Research Findings

Devon Peet and Azalea Irani

● MS-HCI students have information needs specific to the program, areas of study, career preparation, etc.. Also need to communicate

● Need a resource that can be considered the “one-stop shop” (or close to it) to minimize the number resources that need to be used to convey this info

● Needs to be available across platforms, but definitely mobile-focused

Research Problem

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Our process

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Literature Review

Survey

Interviews

Our process

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Literature Review

Survey

Interviews

““ ...graduate students' information seeking

behaviour is influenced by people, primarily academic staff, in addition to other

students, friends … “

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“There are so many articles in so many books

... if you started just trying to search your way through it, it would take

too long .. you ask people, fellow students and professors what is

essential”

● Integrated all-in-one application is preferred

WeChat: China’s Integrated Internet User Experience , 2016

● Issues surrounding Psychological Biases, including Sunk Cost, Loss Aversion, and Endowment Effect.

Literature Review

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Competitive Analysis

Our process

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Literature Review

Survey

Interviews

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Affinity Map

Too many places to search for information

Students are fatigued from having to search for information and announcements in a variety of apps

Centralizing the communication from the program and between peers will help lower the collective cognitive burden, as well as emphasize an “official” location to find information.

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“One of the most difficult things for me is keeping up with information on GT email, personal email, text messages, WhatsApp, Slack, teachers' websites, T-square, and GroupMe. It would be much better if I only had 1-3 platforms to keep up with.”

Efficacy depends on adoption

If less people use it, less information is shared on the platform, therefore, less people will frequent the platform and not many people will see the messages posted there

It must be part of the MS-HCI culture to use the new platform. Anything less will lead to a rejection of “just another platform”

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“Not everyone uses Slack and even if they do, they don’t check it very frequently; therefore, you’re not sure if everyone has seen your message”

Notification overload

Students check their different channels of communication when they receive notifications. They have might start ignoring a channel of communication due to too many irrelevant notifications

Notification management is essential for having a good experience with a communication channel

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“Due to the deluge of survey notifications, I started to ignore all my slack notifications and missed important information”

“Respond very quickly to text messages unlike social media, that’s because it’s a different kind of notification. Slack notifications are the same and hence might ignore.”

Keeping academic and social communication separate

Academic communication better organisedDo not have to shift between language keyboardsCan be silly on social channelsSocial communication might distract while working

Channel that allows for the separation of social and academic communication

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“I usually communicate in Spanish while interacting with friends and family and talk in English for program related interactions. Therefore I have to constantly switch between two keyboards and this tends to become annoying. That’s why I prefer having one channel for social interactions and another for program related interactions.”

Accessibility of people on channels

The lack of a phone number might not allow you to reach out to certain people. If people are not present on a certain channel you cannot reach out to them.Do not know if the professors use Slack.

Accessibility is very important where the efficacy of a certain tool is concerned

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“If I do not have someone’s phone number I cannot access them”“Do not know the professor’s policy where Slack is concerned; whether they are available on it or not” “Cannot contact alumni via Slack”

Need for an integrated platform

Students want to be able to use Google Drive, Dropbox and make to do list and write notes to themselves on the same platform.

The communication channel should an integrated platform that allows students to access other services.

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“Can write messages to yourself; notes that you can access from anywhere”

“Very easy to search and archive stuff, pictures, pdfs, easy to store in google drive and dropbox. Not easy to save data from social media apps”

Transferable Structured/ Threaded Communication

Allows you to quickly find what you are looking forRead messages in correct contextNo need to scroll through tons of unrelated messagesShould be able to access it through mobile or laptop

The communication channel should support threaded conversations and should be available on all platforms.

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“I can quickly find what I am looking for in my emails as they have threads”

“I don’t want to scroll through so many irrelevant messages to get to what I am looking for”

Ability to save important messages

Would like the ability to save/flag the message so they could get back to it later/ address it later

The channel must have a save feature

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“I like that I can flag my emails so I can address them later”

Our process

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Literature Review

Survey

Interviews

Slack is highly preferred for Peer Communication

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Face to Face contact is highly valued

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Students value separate professional and social spaces

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Recommendations

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Slack

The program should continue to invest in slack as it’s one-stop shop for communication

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Slack

CentralizedHaving one app for all program communication puts all the information in one place, simply a search away.

Widely AvailableSkack is available on every major platform. Due to industry support, the program can expect it to be actively developed and supported into the future

Community SupportedSlack has the support of the students, with more than half saying they prefer to use it, more than any other tool

Sensible DivisionsChannels and Direct Messages allow students to separate social and professional communication effectively.

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However...

Education is needed

● Many problems reported by students are already solved in slack (perhaps a discoverability issue)

● MS-HCI Program needs to devote time to education for advanced topics

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Notifications

Ability to customize notifications settings on a per channel level

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Search

Search feature with search operators (from, in, has, on)

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Personal Scratchpad

Can chat yourself to draft messages, create a to-do lists, etc

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Saving Important Information

Star function in slack is unique to each users, while the pin function is for everyone in the channel

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Slack Integrations

Slack has integrations to many popular tools, including Dropbox, Google Drive, Trello and more.

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Education is needed

As seen in our lit review (Endowment Effect, Sunk Cost Fallacy, lOSS Aversion) and interviews there can be a significant barrier to moving to a new platform

Conduct a master-class of advanced features during seminar

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Addressing research concerns

● Spending time educating will build student’s investment in the platform and demonstrate the program’s dedication to making slack part of the program culture

● Helping students better make use of the platform will lead to more adoption, and therefore greater efficacy

● The program should encourage individual professors to make their policy on slack availability clear to the students

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Clutter

● Re-evaluate the naming and number of channels

● Spread the word about the “bouncy-house” channel for social discussion

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Hierarchies of Conversation

● No Hierarchies for Conversation (Threaded view)

○ This feature is coming!

○ “We are conscious that we need a lot more nuance and ways to restrict the firehose, to give people more control over how the information flows so they can restrict it to what they need… We need better ways for people to catch up”

○ There is a workaround using snippets currently in the platform

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