Family Manager

According to the well known ARSC model, it’s important for an app such as ours to have a clear end goal, something for the user to work towards. Since the app is based on the user setting personal goals, we need to clearly show the possibilities this app provides in order to inspire the user.

For a starter some clear and simple promotional material would be necessary. For ease of access the best approach would be to both have a simple promotional video, as well as a short guide with images. Both of these would show the ultimate goal of our app – to unite the family and make everyday life a little easier – so that the users know the apps potential before even downloading it.

When first setting up the app the user will get an option to “Create a routine for my family”. The user can chose to ignore this, or answer a few questions about their household and get some suggested chores based on their answers. An example of this could be telling the app that the family consists of three children and two parents, and they do not have a dishwasher. So the app will automatically set up 5 users, add the daily task of washing dishes, and set who does it each day. David and Emma on Monday, Paul and Tom on Tuesday, etc. If the user ignores this option they may still at any time browse a list of suggested tasks by category to add to their schedule, or they may skip these steps and create an empty profile from scratch.

Malone and Lepper’s theories on Intrinsically Motivating Instruction suggest that learning apps could benefit from including some sort of constant challenge and increase in difficulty as the user gets better to give a sense of progress and accomplishment. For our app this would be difficult to implement as the tasks are rather trivial and the challenge lies in maintaining routines rather than getting better at one specific skill. However we could simulate progress and accomplishment by showing statistics based on how much of each category task the user has done. For example “completed 100 cleaning-choirs”, or “did the dishes 20 times” to reach milestones that give extra rewards. This could also be accompanied by a streak-function that shows how long the user has gone without missing an important task-deadline. A streak might increase rewards earned per new completed task as well. Once a user has gone a long period maintaining their streak, the app may suggest adding additional tasks to their schedule in order to “increase difficulty”. From the beginning the app would suggest starting with few tasks and rather adding new ones when the current schedule is being maintained, to help the user grow with the app and avoid them being overwhelmed and quitting before they’ve even begun.

In conclusion we feel that our app would need to focus on showing its end goal and potential through promotional material, and that the user would need help during the start-up phase so that setting up and using the app doesn’t get overwhelming.

In order for users to keep engaging with our app, we need to make sure they find it useful and helpful. In order to do that, we have looked at the ARCS-model, a well known and tested model in instructional design. For this, the satisfaction part of the model is the most relevant. It lines out a few key thoughts to pay attention to:

• Give users the opportunity to apply what they learn.

In our app, the users apply the knowledge they learn all the time, as all the tasks are practical by default. For instance, if the task is to do the dishes, the user immedeately sees the result of their actions. Over time, the results will be felt in the sense that the house is cleaner overall.

• Try to tap into the intrinsic motivation of the learner.

We believe it is a fair assumption that most people want some level of structure in their life and their surroundings. Even children enjoy this. We therefore assume the user has a lot of intrinsic motivation already. All we are doing is setting up a framework for the user to achieve this goal they already want. Our app organizes what needs to be done, and gives reminders when necessary, it also provides extrinsic motivators (in the form of points) to give the user that extra push to get out of the couch and actually start working towards that goal.

• Provide positive encouragement and reinforcement to motivate the learner throughout the learning process.

Whenever a user checks off a chore, another user must accept that it is complete. This other user gets the option to send a personal message at the same time. We hope this will be used to encourage the user that completed the task. Of course, the app itself provides encouragement, but we believe that personal messages from a loved one will be more meaningful to the users than messages from the app. Simultaneously, this makes it easy to give constructive feedback on how well the task was completed. It makes it easy for a parent to remind the child if they for example forgot to wash a glass. Our system can be contrasted to a more standard rating system – that of giving up to five stars – based on how well the task was completed. Such a system gives a good overview on how well the user is doing, but fails completely to give information on how to improve, something we find extremely important. This also leads into the last point of satisfaction from the ARCS model:

• Maintain a sense of of equity with the learners by maintaining consistent standards and measures of success.

Ultimately this responsibility falls on the other users. The expectations parents have for their children usually rise as their age and skill in the specific tasks rises. Here a system like the one with the stars will fall apart, as what was once considered great will no longer be acceptable. We hope and trust that our users are reasonable when choosing wheter or not to approve the tasks of others.

To summarize: We believe our users have a lot of intrinsic motivation to keep structure in their lives, and we try to build on that. The users will always be applying the skills they learn through the app in the real world, and are immediately able to see the results, at least for some tasks. We trust that the users in a family or similar group will give each other positive messages to keep motivation up, but also be clear on when a task was completed poorly. In accordance to the ARCS model, this will keep our users engaged with our app.

ARCS Model – A well know theory in the field of  instructional design, and is used as framework for creating e-learning and courseware.

• Relevance (making the experience feel relevant)
  • Goal orientation – orienting the learner towards the goal by describing how, and by illustrating the importance of reaching the goal, and how  the goal will help the learner
    
  • Familiarity, showing how new knowledge is related to existing knowledge of the learners
    
• Confidence (make the learners confident)
  
  • Learners like to be successful and success builds on success. Create small opportunities of success along the way by completing small milestones.
    
• Satisfaction (learners need to feel that the learning has value and is worth the continued effort)
  • Provide learners the opportunity to successfully apply their knowledge and skills in a real or simulated setting so they can “see” what they have learned being applied.
  • Provide positive encouragement and reinforcement of the new learning as a strategy to motivate them throughout the learning process.
  • Try to tap into the intrinsic motivation of the learners.
  • Maintain a sense of of equity with the learners by maintaining consistent standards and measures of success.

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Malone’s Theory of Intrinsic Motivating Instructions – In the 1980s Malone did a study of various games to find out why they were fun and motivational. From this he presented a model that includes elements of Challenge, Fantasy and Curiosity

• Challenge (challenge depend on goals with uncertain outcomes)
  • Challenges is flavored by the perception of the learner : If a user see a piece of software as a tool, he or she won’t want  the use of the tool to be difficult. But if the learner sees the software as a toy, he or she expects and is motivated by challenge and wants to try to  figure out the software. For these learners the game is a challenge.
  • Goals should be personally meaningful to the learner and should be obvious or easily generated. Provide feedback towards progress. The learning environment should enhance the players’ self-esteem ( see also ARCS)

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Lepper’s  Instructional Design Principles for Intrinsic Motivation (researcher from Stanford University who proposed some principles in instructional design to invoke Intrinsic motivation instead of relaying on extrinsic rewards)

• Control
  • Provide learners with a sense of control over the learning activity
  • Let them have some say in into when to initiate and when to terminate an activity
  • Allow the learner to make decisions independent of outside influences.
  • Create an environment that minimizes extrinsic constraints on an activity and decrease any exiting extrinsic constraints over time.
• Challenge
  • Create an activity that is continually challenging to learners.
• Contextualization
  • Use an authentic context and environment to stress the utilitarianism of the learning