Blindspots: Growing Student

Perspectives Through Self-Directed

Exposure

Wesley Lauka

School of Information

University of Michigan

wlauka@umich.edu

Ben Mullins

School of Information

University of Michigan

benm@umich.edu

Phillip Tularak

School of Information

University of Michigan

tularak@umich.edu

School of Information

University of Michigan

4322 North Quad

105 South State Street

Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285

Abstract

Blindspots is a system that fosters the sharing ofcareer-oriented stories in an e↵ort to broadenfirst-generation students’ exposure to the career pathsconnected to majors. Being the first person in one’s familyto attend college is a significant achievement, but bringswith it certain challenges. Exposure to stories of thosewho are in a professional position can broaden narrowperspectives and reshape understanding to unknownobstacles. Based on our research, soliciting stories fromthe crowd can help inform student perspectives, openingup new possibilities through the sharing of experiences.

Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).

CHI’13, April 27 – May 2, 2013, Paris, France.

ACM XXX-X-XXXX-XXXX-X/XX/XX.

Author Keywords

First-Generation, Exposure, Storytelling, Alumni,Students, Crowd

ACM Classification Keywords

H.5.2 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: UserInterfaces - Graphical user interfaces (GUI); Interactionstyles (e.g., commands, menus, forms, directmanipulation); Prototyping; User-centered design

Introduction

Choosing a college major can be a di�cult task withsignificant long-term consequences. It dictates futurecareer paths, defines identities, and has lasting financialimplications. Despite the wealth of informative resourcesavailable to students, the journey from choosing a majorto a career is often filled with blind spots. Withoutrelevant guidance and exposure to the obstacles andopportunities that await, students can make drastic leapsbefore asking the right questions of themselves and others[5].

Unfortunately, in the case of first-generation collegestudents, fewer opportunities exist for career-relatedexposure, which is vital to thinking through the outcomesof the decision [9]. These students, comprising up to onethird of national undergraduates [2], often lack access to

larger, domain-knowledgeable networks that otherstudents benefit from. This can be o↵set by providingthem access to a specific crowd, one they may soon findthemselves a part of, an institution’s alumni. Positioned

Figure 1: As a person is exposed

to the perspectives of others,

their narrative on a topic grows,

creating a broader perspective

than one without the exposure of

the crowd.

to leverage the crowd and networks of LinkedIn,Blindspots presents to students short narrative responsesby alumni, drawing on a range of perspectives. It exposesthe panorama of experience between the first few collegedecisions and the realities of a job that waits on the otherend. Blindspots o↵ers the benefits of gradual exposureand a camaraderie in the crowd to better prepare students.

Problem Identification

Framing the Social and Economic ImpactAccording to the Cooperative Institutional ResearchProgram, 85.9% of first-generation students indicated “toget a better job” as a very important factor whenconsidering to attend college. Furthermore, “to gettraining for a specific career” has continuously been thethird most given reason at 77.6% for the past few years[4]. However, the selection and pursuit of a career pathwithout comprehensive understanding of what it entailscan lead to regrets, especially in the current economy, witheducation costs rising 60% over the last two decades [5].

Our initial suspicions regarding the existence of acareer/major selection problem was supported by our ownanecdotal evidence. We all knew college graduates whowished they had known certain things before making theircareer choices. As our research later revealed, a significantamount of the information identified as critical wasinformation embedded in contextual exposure. It was notinformation they were guaranteed to receive, it wassomething they picked up along the way.

Establishing the Conceptual Problem SpaceValues such as culture, community, economic status, andeducation are key attributes that a↵ect an individual’savailable knowledge resources. One’s perspective and viewof the future is limited to the knowledge available [7].Lacking a family-oriented community on which to drawexposure related to higher education, first-generationstudents are more likely to appropriate a generalizednarrative of their aspirations. The key question becomeshow to access the di↵erences within the crowd to enhancean individual’s understanding.

The Envisioned Solution

System OverviewBlindspots is a collection of brief stories crowdsourcedfrom alumni. Users are first presented with a selection ofstories that allow them to begin exploration, or they maysearch for a topic of interest, which will present them amore focused selection of stories. After the completion ofthe first story, users are presented with the option ofselecting between two “paths” to explore. These pathsrepresent navigation to either closely or loosely relatedstories, each path presenting the user with three stories tochoose from. The brevity and diversity of these storiesallows users to step through a wide range of perspectivesin a short period of time.

Blindspots is designed to reveal variables users did notrealize they sought. This takes advantage of “the crowd”in the purest sense. The value doesn’t come from filteringthe crowd. Instead, the value comes from theaccumulated information received from a wide range ofindividuals (see Figure 2).

Flowing from Contributor to ConsumerOn the contributor side, an institution’s entire alumninetwork can contribute short stories based in thetopics/domains on which they are qualified to speak. Thesystem asks directed questions, based on the contributor’sLinkedIn profile data. The amassed stories are continuallylinked together, marking stories as related to the topicsand ideas discussed by the contributors.

FIRST-GENERATION STUDENT ( CONSUMER )

ALUMNI PROFESSIONALS ( CONTRIBUTOR )

Figure 2: The Blindspots system

creates an environment for

student to explore a wide range

of stories contributed by di↵erent

alumni professionals.

Then, on the consumer side, students are presented with asingle story, navigation options, and comments which havebeen left on the story. The navigation takes the form oftwo options. From any story a user can choose to take a“left turn” or “right turn”, reflecting on a desire toexplore closer or further away from the content of thecurrent story. Each direction presents the user with threeoptions for a next story to view (see Figure 3).

Users may want to review content they experienced onBlindspots at a later date. To facilitate this, users canaccess a sequential history of the stories they have read,and label specific stories as “favorites”. Stories alsoprovide users the opportunity to “connect” directly withthe author via LinkedIn’s direct mail service.

User Centered Research

To gain the design perspectives needed, our research wasbroken into two phases, story elicitation from workingprofessionals, and semi-structured interviews withfirst-generation college students at the University ofMichigan.

We chose to make first-generation college students ourprimary target audience, as research suggestsfirst-generation students have a greater likelihood offacing obstacles that Blindspots can help overcome.First-generation students are twice as likely to report

significant concerns about financing college, makingchoice of major a more critical decision [4]. This data alsoshows a higher percentage of first-generation studentsciting “more money” as their top reason for attendingcollege (76.4% vs. 69.8%), yet the proportion aspiring toget a masters degree or higher is consistently 10-15% lessthan non first-generation students. Even accounting fordi↵erences between fields, this suggests thatfirst-generation students may not be aware of all thefactors involved in meeting their goals.

Story Elicitation to ProfessionalsA “story elicitation” was designed to better understandwhat type of data individuals would share about thejourney to their career, and to determine what questionscould inspire rich responses. Utilizing a�nity-basedtechniques [6], we formed core themes around what wouldcontribute to making a professional’s experiencereflectively rewarding. These themes were:

• Context: current professional standing, to groundthe contributor’s experience

• Story: the specific personal narrative• Missing: what the person believed would have made

the biggest di↵erence in their career• Made A Di↵erence: what experiences or choices had

the biggest impact from a career perspective

The resulting questionnaire was distributed throughmultiple channels including an alumni mailing list andTwitter. Receiving 25 quality responses, the elicitationsrevealed a willingness to invest a significant amount oftime sharing their stories, averaging approximately 300words for each narrative. We found considerable variationin what people wished they had known, and mostrespondents felt strongly about the topic.

Interviews with First-Generation StudentsThree experience-driven interviews were conducted,providing information into the motivations offirst-generation students and their selection of majors. Wesought to identify what they felt contributed to theirsuccess, as well as what they regretted not knowingsooner. Participants indicated that their parent’s desire

Figure 3: The Blindspots Story

View, showing the “Left Turn”

dropdown menu. The user is

presented with three options for

the next story to be viewed.

Figure 4: A user engages with

the initial Blindspots paper

prototype.

for the them to be economically secure was a large factorin the decision to go to college and their selection ofmajors. Participant 02 stated, “I wanted to be a doctorbecause my family wanted me to be a doctor.” However,there was a disconnect between what the participants’parents saw as desirable, and what they enjoyed or feltfulfilled doing (a feeling not limited to first-generationstudents). Participant 02 indicated that as a result, theywere not having a valuable college experience. Luckily,Partcipant 02 had the opportunity to meet her freshmenroommate’s mother, whose experience as a lawyer becamean invaluable reference.

Those interviewed repeatedly mentioned almost-missedopportunities, attributing much success to “luck.”Participant 01 remarked, “I wish I had had more peopletelling me what I needed to be thinking about earlier.” Inthe absence of a support structure, most of theseinstances of luck could be credited to being in the rightplace at the right time.

The Design Process

Formalizing Design ImperativesTo ground our design initiative, we assembled constraints,or imperatives, based in our research and conceptualframing. The highest priority constraints were thefollowing:

• Build on the quality of crowds that are already inplace

• Increase incentives and lower barriers forparticipation for both content contributors andconsumers

• The system must be distinct from resources alreadyavailable via search engines. Blindspots focuses oninformation that, while ultimately helpful, the useris not actively searching for

• This is not a system that provides instructions oradvice, it should facilitate exposure to a wide rangeof perspectives and experiences empower the user tochart their own path

In regards to the first constraint, creating Blindspotswithin the career and education-oriented LinkedIncommunity brings several benefits. In addition to notrequiring users to register with a new service, access to auser’s LinkedIn profile allows Blindspots to ask questionsabout specific entries on a profile, increasing the likelihoodof a targeted, and thus unique, beneficial response.

Translating Research Findings into InteractionsBlindspots represents a simple contributor/consumerrelationship, centering on the presentation of small storiesto the student user (consumer) as written by professionals(contributors). Through iterative, low-fidelity design weattempted to pare down the system interactions, focusingon the relationship between the user and the storycontent. The main living artifact of the design process isan integrated wireframe/user-flow (see Figure 5 andFigure 6), representing the entire system. It allows globaland local interactions to be visualized and discussed, whileemphasizing the desire to ease the cost of movementthrough the stories. This led to the decision to limitstories to a short, focused length, allowing engagementcosts to decrease and encouraging movement through thesystem. The level of attention needed to invest in each

story being enough to maintain interest and value, but notoverwhelm the user. One of the most di�cult areas of

ACCESS AS

CONTRIBUTOR

7

LANDING PAGE

MY DASHBOARD

MY EXPERIENCES

STORY SUBMISSION

POST-SUBMISSION

STORY VIEW

NOTIFICATIONS

SHOW NEW STORY

ADD COMMENT

CHOOSE STORY

SELECT DIRECTION

VIEW LINKEDIN MAIL

Figure 5: Wireflow diagram

showing paths through the

system from the Contributor side.

design was the consumer’s entry point. The currentdesign provides the user a small sampling of stories toprovoke potential starting points, while also including auser-input field for establishing a starting point. With afocus on exploration, the system needed to provide astructure to ignite an interest in movement withoutstrongly filtering the knowledge within reach.

Validation

Paper Prototyping the Design SolutionThree users were run through a series of tasks on a paperprototype of the system using the think-aloud protocol [8].Findings showed that users were confused by the initialnavigation button labels (see Figure 4). This behaviorindicated a design flaw in the alignment between the UIand the goals of the system. It was also observed thatusers were confused moving between stories, notunderstanding why they were taken to a particular one.The users did comment that the stories were valuable, andfound the ability to explore the topic area through theman interesting and useful presentation of the information.

Iterating on User FeedbackUser feedback lead the team to redesign the interactionmodel of the local story navigation. The combination oflarge arrows and vocabulary of “left turn”, “right turn”,“straight ahead” confused users, leading them to mistakeit with global navigational tools. This was remedied withmore actionable phrasing and more relevant, detailediconography. This also informed the elimination of the“safe choice” option, which was found to discourageexploratory behavior. Finally, to lessen disorientationmoving between stories while balancing the need forexploration, a secondary menu was adopted. The

secondary menu presents users with the titles of threepotential stories, o↵ering an informed choice to the user.

Discussion

Motivating UsersMotivation problems exist in any crowd-driven systemwhere a critical mass is important. By leveraging LinkedInand the contributors’ associations with the University ofMichigan, Blindspots takes advantage of identity-basedcommitment. Identity based commitment describes howpeople associate themselves as a member of a group, i.e.gender, geographic, nationality, political party, et cetera[3]. This self selection and identification with groups givesstrength to the system as participants are more likely tostay engaged with the system - even without specificfriend connections.

Additionally, the service o↵ers another method for alumnito give back to the institution. Evidence to career paths,accounts of specific personal experiences, and potentiallymentorship, can provide professionals with a means ofenhancing the value of their alma mater. Furthermore,our preliminary observations suggest a willingness withinfirst-generation students to give back as they progressthrough their education. Participant 01 indicated that shecredits much of the valuable information she had obtainedregarding her field to being a peer advisor, helping othersfind resources.

Technical FeasibilityBlindspots leverages LinkedIn’s existing API, o↵eringaccess to relevant job and education data in a usersprofile. Contributors only need to provide stories, asdemographic information used to organize and classifydata can also be extracted from their LinkedIn profile.

Providing users with both similar and unrelated options of

what story to read next requires a means of determininglevel of similarity between stories. Extracting relevantdata from stories such as sentiment, emotions, certainty,and subject matter can be largely automated. Forexample, the Insights API from OpenAmplify [1] canautomatically extract this data from stories, and theresults determine the stories available to be viewed next.

LANDING PAGE

MY PATH FAVORITES

STORY VIEWSHOW NEW STORY

ADD COMMENT

CHOOSE STORY

SELECT DIRECTION

ACCESS AS

CONSUMER

ENTER SEARCH QUERY

FAVORITE STORY

SEND MAIL REQUEST

Figure 6: Wireflow diagram

showing paths through the

system from the Consumer side.

Extending the SystemWhile the solution discussed addresses a very specificdemographic, it is easy to see how the solution could beused across educational institutions, organizations, andeven outside of college.

Conclusion

There is no shortage of online advice and opinionsregarding college and career choices. This information ishelpful and important, but not a replacement for thenuance o↵ered by exposure. Blindspots aims to create anonline environment that elicits and makes available thetype of information that comes through exposure. Byimplementing carefully constructed constraints, Blindspotsremoves the focus from seeking advice from the crowd,and shifts it to learning from their stories. Stories o↵eranswers, or at least an entrance, to questions that readersare not necessarily aware they even had, and have thepotential to be more engaging than rote advice.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our advisor, Professor Sarita Yardifor her continued feedback and guidance. We would alsolike to thank Professors Eytan Adar and Mark Newman,

and the entire School of Information community,especially Nikki Roda and Gierad Laput.

References

[1] OpenAmplify. http://www.openamplify.com/.[2] Supporting first-generation college students through

classroom-based practices. Tech. rep., Institute ForHigher Education Policy, Sept. 2012.

[3] Burke, M., Kraut, R. E., Resnick, P., Kiesler, S., Ren,Y., Chen, Y., Kittur, N., Riedl, J., and Konstan, J.Building Successful Online Communities:Evidence-Based Social Design. The MIT Press, 2012.

[4] DeAngelo, L., Hurtado, S., Pryor, J., Palucki Blake,L., and Tran, S. The american freshman: Nationalnorms fall 2011. Tech. rep., Higher EducationResearch Institute, UCLA, 2011.

[5] Deparle, J. Poor students struggle as class plays agreater role in success. The New York Times (Dec.2012).

[6] Holtzblatt, K., Wendell, J. B., and Wood, S. Rapidcontextual design a how-to guide to key techniques foruser-centered design. Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann, SanFrancisco, 2005.

[7] Kahneman, D. Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Strausand Giroux, New York, 2011.

[8] Lewis, C., and Rieman, J. Task-Centered UserInterface Design: A Practical Introduction. 1993.

[9] Munson, S. Exposure to Political Diversity Online.PhD thesis, University of Michigan School ofInformation, 2012.