Visual Empathy in Collaborative Discussions
ROLE:
Research Lead, UI, Prototyping
DURATION:
10 weeks
TOOLS:
Our project lighthouse is both an app and a device that works hand in hand to aid in active listening and empathy in group conversations.
The lighthouse device will visualize an individual's performances by color and opacity and send the collected data to the app that will show analysis of voice valence, arousal, and speech frequency to encourage participation and active listening.
Additionally in the app, the users can access their performance skills through data visualization. We hope that Lighthouse will be the helping hand to encourage empathy for better group conversations in the future.
The Problem
Group projects face difficulty to reach desired goals due to the lack of empathy and active listening in conversation.
The Solution
Core functions
Capturing voice tone to detect emotions
Utilizing AI technology to capture language cues
Analysis and visualization of data
The addition of the Lighthouse app will allow individuals to refer to their personal data to make improvements in their conversational skills after the meeting as well as their development over time.
The Lighthouse app will show three graphs being energy(arousal), attitude(valence), and speech frequency to encourage participation and active listening.
Our Process
For our research, we started off with the question,
What is Conversation?
Conversation is: between two or more people, in which news and ideas are exchanged.
Ideas are exchanged the most when we collaborate.
And collaboration happens in group work/projects.
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Diary Studies
Based on our primary and secondary data we created a guiding HMW question as well as some insights to better understand opportunity areas.
Survey responses
Interviews
People are fearful of becoming the black sheep of the project.
“I’m scared to give my opinion because I’m scared to be judged.”
“People are too transparent and don’t take other people’s feelings into consideration.”
If you don’t take the time to listen to other people you get associated as a ‘know-it-all’.
“Some people shut you down... they are kinda like bullies.”
There is an unspoken fight for power or competition of approval within a group.
Even if people were confident in their communication skills, 21% still preferred individual projects than group projects. This is because conversations require a lot of effort and soft skills.
We learned that empathy, in particular, was the most difficult skill to have and achieve in group conversations.
How might we make empathy and active listening in group projects easier for increased productivity?