Digital for self is the research on identity issues surrounding social role transitions led by the professor John Zimmerman. When high school students go to a college, they give up their high school identity and reinvent themselves as college students in a relatively short period of time, over one semester. The project is to deliver a digital medium that will help new college students to bridge the gap in building of their identities to grown ups.
Weekly surveys
Surveys are collected from participating students weekly. Two pictures with three questions are collected for:
- Typical College Student
- College Student Not Like Me
- What You Use
- What You Want
These set of questions help us to analyse what college students want and need at each week.
100+ Ideas
- Time capsule: An exchange of memories between parents and the kid
- Leave yourself: Randomly leave something that represents you
- College life game/ College Sims: Play and interact with college life
- Shared music station: Add music on friends' playlist to share
- Major validator: Write strength, goal, potential and get major and schedule of coursework
- Dinner organizer: Check for time availability of others and organize a dinner with them
- Name tag: A physical device which tags people to your blog with name anywhere
More than 100 ideas are created to conceptualize possible digital medium which would serve the guide for the successful transition for freshmen.
Personas
5 Personas are created to represent each transition point, anticipation, orientation, mideterm, thanksgiving, and final. Each persona varies on end goals,digital activities, and emotions.
Click for Persona for Orientation transition point
Click for Persona for Thanksgiving transition point
Scenarios
12 Scenarios, 2 from each transition points, are created to conduct concept validation.
Final Deliverable
(Click for Final Project Report)Findings from concept-validation sessions
What transition?
Freshmen are not very aware of the transition they are experiencing. Responses to the transition questions show unfamiliarity to the idea of transition, and most of the times reactionary.
Critical perspective on technology
Students have a critical perspective on technology. They prioritize human-to-human interaction rather than the mediated interaction. On the other hand they find value if the proposed concepts function as ice-breakers and facilitators to decrease the awkwardness they have been dealing with when they first got in to college.
Individual, transactional, social interaction concepts
Proposed concepts can be characterized as individual, transactional, and social interaction concepts. Students find value in most of these categories except the ones that have privacy, applicability, and value issues.
Individual concepts portray a commonality in reflecting the state of the freshmen. Keeping track of time idea that shows the time that is spent on the face-book and other events is one of the highlighted concepts. Freshmen who are especially heavy users of face book see a big value in this idea regarding time-management.
Transactional concepts are more in the realm of academics and practical maintenance matters. They like the idea of taking-up-notes and tip from upper classes. They want more interaction in the ideas of contextual-tips-about the campus life and taking-up notes from upper class. They praise the online chat before college, and online tutoring during the semester. College-sims and first-travel simulation idea seem one of the neutral ideas, which get both positive and negative feedback. These two make more sense to international students.
Concepts that facilitate the social interaction are welcome when they do not enter the realm of privacy. Paparazzi, photo-pick-choose trip-together ideas are those that have privacy issues. Map-me-tap me idea, pda with epigraphy, digital board are the highlighted ideas that point out a potential to further social interaction.
Synthesis
Looking at the whole, we can see that the proposed concepts address individual, transactional, and social interaction aspects of the freshmen separately. To further these fragmented ideas, we need to synthesize concepts that cover all the three aspects.
Tangible online community
This is a mixed online community tool that has physical components to support the social and individual aspects of identity transition among the freshmen.
The system can take form in a mobile device including 3rd generation cell phones, pda s, or a mobile pc. Freshmen can connect to the digital board component from anywhere and can capture the moment and upload it directly to the digital board, which connects family members, and high school friends. The digital board also supports physical tokens to communicate with the distant friend or family member. It scans the note and shows on the other side.
Academic, maintenance survival
This academic online community functions as a survival facilitator; it is a white board with many hands, peer-to-peer interaction gadget for academics, an online body that gives hints about college life even to the details, The system is an inspector gadget giving suggestions that takes its power from the members. The fabric of this community tool is not entertainment but rather academic and accommodation (food, cleaning, shopping) matters.
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