Link to midterm presentation on system proposal: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1hkxMiOSNpmt8K0shRyNB7haiBnHntp_IraVcWrUIcGY/edit?usp=sharing

This week, I continued to receive responses on my cultural probe regarding the process of users with regards to choosing their outfit as they begin their respective days. I wanted to examine the general decision making process, what kind of variables they considered, and how factors such as weather and their different engagements throughout the day affected their decisions. Ultimately, I hope this can lay the foundation for a future service or application that provides weather information most relevant for a user checking the weather to consider how to get dressed for the day.

In addition, I was able to recruit an additional user to my pool of research candidates; we will call him Sean.

Sean

Day 1

Considerations

• weather: the high for the day was projected to be 20C, which is quite warm, although with an evening temperature of 9C, which is on the colder side.
• occasion: two things on my schedule today — an all-day date outside with my girlfriend, followed my some studying in the library in the evening. I wanted to look dressy enough for my day out, but still wanted to be comfortable for the library. In addition, I anticipated it to be hot during the day when I was engaging in outdoor activities, and also warm indoors in the library, since it’s always packed and a little too warm. I still wanted to be warm enough for when I came back home though.
• overall: I needed a combination that was dressy but comfortable, and with easily removable layers that I could stay warm or cool enough. I opted for a white tee, a cardigan, and a light coach jacket: I’d take the jacket off during the day, take the cardigan off at the library, and wear all three when I went home. [I am pretty happy with how well I planned this] — I not only was comfortable during the day, I expect to get home still feeling nice and warm. (editor’s note: it was a little chillier than he anticipated, but only because he ended up going home around 3am, instead of midnight as already planned; temperature was 3C lower than he had planned).

Day 2

Considerations

• weather: the high was almost in the mid tens, albeit with a low of 4.7 degrees. To be honest I wasn’t really sure what 4.7 degrees felt like: like how cold can 4.7 degrees really be? I did, however, have a feel about how warm the weather would be during the day, so I anchored my expectation to that.
• occasion: (editor’s note: not much is offered here, but I asked him to elaborate and he shrugged and just told me) [full day of classes]
• overall: I layered with a crew neck sweater and a light quilted jacket and some suit pants and leather slip ons (editor’s note: the perfect spring outfit!). I was very happy with my outfit decisions up through the afternoon. Unfortunately, I severely underestimated how cold 4.7C was, as I was absolutely freezing when I went home late at night. morale of the day: 4.7C is nothing to laugh at. Lesson well learned.
• emoji summary: 🤬 (editor’s note: when I asked him to elaborate, he just strung off expletives)

Day 3

Considerations

• weather: it was 6C, so already quite chilly — but I anticipated it to be a bit colder because of reports of wind and slight rain drops. I wanted to dress in layers so I could adjust easier to the different temperature requirements of walking outside during the day/night and being indoors for classes and meetings.
• occasion: (ibid) [full day of classes]
• overall: I layered with a half-turtleneck and a cardigan for indoor comfort and an overcoat for braving the outdoor elements. I still underestimated how cold 6 degrees was so I was freezing coming home at night.
• emoji summary: 🤒 [I’ve been underestimating the weather recently and have been cold and] I think if I keep this up, I’m going to get sick soon.

Day 4

Considerations

• weather: it was around 8C when I planned to leave the house around lunchtime, but the forecast was windy, so I anticipated that it’d be 2 or so degrees lower than the actual listed temperature. I extended this logic for my projected time of return back home — it’d probably be around 3–5 degrees. All signs were pointing to dressing warmly for the day.
• occasion: I was going to spend the entire day in the library from around lunchtime to the evening, so all that mattered was I be comfortable enough for the library (editor’s note: which, as noted above, can get on the stuffy side) and be warm enough for the commute to and from
• overall: full on casual today since it’s a library day — I chose fitted sweatpants, a crew neck and a parka. I briefly hesitated on the parka, but figured I’d rather be too warm than too cold at this point. I realized this was an immensely good decision as soon as I stepped out of the door, since the windchill was even worse than I had anticipated. I was comfortable in the library in my crewneck and sweats, only donning the jacket when I went outside [to smoke] or to get food. I was reminded of my good decision when I was going home at night — all my friends were shivering at the unanticipated cold, but I was very toasty and happy as I went home.
• emoji summary: 😆 (editor’s note: after three days of underestimating the weather, our subject finally wised up and made the adjustment, to favorable results)

The nature of my probe requires multiple iterations of the same combination of actions every day, and hence bears closer resemblance to a daily set of messages returned to the designer of the probe, and less similar to a one-time gift to the participant.

I asked all participants to take a mirror selfie of their outfit, a picture of the world that indicated the weather (I asked my participants to make some artistic decisions in lighting and composition to indicate factors such as sunlight and the associated the warmth, and not be beholden to just sunny/cloudy/rainy), and some short notes on the considerations they had taken in choosing that particular combination of clothes for the day, along with their level of satisfaction with regards to their comfort for the day.

Andrew

Considerations

• weather: it was 10C, but I anticipated it to be a bit colder b/c it rained earlier. I wanted to dress in layers so I could adjust easier to the different temperature requirements of walking outside during the day/night and being indoors for classes and meetings.
• occasion: I wanted to put a bit more effort into getting dressed today because I have a client pitch and a dinner appointment with a 선배.
• overall: I wore an Alexander Wang Heat-tech, a light turtle neck sweater and a matching coat. Very comfortable; right in the sweet spot in terms of warmth

Daniel

Considerations

• weather: was reported to be 12C, but with a large difference in the highs and lows today, so I wanted to dress in something warm that was easily removable.
• occasion: my main appointment today was a date with my girlfriend, so I wanted to wear something casual but smart, with a bright color thrown in there somewhere.
• overall: I wore a striped orange t shirt with a bomber jacket; it was warmer during the day than I had anticipated, so I was a little hot (editor’s note: probably because he didn’t adhere by his earlier consideration of removing his easily removable outer layer), but as it became chillier at night, I was glad I had worm a down filled jacket.

Name: Dan
Age: 25
Location: Seoul
Occupation: Student and occasional intern.
Personal Description:
I was born in 1994 in Seoul, and I’ve lived here for most of my life. I’ve studied abroad in England and the US, but Korea is home. I’m in my last year of college, and am starting to apply for jobs and prepare for interviews. I participate in a variety of extracurricular activities ranging from the casual and social, to the slightly more professional and formal. I try to take care of myself and actively better myself, and do this in a variety of ways, including trying to exercise regularly, reading engaging news articles and magazine op-eds, even if I don’t do either of them as much as I would like to. I also believe that someone’s appearance is at least a surface level reflection of some of their characteristics, and hence care about how I dress and present myself according to the occasion.

On the other hand, I also care very much about being comfortable — I hate being too hot or too cold, because it distracts me from whatever I’m doing at the time, which annoys me further because I don’t like it when I have foreign impediments on my productivity (though I’m fine getting distracted by myself).

Personality:
– outgoing
– considerate
– reliable

Likes: sports, listening to music, reading the news online
Dislikes: being uncomfortable, unprepared, uninformed, crowded (and hot) places

Critical Materiality

This piece discusses the potential of augmenting the physical materials that compose our world with programmable components such that they may be mechanized, actuated, animated, and more. The authors attempted to create a discussion of the concept of Critical Materiality as a platform and a guideline of sorts in order to develop “tangible, embedded, and embodied interfaces.” They aimed to achieve this goal by prompting people to expand their default perception and behavior with regards to materials as part of their world by examining components such as material expressivity, ecological footprints, indigenous ontologies, and more.

I considered this to be an engaging line of consideration worth pursuing, because it took something as fundamental and constant to our perception of the world as the very materials that compose it, and attempted to imagine an alternate world based on a different version of our understanding of materials in our world. Though impressed with the idea that that was a factor of consideration to begin with, I was less convinced by their methods of inquiry, as I was unsure that the first lens the authors chose, that of “the shadows of industrial capitalism” and the “oppression” associated with it, would yield particularly fruitful results — nor could I say that it was a relevant lens at all. I failed to see how materials, as physical building blocks of our world, were supposed to hold negative connotations at all, especially in specific contexts of history. In addition, the prose did not seem to help them make their case: the point they were presenting, along with the idea itself and the way they sought to examine it from a different angle, was fundamentally an obtuse and ephemeral idea. By describing it in even more esoteric permutations of buzzwords, the concept became harder to grasp in full, only lucid after several attempts to do so.

Multisensory Design Probe

This article describes a probe designed to induce individuals to consider their relationship with technology. It aimed to do so by employing “slow technology,” which prioritized reflection and moments of mental rest over efficiency in performance; the latter of which currently dominates our interactions with technology as a modus operandi stemming from our perception of technology as a means by which ends are achieved. It was striking to consider technology that did not encourage, or in some cases even discouraged, constant human attention, as various platforms and applications of technology in our current age primarily compete to dominate our attention as much as possible. This conception of slow technology seemed to be able to imbue a new sense of deliberation and care into the traditionally lighter interactions people have with technology.

In addition, I was especially intrigued by their methods in “multisensory HCI” — it was true that our interactions with technology were almost exclusively audiovisual, although this restriction seems to be more of a physical engineering ceiling rather than an oversight; neither the molecular duplication necessary for digital olfactory representation, nor the physical transformations required for digital tactile representation seem possible with current means of production at the moment. Still, it was worth considering a possibility in which deliberately designed olfactory prompts could “encode” specific information such as the sender and urgency of a content. The one potential issue I had identified was as follows: if smell was so intricately tapped into the part of our brains that deal with emotions and memories, it meant that each person, due to their vastly differing sets of emotions and memories, would have different outputs assigned to a constant set of olfactory inputs. I would imagine a method of messaging that had to be encoded entirely separately for every single user would have some trouble scaling up efficiently enough to be a relevant part of our society.

<Contextmapping>

This paper by researchers at Delft University of Technology discusses contextmapping as a user research tool in participatory design. Within the realm of participatory design, cultural probes and generative technique attempt to create context awareness by eliciting emotional responses within users. Though the underlying reason and benefits for using this practice are extensively documented, the authors of the paper regarded the current literature as neglecting explaining specifically how to engage in these techniques, and hence sought to discuss the practicality of, and report projects in contextmapping.

Context was defined as the “environment of human-computer interaction,” but exceeds the immediately identifiable aspects of time and space, as it encompasses all factors that influence the experience of a product use. Designers may hypothesize on context for a particular product, but the article claims that this is an innately narrow and personal view based on the designers’ own experiences. User research should be undertaken to obtain a more relevant and reliable view of the actual context regarding a product. Better understanding of the context of the product helps users gain empathy with users and to ultimately “create innovative concepts on how a product can be experienced.” This was an excellent solution to a problem I hadn’t even considered yet — designers and users were both ultimately individuals, and the designer was bound to be influenced by his own personal views in designing the product, which may ultimately partly compromise the actual relevance to the end user. To mitigate that possible risk, designers could simply shift the focus of their views on context to that of the users, and make design decisions based on what they understood about their users.

Contextmapping studies were broken down into five steps: preparation, sensitization, sessions, analysis, and communication. Preparation was exactly what it sounded like: goals, planning, selecting participants, choosing techniques. The notable difference was that additional care was needed in formulating concrete goals, due to the already vague nature of the method of research. Sensitization referred to a process where participants are primed to ponder over various aspects of their own personal context in their own time and environment. I believed this to be the essential step, because it defined the scope of the information the users were actively considering and expressing as a response to whatever lines of inquiry the researchers would pursue. It might even seem possible that a “better sensitized” pool of users might yield more personal and relevant results than a “less sanitized” pool, all other conditions kept constant. The third step was the actual sessions where users participated in generative exercises, in which they created artifacts expressing their ideas and feelings. Having them describe their artifacts to a group further highlighted their experiences. This was followed by analysis: because the resulting data is in the form of anecdotes and artefacts, it does not serve to confirm or deny hypotheses, but to explore context and broaden the viewpoints of the designers. The article goes on to describe the particulars of creating a sensitization package; comparisons of sessions with varying sizes; the ideal way to “lead” or facilitate a session; some notes on how to attempt to understand the data yielded, and much more. In this sense, the paper read almost like a comprehensive guidebook for researchers considering contextmapping as a form of method of user research: it outlines why it is necessary, what sort of benefits it may offer, and specific steps and deliberations to follow.

<Probes, toolkits and prototypes>

This paper by Sanders and Stappers compares and contrasts probes, toolkits, and prototypes as different methods of codesigning. The authors identify the act of “making” as something common to all three methods, and served not just as a “performative act of reproduction,” but with increased prominence as a “creative act” that innately embodied construction and transformation of meaning by participants.

Their similarities are only fundamental, however, as they are each composed of different components and serve different specific purposes. Probes exist to provoke or elicit a response from users in a general context, and designers find inspiration in the users’ responses and apply the relevant data to their process. They are examples of the “designing-for” approach, and stem from an expert-driven mindset. Toolkits are specific to a project, and exist to allow participants to make artifacts. This allows non-designers a platform to participate in the design process with the designers, and as such represent a “designing-with” approach from a participatory mindset. Prototypes are physical manifestations of ideas, and serve to give form to ideas, and to explore technical and social feasibilities of the potential end product, and hence are flexible in categorization in designing-for and/or designing-with approaches.

As a reader just beginning to understand the importance of non-quantitative methods of research in understanding users, this paper helped organize what I had learned about these respective methods, and helped place them in the greater context of participatory design and user research

Camera: easy way for users to document their outfits, whether under consideration or actually worn (unsure on type of camera; disposable may be ideal in terms of tangibility for a cultural probe but lacks date-tagging and organization abilities, whereas the user’s own phone camera lacks in the former but excels in the latter).

Calendar + Journal (ideally monthly planner): Allows user to use as calendar to document events and record both factual weather data and actually experienced weather data (i.e. did not bring a jacket because weather said 68F, but windchill made it feel like 53F and I was cold).

Questionnaire: short, intuitive questions such as

• Why do you check the weather?
• How do you check the weather (i.e. app, television, look out the window)?
• How does checking the weather impact your day?
• What do you like to wear on sunny/rainy/windy/cloudy days?

and others to gather information to better understand the user and their needs.

Outfit Recommendation according to Weather and Schedule

What is the name of the system? Undecided, but something along the lines of a play on words including weather and clothes/outfit.

Who are the users? Anybody who checks the weather as they start their day to use this information as a factor of consideration in deciding what to wear for the day.

What will the system do? The system attempts to provide assistance and/or recommendations to users by recommending an outfit to the user based on the weather by considering factors such as temperature fluctuations throughout the day, feels-like temperature. It will also incorporate parts of the user’s schedule as part of the outfit-choosing algorithm to recommend a relevant and activity-appropriate outfit. It might also have a social aspect by letting users share their outfits to social networking services. On the business-end, the system might partner with particular clothing brands to recommend one of the brand’s own clothing items as a form of targeted advertising.

What problems will the system solve? The system will attempt to eliminate the discomfort and distraction resulting from not dressing appropriately according to the weather (i.e. not warmly enough on a chilly day or too warmly on a muggy day), as it can significantly impact user mood and demeanor to affect the performance and pleasantness of activities engaged throughout the day

What is the design vision and what are the emotional impact goals? In other words, what experience will the system provide to the user? For most people, the experience of checking the weather in the morning is a familiar routine in getting ready for the day, though not usually recognized as important. This is an essential part of the day in which the user makes his/her decision on how to present themselves to the people they will engage with on a particular day, taking into account not only the occasion, but comfort with regards to temperature-appropriateness. Though this is an important decision-affecting variable, most systems that inform users of the weather display only a limited combination of high/low for the day, current/average-over-day temperature, and categorization (i.e. sunny, rainy, cloudy, etc). As such, the users are forced to guess and take into account variables on their own, because many more variables impact their decision. They may need to take into account daily fluctuations (i.e. if the temperature fluctuation is large, and I’m staying out all day, I may need an outfit that’s warm enough for the chilliness of morning and evening, but cool enough or easily modifiable enough for the warmth of the late afternoon and early-mid afternoon) but within the constrains of their day (i.e. a low temperature recorded at 4:30AM is irrelevant for a user only active outside of their home between 8:30AM and 11:00PM); feels-like temperature (i.e. windchill and sunheat will respectively depress/heighten the actual temperature the user feels); and more, all of which the system will attempt to capture. It will also consider as a high priority the type of activity the user will be engaging in on a particular time frame (i.e. dressing for a full work day vs. dressing for a casual evening out with friends), and recommend relevant items within the restrictions provided by the occasion (i.e. for an office workday, will predominantly make outerwear and accessory recommendations, leaving the suit as a constant; for a casual evening out, exclude office wear from consideration, etc). It will also heavily incorporate user feedback in additional considerations and variables the decision making algorithm will adopt. If it completes its task successfully, the user will be able to consistently feel satisfaction according to being dressed comfortably with relations to the weather, and will not be distracted from the important parts of their day by being too cold or too hot, or inappropriately for the occasion. This is a system designed to improve a commonplace potential annoyance in the user’s life such that when removed, the user may not be able to imagine a life without it due to how seamless it was in quietly enhancing the quality of a part of the user’s day.

This week’s reading discusses Speculative Design by describing it as a field, examining the methods by which it is undertaken, and explaining its relevancy. Auger describes speculative design as a combination of “extrapolations of an emerging technology” and the “application of techniques borrowed from film, literature…and psychology,” and serves not only to facilitate contemplations on our future in terms of technology, but to objectively analyze and critique the technology present in our society at the moment. I was initially skeptical of the potential utility of a field that sought to imagine the future yet did little to actually push humanity in whatever increments towards achieving such a vision.

Auger writes that the speculative designer must design according to the appropriate context such that the end product is relevant to the ecology it will be placed in, whether with regards to the location and setting it will be presented in, or the medium by which it is conveyed, and that this is an important consideration contributing to the final form of the design. He gives the example of designing the Martians in the film adaptation of The War of the Worlds — H.G. Wells’ written description was of a suffering creature out of its environment, and was consistent with Wells’ background as a biologist and his understanding of adaptation in creatures. The Martians in the film version, however, emphasizes their physical superiority and ability to elicit terror with regards to humans, and was thus a more effective design for the intended environment of the cinema.

In addition, Auger also highlights the effectiveness of provocation in design in order to spur audience engagement and contemplation. He stresses that the designer should not plunge too deep into provocative fields such as sex or death, but instead attempt to elicit cognitive dissonance in its audience by combining such provocative elements with items of familiarity such that the audience may be able to walk the line between being captivated and repulsed. He lists the Afterlife Project as an example in which the focus of the audience was designed to be drawn to the familiarity of a battery within the potentially uncanny experience of being in proximity to a situation in which death was the primary subject, and was thus successfully in examining human responses to a previously less often considered line of thought — less considered due to the conventional discomfort associated with discussion of death. Even reading his descriptions of the installation and some of the accompanying submissions elicited what was probably the designers’ intended response:

I was definitely uncomfortable with the idea of engaging with a portion of a deceased individual, whether a physical derivation through stored electric energy, or a psychological derivation by them continuing to hold relevance in the lives of the people they were with in their life. I am one prone to cord off sad memories into a smaller, controlled section in my mind, such that I have the luxury of visiting them and being subject to the ensuing wash of emotions at my leisure, but not so regularly present in my mind that they influence my everyday life. As such, I was inspired by ideas that involved an approachable, but not quite routine experience, such as the submission about using his battery to power a RC model Spitfire; whenever loved ones wanted to remember the deceased, they could take it out and play with it, allowing them to reminisce on their own terms. On the other hand, I was uncomfortable with the prospect of the battery powering and influencing the operations of something essential to an activity as routine as television watching as family. The creepiness of a remote speaking out in my hypothetically deceased loved one’s voice every time I attempted to watch television was exacerbated infinitely by the random playings of nature documentaries and the inability to change it to something else for the duration of the program, and would probably ultimately induce me into watching less television and ultimately engaging less in the activity meant to lessen the emptiness of the departure of a loved one.

In the next subsection, Auger claims that the importance of good observations, relevance, and attention to detail in design is demonstrated through its effectiveness in stand-up comedy. By tapping into the “excellent data-compression” function of well-crafted stories by providing a detailed, specific, and relevant experience, the designer could establish a “tangible link” between the familiarity and mundaneness of everyday reality, and the creativeness of her own designs. Additionally, Auger uses alternate histories and realities to reinforce this point of a link between the potential juxtaposition of conceptual oddness and the familiarity of a particular idea or design. I was actually very familiar with the example he cited, having binge watched The Man in the High Castle with my college friends earlier in my college career, and having spent many hours into the late night with them discussing and imagining ourselves in the hypothetical society presented. It was indeed an excellent way to dissect the characteristics of our society and culture in modern times, and contemplate how much of it was a direct result of a particular world-shaping event.

The excerpt is concluded with a reminder that the examples and techniques given in the text were guidelines in a field that was defined by its diversity of subjects, contexts, technologies, perspectives, and other factors necessary of consideration. Regardless of the difficulty in generalizing an ideal method of approach, Auger extolls the field of speculative design as the ideal way for a society to examine what they might or might not want from their future without the shackles of considerations of commercial viability. Despite my initial skepticism, Auger’s examination of the field was enough to thoroughly convince me of the potential effectiveness of speculative design projects, provided they were well-designed in their relevance and specificity, and pushed people just enough such that they were asking themselves and each other questions about their current and future world that they otherwise wouldn’t consider.

The three readings for this week all discuss “cultural probes” as a method of placing a user into relevant contexts to better understand the user: they alternately describe a successful example undertaken in Europe by members of The Presence Project, a more theoretical study of cultural probes and their unique value, and a description of Taskcam, a tool aimed at facilitating the effectiveness of cultural probes.

(Passage 1 Summary) The first passage described its efforts in making what would turn out to be the first cultural probe: they outlined their vague goal for their project, in discovering novel interactions to increase the presence of the elderly in their local communities. They decided they needed a way to bridge the gap between themselves and the people they would be researching, both in “officialdom” and generation. Instead of attempting to subjugate their subjects to the researcher-set standards, the researchers met them at the elderly subjects’ comfort point by providing easily accessible and understandable methods of expression in postcards, disposable cameras, journals, etc, packaged with deliberately vague instructions. By doing so, the designers sought to gain a “impressionistic account of their beliefs and desires, [and] their aesthetic preferences and cultural concerns” i.e. “inspirational data”, as opposed to traditionally quantifiable data. This was a decision motivated by a desire to ultimately unearth and understand “new pleasures, forms of sociability, and cultural forms.” The authors also recognized that the probes were not designed to be analyzed and therefore readily understood and directly applicable in answering hypotheses, but were instead meant to generate impressions of a particular group of people in a particular context. Such a method of interaction allowed both the researchers to better understand the elders, and the elders to better understand themselves and their communities.

(Passage 1 Response) The goals of the authors did well to translate this vague project goal into the more tangible one: of giving a voice, or a medium of expression, to the elderly members of a particular community. This was an important area to highlight because a community is often identified by its most vocal members, which are frequently lower in age and/or more connected with the outside world via information and technology methods, leaving the eldest group somewhat marginalized in a smaller, mostly self-contained subset of their own community. Their cultural probe was a well-designed attempt at eliciting an authentic, multi-dimensional, and thoughtful representation of the kind of person an individual was.

(Passage 2 Summary) The second passages discusses the characteristics of cultural probes, and how the uncertainty and unquantifiable nature of the responses collected are a value intrinsic and exclusive to this type of interaction. It claims the main merit of cultural probes lie in their ability to engage in a remote narrative of a particular person, rather like we would tell stories about people we know. The complete subjectivity of the Probes, while may be a detriment for more conventional methods of research (and therefore sought to be disguised via controlled procedures or impressions of impersonality), served as an asset by dramatizing the inherent difficulties and subjectivities in communicating with strangers. It also outlined suggested methods of approach in attempting to understand the responses collected, by advocating a subjective and creative response over a more scientific one.

(Passage 2 Response) While the article extolling the virtues of the Probes was compelling and written with gorgeous prose, the ultra-specific purpose and effectiveness of the Probes with regards to a particular type of research had me skeptical of their general applicability in the field of User research, nor their relevancy in Human Computer Interaction as a whole. It does, however, seem to be an effective way to gauge the figurative temperature and particulars of a person rarely captured via other means of surveys and studies. Though they are limited in function, an appropriate combination of Probes and more traditional, readily quantifiable metrics of analysis might provide a better understanding of subjects than could be obtained before.

(Passage 3 Summary) The third passage describes a device called TaskCam, which is a self-documentation tool for use in Cultural Probe Studies. Their ease in use, intuitiveness in usability, and ability to contextualize through aesthetic customizations supplants the core function of enabling users to take photos in response to various “prompts” displayed on its screen.

(Passage 3 Response) The TaskCam is an effective tool in that it facilitates the collection of the type of responses desired in a cultural probe study, along with its various functions to better aggregate and tag the responses collected. This is largely all it is, however. It is a superb aggregation tool, but does little in helping researchers gain new insight into the responses they collect. In addition, its usefulness and breadth in collection is limited by its ability to only record responses via photographs; while effective themselves, written responses often elicit a more in-depth response to a particular prompt, and therefore yield a more-in-depth understanding of the subject.