SuperMeetUp

Design for social commitment

Exploring Interactions Design and Research Report Cycle 1

Samuel Verburg 4007344

Design and Research Goal

Design Goal
The goal of this project is to strengthen the ties within a group of friends that uses digital communication to keep in touch. This will be done by rewarding social commitment.

Interaction Vision
A reward for social commitment, like youve solved a puzzle together.

Research Questions
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Who is involved in the friend group? What was the main medium used for communication? How effective is the group at organizing a meeting? What was the intended meeting spot/time/activity? How long does it take for each member to reply? What is the motivation for the group to meet?

Design and Research Activities

In order to gain insight in the dynamics of organizing a group meeting I set out to gather some simple data about the experiences people have with organizing a group meeting. The research methods I employed where twofold: 1) On-line questionnaire about digital communication concerning group meetings. 2) Sensitizing booklet and creative session.

Aside these research methods I discussed the design goal and my project ideas with a number of people, most of whom were part of the target group.

Questio Questionnaire
The questionnaire was intended to gain some generic data on digital groups and the different roles people play in them. The questions asked are these:

How many groups are you part of? Whats the size of the most important group? What is the main communication platform? What is the frequency of communication on this platform? What is the frequency of group meetings? How often are you complete? How important is it to you to be with many? How fast does everyone respond?

Sensitizing booklet

The sensitizing booklet had four main assignments: Take pictures that relate to your group Write down the groups you are and have been part of Map out the communication you have with different group members Construct a timeline of how a recent group meeting came to be

The full booklet can be found in appendix 2.

Results
Questionnaire
The questionnaire had very few (3) respondents and was therefore not a great source of information. The reason for this low response was an error within the questionnaire preventing it from saving results. After I fixed the error there wasnt a lot of interest left. The literal results are in appendix 1. The most striking results from this questionnaire can be linked to the very last open question, where people could describe the experiences they had with organizing group meetings. One replied: Frustration with always the same people causing problems; More a social issue The other replied: Excitement. The freedom to come up with something not long before. These seem to be two extremes in the spectrum of group organization. One has problems with the group organization where the other has not. This results in a different emotion, or stance, towards their respective groups.

The most noticeable differences between the respondents answers that could explain these different stances towards their groups are:

1)

The amount of replies to an initiative.

2) The amount of initiatives in a group. 3) The trustworthiness of replies.

The respondent that was positive about the group interaction had more replies, more initiatives and less people changing their mind than the respondent that was negative about the group organization. To put it more simply: The organization of group meetings is heavily affected by the commitment of the group members towards that group. A group needs commitment from its members to thrive.

Another striking result from the few questionnaire respondents was the incredibly different responses to the question whether the following statement was applicable to them: I only want to be there if the group is large enough. Both totally applicable and totally not applicable where among the given answers. This suggests that these different respondents have a different stance towards the group, one being more dependent on the group dynamics than the other.

I observed this difference in group dependency a few years back, while on a holiday in Spain. It was striking to see that the locals never seemed to go anywhere without at least two other people and preferably with as many people as possible. The reason I noticed this social dynamic was because it annoyed me and my family. We were comfortable with just the four of us. When you compare Spain with Holland on their scores on Hofstedes cultural dimensions, the most striking differences are the degree of individualism and uncertainty avoidance (source: http://geerthofstede.com/spain.html). Dutch people tend to be more individualistic and can tolerate a larger degree of uncertainty. Spanish people tend to focus on a collective and cannot tolerate a large degree of uncertainty. This means that Dutch people will not feel a great dependency on groups, whereas Spanish people will.

The results from the questionnaire suggest that there are large individual differences in these stances, despite the Hofstede scores. Although I do not have a clear image on the effect of this stance it is important to remember these differences in the next cycle, as it might be of importance to specific group dynamics.

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Creative Session
The response on the booklet and the creative session was even more disappointing than those of the questionnaire. I distributed the booklet among three people from Lelystad and one from Schiedam to get a spread in results that would allow for more room to interpret them. Out of the four people that I had given a sensitizing booklet only two joined the creative session. The other two never showed up despite calling one of them out of bed at three in the afternoon.

My brother, who still lives in Lelystad and therefor knows these people better than I do, had warned me for this. He told me he had great frustration with these people because they never seemed to want to commit to a group effort. Only when there was sufficient interest from others they seemed willing to join. My brother contributed their actions to a lack of commitment.

The creative session was attended by Dorian and Laura. I had prepared a set of pictures and emotive words for them to sample from and form a small poster that describes how they meet up with their friends. As they happily cut, pasted and wrote on their posters I examined their sensitizing booklets.

Sensitizing Booklet

Dorian is a 21 year old friend of mine who lives down the street where lived before moving to Delft to study. He is studying at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht, but still lives with his mom and sister in Lelystad. Dorian has no smartphone and mainly uses texting and Facebook Chat on pc to communicate with individual friends. He noted that although he might not be the most social person in terms of digital contact, the quality of his social interaction might be higher due to more commitment to the communications he does have.

Laura is my 20 year old girlfriend. Shes been part of an expat family and has travelled all over the world, but right now she lives in an apartment in Schiedam and studies at the Haagse Hogeschool. Laura uses every channel at her disposal to communicate with her friends. Whatsapp is the main communication platform for the group communication, but Facebook Events and Facebook Chat are also part of her social toolset. I know her to be a social media power-user.

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Posters

Dorians poster communicated an individual initiative that turned into a group effort. The person that initiates this group effort has a leading role in the overall organization. The poster also showed that Dorian primarily meets up with his friends to go to a party and that the anticipation of the event is what drives the organization. I know that these parties are often preceded by some beer shopping at the supermarket so timing is of the essence. The poster also showed that organization can fail causing boredom filled with episodes of Family Guy.

Lauras poster communicated a strong reliance on the force of habit. Her group mostly meets at i.dKafee so time and place do not need to be discussed; Wednesday 17:00 is an important time to a lot of the IDE students. Laura used to be one of them so she is sure that shell meet people she will know apart from the friend group discussed. There is a certain commitment to being part of that group which is having to show up at i.d-Kafee. The main Whatsapp group is even named after the event: Kafeeteranen. As a member of this group I know that a well-timed beer? is enough initiative to meet up.

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Conclusions
The questionnaire yielded one respondent that described the experience of organizing a group meeting: Excitement, Freedom to come up with something not long before. Digital communication was obviously working for this person, making it easy to improvise his/her social life. The main differences with the other respondents was that the discussed groups had a tendency to come with initiatives and respond reliably.

The creative session yielded several insightful results. The ways that communication is used is diverse and adaptive to the social task at hand. The driving force behind the communication is more important for success than communication itself. If there is no commitment towards the social interaction the meeting is more likely to fail, regardless of the communication platform.

The driving forces behind organizing a group meeting are habits, a shared interest and the anticipation of an informal social event. We meet up with friends at cafs, bars, clubs and parties. The meeting is considered a spare time event and so we meet after our regular day activities and we the group to unwind and have a good time. More often than not we combine this with having a drink and taking a few pictures to document our social life.

When the group members are committed to their group an initiative to meet up is more likely to succeed.

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Concept 1
The schedule matcher. By providing information about the possible times to meet up with the group excitement about these times can become a driving force behind group organization.

Concept 2
Tapping the glass. By providing the group with a low level social interaction the sense of being connected might increase, increasing group commitment.

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Concept 3
Social Gaming Device. Making meeting up in real life the core mechanic for a game can create a very clear reward for this interaction, contributing to the commitment to meet up.

Appendices

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Appendix 1
Questionnaire results

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Appendix 2
Sensitizing booklet

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