UE 1 : Nostalgia headphones
In this storyboard, a senior student walks in the Central Campus listening to recent pop music on headphones in a free afternoon. The headphones are wireless which is controlled by researchers. The participant first passes Hill Auditorium and gazes on the building. When his/her pace gets slow, music on his/her headphones is changed to a classical symphony. From this UE, we want to see how participants think and react when the music is suddenly changed automatically. Does the participant get confused? Is the experience pleasant or irritating to the participant?
UE 2 : Workout buddy
In this storyboard, an Ann Arbor resident runs/walks around a residential area in the town to work out wearing wireless headphones. Same as UE 1, the wireless headphones are connected to and controlled by researchers. When the participant turns an app on, a voice comes from the headphones. The voice tells stories of the participant’s father who also lived in Ann Arbor while he was a student in the University of Michigan 25 years ago. When the participant passes buildings, streets, restaurants, or parks where his/her father has memories with, the voice tells related stories. From this UE, we want to see this storytelling helps him/her keep working out. Also, after the experience, we want to know what kind of feelings and thoughts are summoned up by this experience.
UE 3 : the Big house
This is an enactment designed to see how participants react after experiencing the public memory in the place where the memory happens. We also want to explore what type of role this shared public memory have. Do participants really want /feel comfortable about this experience while visiting the places? What else do the want in the scenario? Have our design improved their visiting experience in a meaningful way?
We choose Michigan Stadium as the location because in our cultural probe interviews, 5 out of 6 participants have mentioned this place. Besides the big house as our physical probe, we also collect 2 videos that could be layered on google cardboard (there are some VR apps that can make it happen) so that participants could see the videos as what’s in the video was happening right now and they were part of it through cardboard. 2 videos are michigan football game and graduation ceremony. We choose the videos also because these are the two common themes interviewees mentioned during the follow up interview.
We ask the participants to act as a Michigan Alumni who come back to visit UM in the home coming week. We are expecting that the participants would be able to talk about his wants, needs and feelings based on a the non-abstractive scenario we designed and hopefully we could explore some new areas/ways to design based on their reaction.
We choose Michigan Stadium as the location because in our cultural probe interviews, 5 out of 6 participants have mentioned this place. Besides the big house as our physical probe, we also collect 2 videos that could be layered on google cardboard (there are some VR apps that can make it happen) so that participants could see the videos as what’s in the video was happening right now and they were part of it through cardboard. 2 videos are michigan football game and graduation ceremony. We choose the videos also because these are the two common themes interviewees mentioned during the follow up interview.
We ask the participants to act as a Michigan Alumni who come back to visit UM in the home coming week. We are expecting that the participants would be able to talk about his wants, needs and feelings based on a the non-abstractive scenario we designed and hopefully we could explore some new areas/ways to design based on their reaction.
Concerns about conducting the User enactments for our concepts
My team’s design is related to outdoor places where people interact with both physically and emotionally. Since UE examples in the papers are conducted indoor sets designed with simulated objects, we think we have to think about how to prototype outdoor places and give participants feelings that they are on a theater stage. We think our current designs of UE don't have any kind of "settings."