The group conducted surveys, interviews, and contextual inquiries to understand how students use Discord. They found that most use it for gaming and creator servers and identified confusing aspects like crowded screens. Further research uncovered awareness of different features. Interviews explored usage patterns and opinions on features from other apps. Contextual inquiries examined feature locations. The group reflected on combining methods to get a well-rounded understanding and difficulties engaging users for all activities. They concluded Discord fills a niche as a combination communication, social media, and community app, and aim to address issues found.

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2. DT 108
Human Computer Interaction
Assignment 1 - Define Problem Statement
1.High Level Statement
2.Survey 1
3.Contrxual Enquiry 1
4.Survey 2
5.Interviews
6.Contexual Enquiry 2
7.Reflection
8.Final Statement
9.Group Work Distribution
Index

3. “
“
High Level Statement
Jeremiah John, Manas Gupta & Gaurav Deshmukh
Study how the Discord app is being
used by students for various purposes,
and what has made Discord create a niche
that it has among the other messaging
platforms like WhatsApp & Telegram.
Figure out various pain points that users face
with the UI Interaction of Discord, and
suggest changes according to our user research.
Assests: Sticky Notes Images

4. Survey - I
Design - Gaurav Deshmukh
Distribution - Jeremiah John
We created a survey after going through Discord app and a few Youtube videos about its various features. Then we circulated it
in our class group and on Twitter. We had a feeling this is not our final survey, this was just to gauge a higher level understanding
of users.
^ Name
^ Age Range
Less than 10
11-20
21-30
31-40
More than 40:
1. My favorite chatting app is:
WhatsApp
Discord
Telegram
Other
2. I use Discord for:
Gaming Servers
Educational Servers
Artist/Creators Servers
Friends Group chat
Other
3. How many servers are you active in?
1
2
3
4
5
More than 5
4. What aspects of Discord is most confusing?
Using Voice channels
Screen is too crowded
Emoji Access
Difficult to find which channel a message was sent
Confusing message notifications
Other:
Assets: Form Link (1), Summary Report (1)

5. 5. Does it take too long to find the right emoji when typing?
Yes
No
6. I would like to see the following features on Discord?
Document collaboration suite (Like Google Docs)
Coding repository (like Github)
Presentation platform
Embedded Youtube Player
Other:
7. Any other thoughts/suggestions you would like us to know about Discord?
We got 24 responses, 87%
participants being in the age range
of 21-30. Most claimed to be using
Discord for gaming servers and
Artist/creators servers. Majority of
participants had more than 5
servers on their Discord.‘Screen is
too crowded’and‘Difficult to find
which channel a message was sent’
was most confusing. Most argued
for a Docs collaboration, but batted
for emojis.
After following up with the responses that we got, we realised we need to access every feature of Discord separately, and
therefore to aid that we should turn to Contexual Enquiry. Then we can decide our next steps from there.

6. “ “
Contexual Enquiry - I
Manas Gupta - Pranjal Walia & Shashank Devarmani
We have a laundary list of features of Discord, which we will ask our participants to find and use. The goal is to find which features
are most easy to locate and which not. This will help us gauge an understnading of wrong-placement of certain features in the
Discord app User Interface.
The create new server option is at the
bottom after all servers, which is a
pain if you have 100s of servers.
Assets: Screen Recording (1), Audio Recording (2), Scribe Notes (2), Photos (4)

7. “ “
Sync contacts option doesn’t
make sense in “Privacy &
Safety” settings.
Pranjal is a‘Hardcore’Discord user, and already knew all the features’location, and
even showed us some latest Beta version features of Discord.
Shashank was a avid user of Discord in pandemic for gaming. He had to reinstall
Discord for the activity and found many new features added since.
Not only did we find many new features we even we were unaware of before, we also gained new perspective of what Discord means
to a‘Hardcore’user and a ‘Vanilla’user. We stopped our Contextual Enquiries here and decided to create another new survey to
incorporate our new findings into new questions.

8. Survey - II
Design - Gaurav Deshmukh
Distribution - Gaurav Deshmukh & Jeremiah John
^ First Name*
^ Email
^ Select your favorite
Universe*
1. Rate yourself on your knowledge
and experience of Discord*
Noob
Vanilla
Hardcore
2. When did you start using Discord?*
Recently (a year or so)
Three years
Many moons have passed
since that pivotal day
3. Which Discord features are you aware of so far?
Connections*
Create your server*
Custom status*
Custom channel selection*
Find Friends via Contacts*
Friend Requests*
Mentions*
Public Video/Audio Channels*
Quick Status*
Role-based colours*
Safe DMs*
In-app global search*
Audio/Video Calls*
Echo/Noise control*
Following the Contexual Enquiry we got very many insights about various Discord features and how different level of users
think about Discord and thus use it. We decided to create a proper survey this time focusing on as many features that we can
ask to users. To get serious responses we went to‘Lilavati’and‘Visveshwara’hostel and knocked every door of all 5 floors and
explained our requirement of the survey.

9. 4. What do you think the Discord Icon Signifies?*
5. Do you know about Discord Nitro?*
Yep
Naw
Heard of it, but don’t know what it is
6. Have you ever created a Discord server?
Yes
No
6. 1 O Wow, Interesting, what did you use it for?
Gaming Group
College Project Group
College Study Group
Friends Gossip Group
Hobby Group (Art, etc)
Other
7. Do you think Discord is more secure
in terms of video/audio calls
and text message encryption?*
Secure enough
Don’t care
Not secure
8. How many servers are you part
of currently?*
Less than 5
Less than 10
Lost count, more than my fingers
9. This is a random screenshot of a
server chat, what aspects do you
think are good and what are bad
and should be changed/removed?*
10. Any comments on our survey
methodology, or anything else
you would like us to know about
Discord, feel free to let us know.
(If you don't like writing long para
but still want to share something
interest,
click: https://record.reverb.chat/
and record, and then share the
link of the recording here)*
11. Would you like u to contact
you for a follow-up interview?
Sure bro, imma your guy
Kinda unavailable
After getting suffiecient responses we decided that now we are ready to
take interviews in the form of semi-structed forms. Fortunately we had many
volunteers who did survey ready to give us interviews.
We got 23 responses, mostly vanilla who has been using
Discord for atleast 3 years. Safe DMs and Custom status
were the least known features. Majority thought the icon
as a controller. Most of them didn’t know about Discord
Nitro. and were Dark-mode, Off notification users.

10. “
“
Interviews
Jeremiah John - Kartik Joshi & Subham Chowdhary
Manas Gupta - Pranjal Walia & Shashank Devarmani
Gaurav Deshmukh -
Assests: Audio Recordings, Scribe Notes
All our Interviwees were self-volunteers from our previous surveys. Thus we have a brief idea of what their level of knowledge of
Discord was and also which features they were aware of and not aware of. We came up with some common questions for all of
them but since it was a semi-structured interview, many other aspects were discussed to as and when they arrived.
I think in the case
of threading of
responses,
Discord should
follow Slack &
Reddit like UI.

11. How did you come to know about Discord?
You mentioned Discord being safe/unsafe; what is the basis of this belief?
Can you show me the servers that you are part of currently?
What is your Discord screentime as a percent of total screentime?
Do you have a good example of reply threads from other apps?
When you hear about Discord Nitro, the premium tier of Discord, what added features do you imagine?
Do you know a person/friend who is very active on Discord?
Have you ever used Discord for a audio/video call?
Discord is one of the apps where bot usage is very active, why do you that isn’t in other apps?
Are there other apps that you know of where bots are prominently used?
What features do you think Discord app can take from its other devices versions?
What features from other messaging apps would you like to see on Discord? (WhatsApp, Telegram)
What features from other community management apps would you like to see on Discord? (Twitch)
What features from other social media apps would you like to see on Discord? (Instagram, Twitter)
After having done the interviews we decided to continue with our Contexual Enquiry to see if we have covered all aspects that
we wished to cover. Some particular features had mixed responses in the interviews, some claiming them to be a useful addition
while others saying it would complicate things even more and would go away from what Discord stands for.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14

12. “
“
Contexual Enquiry - II
Jeremiah John - Kartik Joshi & Subham Chowdhary
The avatar should be
accompanied by their names
because remembering avatars
is way harder, and they keep
changing.
The second contexual enquiry also involved comparing with other apps and thinking aloud where their particular features
would and would not match. Subham had a very long experience of Slack and Kartik also managed to find useful Reddit
features that would suit Discord.

13. “
“
Discord’s calls are
better than
WhatsApp but
needs high
speed net.
Having completed our second Contexual Enquiry we analyzed all of the work done so far and wrote up our particular parts of
interviews, contexual enquiries and surveys in a shared Google Docs report. Followed by Gaurav conveting the document into
this designed double page PDF on Adobe Illustrator.
Subham even drew some of the different types of
thread managing structures for us that he knew of.
He although didn’t have much experience in using
Discord, but that too somehow helped us.

14. “
“
Reflection
Jeremiah John, Manas Gupta, Gaurav Deshmukh
Similarities:
Differences:
Strengths:
Weaknesses:
Structure:
We knew we had to do Survey first because that is how we would know and will be able to
interview all kinds of users (Experienced and new), the contexual enquiries helped us to
form interview questions better.
We found that we could ask about their
experience and the features they are aware of in
any of the three methods.
Users were hesitant to answer descriptive answers
on surveys which we were able to follow up during
interviews and contexual enquiries.
Combining these three methods is actually very
useful, these three actually complement each
others and help to see a well rounded picture.
Finding users who are ready to be present for all
three methods was quite hard. They were fine
with surveys and interviews but cound’’nt
understand the importance of contexual enquiry.

15. Final Statement
“
“Discord is popular for its niche communities.
It is neither a social media app, messaging app
or a community app, but a very stable
combination of the three.
Figure out ways to incorporate several fallacies and
misplacement of some features that we
encountered during interviews and contexual
enquiries.

16. Group - II
Jeremiah John
• Survey-1 Distribution, (Twitter, Class group)
• Survey-2 Distribution, (Lilavati, Vishveshwara)
• 2 Interview, (Kartik, Subham)
• 2 Contextual Enquiry, (Kartik, Subham)
• Survey Questions cross-critic
• Report Writing (Google Docs)
Group Work Distribution
Assests: Miscellaneous Photos

17. Manas Gupta
Gaurav Deshmukh
• 2 Contextual Enquiries,
• 2 Interviews, (Shashank, Pranjal)
• 1 Scribe, (Mr Y)
• Report Writing (Google Docs)
• Project Management (Task Delegation, Planning),
• Survey-1 Creation, (Google Forms)
• Survey-2 Creation, (Typeform)
• Survey-2 Distribution, (Lilavati, Vishveshwara)
• 1 Interview, (Mr. Y)
• 4 Scribe, (Kartik, Subham, Shashank, Pranjal)
• 1 Contextual Enquiry, (Mr Y)
• Report Writing (Google Docs)
• Report Design (Adobe Illustrator)