyping
to evaluate how we might recreate the lively and meaningful connection-based experiences that KST and its community holds dearly.
We created a prototype of a conversational connection experience, KST Affinity, that is flexible enough for KST's various events and programming, with
enough structure to enable meaningful connection among people who share a similar interest.
My focus:
I specifically lead the efforts of creating in-depth and in-context sessions for the think-aloud and contextual inquiry methods, aiming to
dive deep into the user's experiences, stories, and needs. I also assisted in leading sessions for synthesizing data across our diverse groups
of participants as well as designing our experience prototyping sessions to lead to useful data for evaluation and improvement.
Deliverables
Source: Geekwire article about Kelly-Strayhorn Theater
Problem Space and Context
During the pandemic, meeting and connecting with new people over similar interests is really hard. The “lobby party” vibe that KST had is lost with virtual performances. The ability to meet and mingle with people who are justn as interested in and as excited about contemporary dance and the topics that KST puts on, is no seemingly exponentially more difficult. People miss being able to connect with other theatergoers and virtual interactions as is do not facilitate the kind of warm community they strive for. Zoom "Happy hours" are strife with technical difficulties, overlapping and interupting conversations, and the chances to make meaningful connections seem nearly impossible. KST strives to curate and cultivate these beautiful aspects of human-to-human connection, but needed help in the transition to the remote world.
Process
We went through a series of research steps to full understand the problem space - specifically to thoroughly understand what makes online communities thrive, and how we might recreate that in an experience for KST. We used:
Generative Think-aloud to get a full understanding of virtual theater and participatory online experiences
Contextual Inquiry to fully understand the contexts and patterns of online communities and connections that could then be generalized to KST's context
Rapid Ideation and Prototyping with sketching and storyboarding
User need validation and initial idea evaluation through "Speed Dating"
Experience Prototyping to evaluate and iteratively improve our selected solution
Evidence
While our initial research collected many different opinions and pieces of evidence, we thought these were most representative:
The core of the virtual interaction is the same, but not enough to make it enjoyable due to missing part of the community.*Participant after a virtual yoga session
Can't have side conversations, so everyone is a part of one big conversation which might make people feel left out*Participant after a virtual dance class
I appreciate the [virtual] conversation time in maintaining relationships in this community.*Participant after a Asian-student networking hour
*Paraphrased
Insights
From our research evidence, we analyzed the patterns and commonalities and derived six insights that would guide our solution:
Virtual conversation in large groups, especially among strangers, is often intimidating for many people and discourages free flowing conversation. 1
Meeting people with similar interests broke down social barriers and was more welcoming than meeting complete strangers with no common focal point. 2
Virtual connection is more difficult and awkward than in-person connection and thus requires additional structure and aids. 3
Providing another person to rely on as a social safety net to help people feel safe in the new environment. 4
Despite being more socially challenging in some ways, one-on-one conversations produced much more fruitful conversation and connection than large group conversations. 5
Providing participants with loose, optional conversational structure, provided by a moderator, aided in facilitating meaningful and approachable discussions. 6
Prototyped Solution
Taking cues from the latent need for social comfort when meeting strangers, we have developed a system for fostering community engagement through the use of focused online group meetings, wherein each participant is matched up with a “buddy” with mutual interests. This buddy is intended to act as a social safety net that helps users feel comfortable throughout the discussion and promotes connection. There will be a moderator who will explain the system, relieve ambiguity, and share the discussion points set for the meeting.
How it works
1
At the beginning and end of each group meeting, participants gather for informal mingling.
2
Participants are then sent to breakout rooms with their buddy for one-on-one conversations with “conversation cards” to encourage discussion.
3
After having some time to talk and to get to know each other, buddies are then paired up with another set of buddies for group discussion with a new set of conversation cards.
What users said after Experiential Prototyping sessions
Conversation with my buddy was warm, friendly, and refreshing. Given the pandemic and everything being remote, it was nice to connect with someone new like you would at a party... I learned something new and cool...; and formed a nice connection with my buddy.
It was fun overall. Conversations should be fun, easy, and fluid, and that exactly what it was. It wasn't as awkward either as I thought it would be.
This was the first time I got on a call since COVID and met someone without having too much of a purpose behind our call other than to get to know each other. I think this type of friendship building or bonding hasn't been happening for a while.
Implications and take-aways
Through extensive research and iteration, we developed a light-weight and easy to use solution that KST can use, starting today with little effort, to curate meaningful connection and engagment with their community members. The conversational design can be changed and flexed to fit the needs of the users or moderators, allowing it to work in many different situations, changing to the given resources and people involved. Part of its unique design is that it's set-up time and effort is minimal: it only requires time to match participants and create conversational topics, which are universal and do not need to be thought-out more than general conversation, like "What shows have you been watching this year?"
This project was a blast and a certain challenge. We were able to go through rounds of research and design that I honestly didn't think was possible due to the remote nature of this semester and project. With that said, this project allowed me to expand my research skills, hone the interviewing and evidence synthesis practices, and really work to create a piece of research and design that is usable and impactful.
