Hello everyone, welcome to this presentation on Scenario Co-Creating Cards
a culturally sensitive tool for eliciting values
It’s Tag here, and on behalf of my team, I’ll be presenting our paper that was published in CHI 2020
So, I’d like to start with something familiar that we all probably have been though while conducting user research
It’s the fact that user research does not only teach us something about the users,
but it also challenges our assumptions as researchers about how people talk how they express themselves
especially how they differ across cultures in that aspect
So, it is our responsibility as researchers to investigate their cultural background
in order to incorporate that understanding in the way we communicate with people
So our team developed a culturally sensitive tool that its main aim is to help participants express their values
while taking in consideration their cultural background
The case study we’ve applied this method on is transnational Saudi women’s visibility in the digital media
Our culturally specific group here is transnational Saudi women
and they are coming from a conservative and religious environment which potentially could limit
the ways by which people express their values independently from their society’s values
And that’s where the idea of developing a culturally sensitive tool came from
We wanted to base it on their cultural background But also we considered two other factors
Aside from the cultural context, we considered literature on values and value expression
So literature that teaches us about how people express their values and how we can detect that in the way they talk
Also, we based the development of the method of course on other existing research methods
We review all these factors in our paper
We specifically focused our review on methods that are in values sensitive design
So basically the 6 methods that you see here These were listed as value eliciting methods
in the recent book by Friedman and Hendry
And our general conclusion from these methods that there were two limitations that made it difficult for us to directly use them in our case study
The first is that these methods are universal so they’re not considering specific cultural background,
or they don’t consider how we could adapt these cross cultures so we can use them basically in any context
The other thing within VSD literature is that we couldn’t find any clear criteria or reflection on what makes for a value eliciting method, how we can classify a method as such
To answer these two questions we provide, so for this aspect, we provide a list of criteria, principles basically we took them from literature on values and value expression
and we hope that would help researchers to consider when they develop value eliciting methods
For culturally specific methods, we provide an exposition of how we developed scenario co-creating cards as an example of developing culturally sensitive tools
So, for scenario co-creating cards there are three main aspects you would need to consider
So we have the conceptual design which is the content that you would put in these cards
Then we have the physical design, how they would look like and how you make them
And also the practical design which is how you would use them with users they are more like a game so it is how you would play that game with your participants
So for an example here, how to develop the content here From our research question, which is the first step you would need to go through
You develop the content. So it is important at this stage that you have a very clear research question
because you would break it down into its key concepts These concepts will make the piles of your deck
The deck of the cards in our case had three piles But if you have a different research question you might have different piles, it depends on the aspects in your research question
So as an example here from this research question we had the user, Saudi women, so for the user we had the red pile here
and with that you would have to come up with different roles that the user would assume
The other key aspect was the technology, so here the digital media , it was the blue pile and we had different media for the concept we are investigating , self-disclosure
And finally we had cultural values, it is an abstract concept so we presented this concept in people, basically the audience in this case
So we have the user, the media, and the audience You might wonder why self-disclosure was not presented here
We call this the phenomena under investigation So the phenomena is not one of the key aspects
It is the thing you would talk about with your users, so you don’t represent that, you talk about it
So you talk about the users assuming different roles while engaging in this phenomena in a specific media and being watched, while engaging in this phenomena, by a specific audience.
Ok, so then once you have the piles and decided on what each pile would be, you move to the physical design, so how you would create the images and the colors
We prefer to color code piles because they are faced down, and that’s something we describe in the mechanism of the cards why they’re faced down
So each pile has a different color to distinguish from the other piles And in terms of the image, the images here are
a combination of both creative work, we had to brainstorm what possible roles or media or things we need to investigate
And it was also based on the cultural background we did in the literature about this specific group So this would be a combination of the two processes
Then once you have the physical aspect you will have to consider how these work. So you start with your participants while the cards are faced down
Since they’re faced down you can still distinguish which is which through the color. So you would tell the user, or the participant,
that the red for example here is the role, the blue is the media, the green is the audience. They would need to draw a card of each pile to have a set of a scenario
So a scenario is consisting of 3 cards These are relatively open to interpretation
So there is no story there, there are only the elements We need the participants to tell us a story about themselves being in that specific scenario
And that’s where the data comes from. It’s basically themselves projected in that scenario and they describe how they would act and whether they would engage in such a scenario
And once you feel you got enough data about a certain scenario,
you can ask the participant to change one card, if you want to investigate something more specifically like the role or the media
Also, you can change two or even the three cards and start over a new scenario
And then for analyzing the study just wanted to point out that this paper is specifically about
the methodological aspect here because we had two different analyses
One was looking at how the method worked and how participants interacted with it and how it helped us arrive at certain values or on certain data sets
And then the other analysis would be in a forthcoming paper is about the empirical data
how participants actually present themselves in media what kind values are associated with their online visibility
Ok, so for the methodological aspect we identified three main themes
we provide quotes and explanation for each of these in the paper, I’ll go through them quickly here
So, the first is that we found the cards helped participants both explicitly and implicitly express their values
So, in some cases they would say something overtly like “oh I would not be visible unless” for example, “I have achieved something”
So, we identify achievement as a value in itself
But then in a similar scenario somebody might not necessarily say achievement or “I achieve something”
but the way by which they constructed the scenario or wanted it to be in a certain story
while they “glorify” their role as participants in that story, that also was a way to find the same value so “achievement” in this example
Ad we found that common with other values we explain them in the findings
The second one was distinguishing individual from collective values And that was one of the most important things
especially with this specific group
Because in the literature we found this group is coming from a collectivist culture
and Hofstede talks about how collectivists cultures identify more with their societies
so what happened with the cards is that participants managed through projection to give this that distinction
so through projection they would talk about their aspired or desired scenarios or future scenarios
sometimes they would explicitly ask “do you want me to construct a story about how I would be visible now?
Or how I want to be? Or how my future self would be like?” and that gave us a clear distinction of their current situation
which is constrained by cultural values and then what they want or what they aspire to be
and that was also represented in the way they constructed scenarios around their children, especially daughters
So, they would say things like “I would be visible in this way or that way, but I would not want my daughters to be visible in this way, I would be more open”
that was a common theme, they would be more open with their daughters being more visible in other aspects
than the ones they identified for themselves
and the final one was presenting a nuanced view of values
not only among participants but even within the same participant, there are so many differences you would find,
sometimes inconsistencies, and that’s where the cards helped, because we don’t provide users with
one scenario to reflect on but the fact we changed the cards gave us more nuanced views of that certain participant
and at the end you end up with this rich data with different spectrums of different participants
eventually we’d be able to see the overall picture
but it was a very good way to see the nuances within each participant before seeing the overall picture
And then for the implications for value sensitive design The multiplicity of different mechanics within one method
that was one factor that helped us facilitate communication with participants
So we have the scenario the story or the narrative aspect and there is so much literature about this
the projection technique, we based a lot of this on projective methods
the participatory method, the visual, the tangible, the playful element in some games
all that was considered in developing this method
and the other thing was accounting for the principles that we identified earlier in the paper from literature on value expression
so we identified that list that helped us incorporate in the way we developed the scenario cards
and finally, and the key aspect in this whole work is the cultural factor
we argue in the paper that values are inherently cultural
you can’t investigate values without investigating the cultural background of these values
because values are identified differently in different cultural contexts
and finally, I know this might seem like a lot of work but I’m sure developing a new deck of card would be interesting
so I’m happy to help if you would like to develop your own based on your research question feel free to contact me
and I’m happy to go through the process personally with you Thank you very much