Paper Reading #7: Experience in Social Affective Applications: Methodologies and Case Study

Comments
Zack Henkel
Stuart Jones 


Reference Information
Title: Experience in Social Affective Applications: Methodologies and Case Study
Authors: Paul Andre, m.c. schraefel, Alan Dix, Ryen White
When/Where: CHI 2010, Atlanta, Georgia

Summary
This article discussed Healthii, a social-networking tool for conveying well-being, and used it to show the need for methodologies to examine experience and affect in social situations. For this application, two things were tested: the concept and design of a tool for sharing personal information and evaluating the experience of how that information is interpreted and used.

Healthii uses four discrete dimensions and three finite values for reflecting personal well-being. This well-being status can be represented using a numeric code or avatar. Users can update their state and view past states, along with seeing the states of a friend group. These updates can occur through Facebook, Twitter, or a desktop application.

An example of Healthii. Source: users.ecs.soton.ac.uk

For evaluation of this tool, ten people were selected that were already friends of the authors and users of social networking tools in order to ensure new friend groups were not being created. The users were asked to use Healthii over a course of five weeks, creating a longitudinal test. Once a week, the group met to discuss the tool. From these discussions, the designers of the tool considered changing aspects of the design/interactions. These two aspects, longevity and refinements combine to create a hybrid evaluation approach. At the end of the test, the participants were given individual surveys to analyze results that users were unwilling to share in a group context.

Discussion
I liked how this tool was designed specifically for testing and evaluating the current networking tools, but with specified, default values for personal well-being in order to easier evaluate the results. I thought the authors had a valid point about needing to start discussions about how to evaluate the use of social networking tools. The idea of evaluating for a long period of time is good, but changing the tool throughout the process seems like it could affect the results despite the fact that the authors argue against any affect.