Avatar Builder: The Love Affair With Our Digital Selves

Does your digital self represent your true self?

Could you go a day without checking your Twitter? A week without checking your emails? A month without opening Instagram? The line between our offline and online lives has become incredibly blurred in recent years, and even more so in the past 24 months. The growth of social media platforms to promote ourselves in any manner of our choosing has resulted in a widespread addiction and reliance on the idea of the digital self. And the inauthentic nature of the digital selves we often present to the world has brought on somewhat of a backlash with an outcry for authenticity and transparency from many also occupying the digital space. However, the love affair with our digital selves still prevails and will undoubtedly continue to do so as technology continues to evolve.

So how do we make this overlap work in our favor? How do we turn our reliance on technology into a more supportive rather than dependent relationship? The answer is much longer than I could fit in one blog post or even 50. The opportunities to use growing technology and the evolution of our digital selves to our advantage are endless, once we take control of it rather than letting it take control of us.

With the dramatic rise in remote work over the past 24 months of the pandemic, the need to have a “place” where we exist in the workplace outside of the kitchen table or home office we physically occupy has become more important than ever. We need that ability to transition our mindset from “home to work” and it’s something many people struggle with, so the idea of a “digital self” that you switch on and switch off may in fact be the key to doing so. This also presents the opportunity to feel more involved in your working community and is further supported by the use of online task management software to bring teams together from wherever in the world they may be. And this is why the Avatar Builder in Buckets has become one of our most popular features to date. It personalizes your digital self, allows you to create the presentation of yourself that you want to share with your team, and it makes you feel like you’re a part of something. It’s much harder to ignore a comment accompanied by an avatar than it is to ignore a faceless email, right?

Building avatars helps team members to become more familiar with each other and it helps to bridge the gap between the offline and online world when working remotely with each other. In fact, companies such as Accenture, IBM, Intel, and Cisco all use avatars to operate within virtual worlds to brainstorm, collaborate, attend training sessions, and even sell to customers. Perhaps most importantly, it makes work fun, which in turn increases productivity.

“Our laboratory research shows that there is primitive engagement behind the fun — the hearts of the people that control avatars beat faster, the areas of people’s brains that regulate social interactions are more engaged, and people care substantially about how their avatars are treated — even though all of the action is in a virtual world. As a result of this intensity, avatars create the emotional and social connections necessary for the most valuable business conversations — those where innovations are first cooked up and debated, passions are exposed, and people win, lose, or accommodate via personal connections.” — Byron Reeves, Professor at Stanford University & Leighton Read, Chairman of Seriosity, Inc

When you set up an avatar in Buckets, you have complete control over its presentation. You can customize its appearance, size, race, and gender. If you have blonde hair, you can give it black hair. If you hate your glasses, you can give it perfect eyesight. If you have perfect eyesight but like the look of glasses, you can add them too. It’s all up to you. Once you have your avatar created, you can work on setting your targets and achievements in your Buckets workflow, and more customization options will become available to you once these are met. You’ll also be able to see your colleagues’ avatars on your homepage where you can get a bit of competition going to see who’s coming out on top. This type of gamification (setting targets that = rewards) is something that really benefits from having personalized avatars in place.

Ready to have some fun and get started with creating your own custom avatar? Log into Buckets or sign up here and join the crew!

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