Shiosk is my thesis project for the M.S. User Experience program at Jefferson University. It is the culmination of a year's worth of research, iteration, and design. With that said, I led all aspects of this project from start to finish. It's practically my baby!
Recently, an increasing number of women have began to speak up about the sexual harassment they have faced at gaming events. In the summer of 2020, over 400 women came forward with their own stories of sexual harassment in the gaming community. For this reason, many women currently do not feel safe attending these events alone.Efforts have been made to provide women a place of acceptance at events by creating meetups for women, however, these spaces often bring about their own unwanted attention. Currently, there are little to no resources available to women at gaming events to help them in case of an emergency.
How might we help women feel safer at gaming and esports events?
Shiosk is a service that uses RFID wristbands combined with RFID readers throughout the event venue to help women accurately pinpoint their harasser. Using a kiosk hidden away in the restroom, women can report their harasser. By scanning their RFID wristband, information is pulled from the RFID readers they've been near, showing attendees they have been in contact with. This helps women discreetly and accurately report their harassers to event organizers.
I conducted a screener survey to find the appropriate users to interview. I reached out to people I knew in the gaming community and had them refer any women they knew in the gaming community my way. When the women reached out to me, I sent them my survey. I did this to avoid "troll" survey responses from men.
Overall, I received 32 responses. Out of the 32, I specifically sought out anyone who answered a 3 or below on the second question, regarding their feelings of safety at offline gaming events. I chose these women as I deemed a 3 or below to be an inadequate feeling of safety, and I wanted to understand why they felt this way.
I interviewed 12 women who were attendees of gaming and esports events.
Interview Goals:
• Hear about women’s experiences at gaming events, including:
○ Pain points
○ Gain points
○ Opportunities to improve upon
• Understand how safe they feel and why they feel that way.
• Learn how they have handled instances of sexual harassment at events in the past.
• Learn about any existing resources in place by tournaments to help women feel safer at events.
I conducted a problem tree analysis to distill the information from my research.
I created a persona, Gamer Gabby, to better empathize with the users. All of the goals, challenges, needs, and quote were informed by the women who I spoke to in my interviews.
Because there were no existing solutions in place regarding the sexual harassment at gaming events, I decided to dig into some other communities that had similar issues with sexual harassment. I did this to understand how they approached the problem, and what solutions had been devised. In doing so, I stumbled upon Tanzania.
What do Tanzania and the gaming community have in common? Well, as it would turn out, Tanzania also has a huge problem with sexual harassment, and in fact, nearly half of Tanzanian women under the age of 50 have suffered from some form of sexual harassment or gender-based violence.
And what makes this even more interesting, is that many of the fears Tanzanian women faced were very parallel to the fears expressed by the women that I interviewed: Fears of being taken seriously, lack of privacy, and ostracization due to reporting their incidents.
How they solved this was with the introduction of something called "Gender Desks."
• A desk in police stations specifically for women to report cases of gender-based violence
• Staffed by female police officers
• Focus on maintaining privacy for the victims
• Established trust between the Tanzanian women and police
• 39% increase in reported cases of sexual harassment & gender-based violence
This was eye opening, as it would shape my solution
Based off of the insights I gathered from my primary research, along with the parallel solution I discovered from Tanzania in my secondary research, I formed my hypothesis:
By creating a discreet and trusted way for women to report incidents of sexual harassment, women will feel more comfortable to report, feel like their voice is heard, and thus, feel safer when attending offline gaming and esports events.
Because this was during the height of the pandemic, I couldn't test my hypothesis in person. Instead, I created a survey to distribute to the women who took my screener survey. I started with a baseline question to measure the women’s current feelings of safety at esports events pre-COVID. Then I followed up with a question asking how safe they would feel if they could discreetly and digitally report their harassers to event staff.
And sure enough, there was an increase. Where over half of the women indicated a 3 or below in terms of safety at the last event they attended, there was a definite increase in the follow up. When presented with the option to discreetly and digitally report harassers, almost all women’s feelings of safety increased to a 5.
• Check-in tablet that snaps photo of attendee’s face (made possible by pre-existing event policies and waivers)
• Digital kiosk placed in women’s restroom to report incidents
• RFID wristbands which contain the information of the attendee and also act as the key into the event
• Long range RFID readers placed throughout the venue
• Security cameras located throughout the venue to review disputes
Check-in Tablet
• Users will input their registration email and confirmation number on the tablet
• Tablet discreetly snaps photo of user without their knowledge during the "verification" animation
• This photo will be used in report flow for Shiosk so that women can identify their harasser by face
Kiosk
• Digital reporting interface
• Privacy shields on left and right sides
• RFID scanner to scan wristband
• Pulls data from the RFID chip
• Select a location on the map and Shiosk populates the list of people who were by the nearest RFID reader at the same time
• Women can identify their harasser based on the photos taken at the check-in tablet
Wristbands
• Attendee’s key into the event
• Contains the information about the attendee, including photo
• RFID readers throughout the venue read the chip and keep track of their location
• Branded to your specific event
I created a service blueprint to lay out all touchpoints for a user, as well as how they combine to work in conjunction with one another.
I created a storyboard to illustrate a potential use case for Shiosk in more detail.
I next solidified my user flow for the kiosk interface to better understand all of the screens I would need to create. Users have the option to learn about the kiosk or view the venue map before they scan their wristband.
Once users scan their wristband, they are able to access the main function of the kiosk, which is to report an incident. The user can also view their event schedule. This is added in to make Shiosk more multipurpose, so that it isn't as obvious a woman is reporting sexual harassment when she is using it.
Using my user flow, I sketched out wireframes to plot the general layout of my user interface, before bringing my ideas into Figma to create high fidelity wireframes.
High fidelity wireframes used for user testing, created in Figma.
I conducted user testing in order to reveal possible usability problems. These studies were moderated and conducted remotely over Zoom.
Tasks:
• Learn about the kiosk
• Report a harasser whose face you remember
• Report a harasser when you don’t remember their face
Follow Up Questions:
1. What about the product was simple to use?
2. What about the product was not simple?
3. What about this product makes you feel safe?
4. What would make you feel safer?
5. What scenario would you use this? Would you use it?
OLD
When asked to report an incident, users had to take a moment to scan their options.
NEW
Added iconography so all buttons could be quickly identifiable. Made the report button most prominent, as it's the main feature.
OLD
The "about" screen previously had two sections to swipe between. None of the users in my testing sessions realized this.
NEW
Consolidated all information onto one simple screen so that users could learn about Shiosk quickly and hassle-free.
OLD
Users were made uncomfortable with the wording on the second paragraph. They didn't want to be told nothing would happen after opening up about a traumatic experience.
NEW
Revised wording to be more comforting to the user. Instead of focusing on the negative "what may not happen," it emphasizes what we will try our best to do.
For the visual design, I wanted the branding to reflect women empowerment, strength, and boldness. I also wanted it to reflect a typical gaming aesthetic, pulling in images like the Gameboy color, gaming PC, and Twitch.
Drawing from my moodboard, I was able to create a style guide and UI kit. While I wanted the overall branding of Shiosk itself to be bold, I wanted the user interface to be more simplistic and easy to use.
To lead such a big project from start to finish was definitely a new challenge for me, but an incredibly rewarding one. I was able to hone both my research and design skills throughout the course of this project. From beginning to end I was able to guide my own research and made important decisions on what methods and tools to use. On top of it all, service design was an area I hadn't previously explored, so I had to teach myself some new things along the way. All in all, it was the perfect project to be able to put all of my UX skills to the test.