Creating a Social Media App for Goal Accomplishment
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Tor-Martin Holen Creating a Social Media App for Goal Accomplishment Master’s thesis in Applied Computer Science Supervisor: Mariusz Nowostawski June 2019 Master’s thesis Master’s NTNU Engineering Department of Computer Science Department of Computer Faculty of Information Technology and Electrical Technology of Information Faculty Norwegian University of Science and Technology of Science University Norwegian Tor-Martin Holen Creating a Social Media App for Goal Accomplishment The Social Media App, SetGoals Master’s thesis in Applied Computer Science Supervisor: Mariusz Nowostawski June 2019 Norwegian University of Science and Technology Faculty of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering Department of Computer Science Creating a Social Media App for Goal Accomplishment Tor-Martin Holen 01.06.19 Master’s Thesis 30 ECTS Supervisor: Mariusz Nowostawski Abstract The work covers persuasive technology and how this can be used to create a social media applica- tion for goal accomplishment. The work attempts to discover if personality traits assessed through the BFI-44 affects how the users behave in the application in the form of content they produce. However, the work lacked a large active user group. The results do also covers advertising results obtained from campaigns with Google Ads and Facebook Ads. In total the application received 102 registered account, but only 18 can be considered active users. The prototype is created with Flut- ter, Dart and Firebase. Social Media Application, SetGoals, is open sourced, and anybody is free to fork it and use it for non-commercial gains. Creating a Social Media App for Goal Accomplishment Contents Contents ............................................... i List of Figures ............................................ iv List of Tables ............................................. v List of Listings ............................................ 1 1 Introduction ........................................... 1 1.1 Related works........................................2 1.1.1 VivoSpace......................................4 1.1.2 ActiveShare.....................................4 1.1.3 EcoIsland......................................5 1.1.4 BinCam.......................................5 1.1.5 Goal Tracking....................................5 1.1.6 Papers........................................5 2 Methodology ........................................... 7 2.1 Literature Search......................................7 2.2 Data collection.......................................7 2.3 Classifying Users......................................8 2.3.1 Bartle’s taxonomy.................................8 2.3.2 Myers-Briggs Type Indicator............................8 2.3.3 BrainHex......................................9 2.3.4 Persuasive Potential Questionnaire........................9 2.3.5 Five Factor Model..................................9 2.4 Data processing....................................... 10 2.5 Plan A............................................ 10 2.5.1 User Recruitment.................................. 10 2.5.2 Risks of Plan A................................... 11 2.6 Plan B - The contingency plan............................... 11 2.7 Theory............................................ 11 2.7.1 Storyboards or in-app-test............................. 12 2.7.2 Socially Oriented - Persuasive Strategies..................... 12 2.8 Hypotheses and Data Logging............................... 12 2.8.1 User Retention................................... 13 2.8.2 Posts and goals................................... 13 2.8.3 User-set Reminders................................. 14 2.8.4 Privacy....................................... 14 i Creating a Social Media App for Goal Accomplishment 2.9 Flutter and Dart....................................... 14 2.9.1 Quirks and Features of Dart............................ 15 2.10 Firebase........................................... 16 2.10.1 Firebase Authentication.............................. 16 2.10.2 Cloud Firestore................................... 17 2.10.3 Cloud Storage.................................... 18 2.10.4 Cloud Functions.................................. 19 2.10.5 Firebase Cloud Messaging............................. 20 2.11 The Prototype........................................ 20 2.11.1 The Goal List.................................... 22 2.11.2 Login Process.................................... 22 2.11.3 Sumarizing the application............................ 23 3 Results .............................................. 30 3.1 Test Account........................................ 30 3.2 User Recruitment from own Network........................... 30 3.3 User Recruitment from Advertisement.......................... 30 3.3.1 Jodel Advertised Post................................ 30 3.3.2 Google Ads..................................... 30 3.3.3 Facebook Ads.................................... 32 3.3.4 Result of Advertising................................ 32 3.3.5 Analytics...................................... 36 3.3.6 App Installs and Deletes.............................. 36 3.3.7 Differences in the advertisements......................... 37 3.4 User Feedback........................................ 37 3.4.1 Questionnaire.................................... 37 3.4.2 In-app feedback................................... 39 3.5 User Behaviour....................................... 39 3.5.1 Implemented Persuasive Strategies........................ 39 3.6 Processing data....................................... 40 3.7 Economical Aspects..................................... 41 3.8 Architecture......................................... 42 3.9 Optimizing for Mobile................................... 42 4 Discussion ............................................ 50 4.1 Technical Discussion and Application Design....................... 50 4.1.1 The Home Feed................................... 50 4.1.2 The Goal List.................................... 50 4.1.3 The Map....................................... 50 4.1.4 User Recruitment.................................. 50 4.1.5 Usability....................................... 50 4.1.6 Architecture..................................... 51 ii Creating a Social Media App for Goal Accomplishment 4.1.7 Packages...................................... 52 4.1.8 Technical Debt................................... 52 4.1.9 Privacy....................................... 52 4.1.10 Ways to improve the data collection....................... 52 4.2 Flutter............................................ 53 4.3 Legal Aspects........................................ 53 4.3.1 GDPR........................................ 53 4.3.2 App Review..................................... 53 4.4 The app........................................... 54 4.4.1 Updating the app.................................. 54 4.5 Ethical Aspects....................................... 55 4.5.1 Publication bias................................... 55 4.6 Persuasive Technology Techniques (PTT)......................... 55 4.7 Open Source........................................ 55 4.8 Complying with GDPR and NSD.............................. 55 4.9 Loss of users......................................... 56 4.10 External Factors....................................... 56 4.11 Login/Notification bug................................... 57 4.12 Bug: Wrong Image When Posting............................. 57 5 Conclusion ............................................ 58 5.1 Main Contributions..................................... 58 5.2 Reflections.......................................... 58 5.3 Further Work........................................ 59 5.3.1 Persuasive Software Features........................... 59 5.3.2 User Testing..................................... 60 5.3.3 Sharing....................................... 60 5.4 Deprecation......................................... 60 5.5 Bad internet connections.................................. 60 5.6 Limitations of this work.................................. 60 Appendices .............................................. 61 A Designing the questionnaire .................................. 62 A.1 Original Questionnaire................................... 62 A.2 Revised Questionnaire................................... 62 B Content Analysis ......................................... 64 Bibliography ............................................. 71 iii Creating a Social Media App for Goal Accomplishment List of Figures 1 Flutter’s Layered Architecture............................... 17 2 A technology overview................................... 21 3 Prototype: Goal List Feature................................ 22 4 Prototype: Map Feature.................................. 23 5 Prototype: Create Goal Feature.............................. 24 6 Prototype: Login Screens.................................. 25 7 Prototype: Reminder Feature............................... 27 8 Prototype Overview: Startup and Authentication Flow................. 28 9 Application Overview.................................... 29 10 Advertised Post on Jodel.................................. 31 11 Google Ads: Overview................................... 32 12 iOS Installs......................................... 33 13 Difference Between Active Users: Android vs iOS.................... 36 14 Installs and Uninstalls................................... 36 15 Overview of the analytics data from Apple’s App Store Connect............ 37 16 Old and New Login Screens................................ 44 17