Cup of Jokes shows jokes about design and programming. When designers and developers work together, not knowing each other's profession might lead to inefficiency or arguments. Cup of Jokes takes humor as the medium to facilitate conversation between designers and developers. Through more conversations, people develop more empathy for each other. Also, a deeper understanding of the other profession could be achieved. For instance, designers and developers can start a conversation from the jokes on the cup. Designers can explain a design joke to developers while enjoying the joke, in the meantime, developers get to know more about the design world; developers can do the same thing to designers with programming jokes.

Goal

Helping communication and empathy building between designers and developers in the office.

Why Cup?

A cup might be the most common object that everyone will use, and cups are mostly shared by all rather than owned by individuals. A cup has a big empty surface to display information. The heat from coffee or tea can be used as an energy source to power electronic parts.

Why Humor?

Humor has positive effects on psychological well-being, such as moderating the feeling of stress and anxiety [1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]. Therefore, humor can bring designers and developers joy and psychological well-being.

Shared appreciation of humor shows shared background knowledge and shared expectations of behavior, which increases the tendency of collaboration [2]. Also, in a positive humor climate, relationships among people get reinforced [5]. For instance, if a designer already can understand programming jokes and laugh with developers, then their relationship will get closer and developers will be more willing to collaborate with this designer.

Empathy means being able to understand and experience the thoughts and feelings of another, which is essential to intimacy and trust [4]. In the long run, by discussing jokes together, designers and developers would have more empathy for each other and collaborate better.

Background

The idea of Cup of Jokes came from an empirical study done by myself. The topic of the study is the gap between design and development. The study consist of two main parts: participatory observation and semi-structured interview.

First, participatory observation of a website development project was done in a setting where 4 developers were asked for developing a website according to the given design handoff. The key findings from the observation are:

1. The design prototype and documents failed to provide a clear concept and logic of the design.
2. To develop, developers need to understand all states and relations of the elements in the design.
3. Without fully understanding the concept and logic of the design, developers could develop the website wrongly.
4. A small change in the design could lead to a significant change in the code.
5. The technical aspect was not well considered in the design.

Second, 7 interviews were conducted with both the designers and developers of the website. The key findings are:

1. Not every feature in the design can be implemented under time or technical constraints.
2. Designers also could fail to consider every aspect of the design.
3. Designers prefer a "pixel-perfect" development outcome.
4. Developers prefer a design handoff that includes all the details and possible cases.
5. Designers wish developers would know more about design; developers wish the designer would know more about development.
6. The back and forth negotiation about the design and development could frustrate both designers and developers.
7. Designers and developers sometimes are not getting along very well due to lacking empathy for each other.
8. Negotiation(exchanging opinions) from designers and developers sometimes could bring a better design.

Through reflecting the empirical findings, the conclusion was drawn: Designers and developers need to communicate to complete their tasks; better ideas could be inspired by the communication; however, they need to have more empathy for each other to collaborate better.

References

[1] Millicent H. Abel. 1998. Interaction of humor and gender in moderating relationships between stress and outcomes. The Journal of psychology 132, no. 3 (1998), 267-276. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00223989809599166

[2] Oliver S. Curry and Robin I.M. Dunbar. 2013. Sharing a joke: The effects of a similar sense of humor on affiliation and altruism. Evolution and Human Behavior 34, no. 2 (2013), 125-129. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2012.11.003

[3] Herbert M. Lefcourt and Rod A. Martin. 2012. Humor and life stress: Antidote to adversity (1st. ed.). Springer-Verlag New York Inc., New York, NY.

[4] Carl Ransom Rogers. 1995. A way of being. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, MA.

[5] Rod A. Martin and Thomas Ford. 2018. The psychology of humor: An integrative approach (2nd. ed.). Academic press.

[6] Rod A. Martin and Herbert M. Lefcourt. 1983. Sense of humor as a moderator of the relation between stressors and moods. Journal of personality and social psychology 45, no. 6 (1983), 1313–1324. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.45.6.1313

[7] Carmen C. Moran. 1996. Short-term mood change, perceived funniness, and the effect of humor stimuli. Behavioral medicine 22, no. 1 (1996), 32-38. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/08964289.1996.9933763

[8] Michelle Gayle Newman and Arthur A. Stone. 1996. Does humor moderate the effects of experimentally-induced stress? Annals of Behavioral Medicine 18, no. 2 (1996), 101-109. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02909582

[9] Attila Szabo. 2003. The acute effects of humor and exercise on mood and anxiety. Journal of leisure research 35, no. 2 (2003): 152-162. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00222216.2003.11949988