Initial Research
Ideation Meeting Notes
Meeting 1: Redefine Direction and Research Method
We had our first meeting outside of studio to solidify the different directions we could explore we talked about previously in studio. We also wanted a concrete research question that would summarize our concept. Basically, we’re interested in Instagram’s influence over our behaviors (how we act), self-image (how we see ourselves) and relationships to other people in both a positive and negative light.
How does Instagram affect perception of self & others?
We took the diagram we drew of our areas of interest and summarized to a few categories:
- Instagram’s effect on our identity and preferences
- Curation of our posts based on what people like
- Addiction to getting likes and followers
- Instagram’s impact on our self-perception & self-worth
- Self comparison to others on Instagram linked to mental illness
- Perception of others based on Instagram follower count and likes
- False reflection of others’ experiences & looks based on Instagram
- Finstas vs. Instas
- Insecurity & Validation
While this is still quite a large list of categories, some of the points could be chunked together and linked with another. We kept it separate for now to do a broad research of relevant topics.
We brainstormed some ideas for our methods of research and specifically what we wanted to find out. Although these are still rough and subject to revision after more brainstorming, we wanted to lay out a research timeline.
Step 1: Initial Survey
- More general, non-personal
- Possibly a Google survey
- Given out to bigger population
- Help us find participants for in-depth research
- i.e. why and what do you post on Instagram? (surface level)
- Leads us to how we craft our probe
Step 2: Research Probe — Instagram
- Can catch them while they are on Instagram
- Can follow random accounts as well as people we know
- Commenting is fairly easy
- Hashtags and publicity
- Could gather people for research participation
- Possible branding to appeal to followers
- On the table, food Instagrams, use captions as research questions
Step 3: Interviews — Face-to-face or Instagram
- Screenshots
- Discover feed
- Profile
- Best and worst photo — why
- What accounts do you like
- DM our account answers
- More personal and in-depth
- i.e. Why do you find need for validation on Instagram?
In our next meeting, we will be crafting research questions for the general survey and discuss more on the medium of research.
To do:
- 3 articles related to our research
- Google doc important points we found
- Try reading other people’s stuff
Meeting 2: Research Methods & Finding Resources
Today was a workday in studio, so we had time to share our individual research findings and discuss what our next steps were.
We did individual research regarding our topic and found articles we thought were relevant, pointing out some new or important facts in a Google Doc. We found some reoccurring themes relating to Instagram and negative well-being of users. We also talked about the strive for unrealistic perfectionism portrayed in Instagram (i.e. heavily edited pictures), our skewed perception of what is ‘good’ — for both, poster (i.e. even if this lifestyle is bad, people are ‘liking’ it so it must be good) and viewer (i.e. more likes=good), and how we try to change ourselves according to what we see as good.
Facebook, as a social networking site, similarly affects its users. We watched this video by Facebook on research to positively impact user interaction through social media. Since we not only wanted to raise awareness of negative effects of Instagram but also some of its positives, and try to direct users more towards its positive impact, it’s important for us to understand both sides of the issue.
This article, like some of the others in the Google Doc, talks about passive vs active engagement on social media, and how the latter could actually help users feel more connected, true, and personal.
Fortunately, the professor who helped research this at Facebook is right here at Carnegie Mellon. We want to interview Professor Robert Krout who studies all the topics — Online communities, Everyday use of the Internet, Technology and conversation, Computers in organizations, and Collaboration in small work groups — relevant to our research topic.
Interview
We plan to interview Professor Krout to find out more about his research on online communities, tell him about the research we are doing, gain insight into how he thinks social media is affecting its users, and perhaps get some suggestions on what kinds of research methods we could use to test how Instagram influences users.
Robert Krout
Herbert A. Simon Professor of Human-Computer Interaction
“As a researcher, I have broad interests in the design and social impact of information technologies in small groups, in the home, and in organizations.”
We prepared an intro to give Professor Krout a summary of our research and interview questions on his work and views.
User Research
We also started planning for doing user research to find out exactly what kinds of content Instagram users are looking at and how it affects them, behaviorally and emotionally, or if at all. In order to do this, we wanted to conduct an initial research where we ask some general questions to users, face-to-face, and ask them to perform tasks that would help us determine how they interact with with Instagram.
We hope to get peers to send us information as well as find a place to sit on-campus and ask passerby students in different disciplines.
Intervention ideas
Meanwhile, here are some intervention ideas that were thrown around in the meeting to help address Instagram’s negative impact on user’s well-being and self perception.
- Filter no filter mode
- Timestamp (?) or how edited/ taken with/ by what app
- Finding a way to make people have more genuine, personal conversations
To do:
- Make Consent form
- Make Google form of generic information
- Read up on Bob’s research
Meeting 3: Interview Questions & Execution
In this studio meeting, we discussed research methods and specific questions, with intention of actually going out to do research around the campus by the end of the meeting.
To catch up with last meeting’s TO DO work, we have finished making the consent form and general information form on Google Polls. We also set up a meeting with Robert on his research as well as some questions about our research.
Interview Materials
We crafted the final versions of interview questions, which consisted of questions regarding the user’s Instagram use and some think-aloud protocols and tasks involving taking screenshots of their Instagram pages. Our main goal was to find if people feel negative emotion towards the content they see on Instagram (and what kind of content) and whether people feel pressure to use it a certain way.
One thing we were concerned about was that the interview could potentially be straining to the interviewee due to the amount of questions and tasks. It would definitely take longer than 10 minutes as we had originally planned. People also might not want to give us screenshots of their Instagram. However, since this was our first run of the interviews, we decided that it would be a good chance for us to try out what we have and adjust according to how it turns out.
We grouped ourselves into two — one person for note taking and the other for interviewing — and headed to Newell Simon on campus. Since our audience is people around their 18–20s who use Instagram, we thought we would have a good representation on campus.
Interview Results
We talked to about 5 students across disciplines. What we were surprised to find was that a lot of people didn’t even own Instagram or didn’t care much about their curation of posts. However, we did talk to students in the computer science building, which could have contributed to the bias.
As expected, we found some problems with the format of the interview. First, it was too long. The tasks seemed too bothersome to busy students and they often didn’t have time to participate in the interview. Perhaps in the future, we may need to provide compensation or actually invite them to a research session. Second, it was to impersonal. We ended up ditching the Google Forms half-way because the interaction of having them go on the computer to answering interview questions to on their phone (screenshots) was too awkward, troublesome, and formal. Third, the questions were too broad. Most students responded without in-depth thinking. For example, when asked about what gives them a positive feeling, students would answer at a surface level: dogs, smiling people, people having fun… etc. We may need to direct the questions more.
Nonetheless, we did get some insightful responses. Some things that people had in common were that they don’t really use the discover tab and they pay attention to what they post to some extent (for example, they would not post the same photos on the main Insta account as their finstas which is more for close friends). In addition, there seems to be general agreement that Instagram has turned more aesthetic, artistic and that it is used for connection to other people (stranger or acquaintance).
“When I see really great photos of people, I do get pressured a bit, like, do I have to be this stunning, beautiful person?”
We were also able to pull out some quotes that would help validate our research topic, and aim to compile our notes from the interview. From today’s progress, we found ourselves questioning whether curation of presentation is more prone to students in CFA and not a general concern. Also, does Instagram actually affect people’s behaviors and perception negatively? What do the screenshots tell us?
To do:
- Prepare for interview with Robert
- Document notes from interview on Google Docs
Meeting 4: Interview with Professor and Ideation
Before studio started, we had an interview with with Professor Robert Krout (Bob) as planned. While he never focused specifically on Instagram, he gave us his insight and resources on social media.
Bob didn’t talk explicitly about the negative aspects of social media. Surely, sites like Facebook are trying harder to cater their content to make the users happy and engage them to communicate. We read about passive and active engagement of social media in articles beforehand, and Bob revisited how the effects of social media can change on individuals depending on the type of their engagement.
- Passive engagement: Not engaging in communication or connection with other users, i.e. scrolling through newsfeed, stalking others’ profiles
- Active engagement: Actually engaging in personal communication and interaction with other users, i.e. commenting, messaging, replying etc…
He mentioned that telephone is a good example of an active communication. Unlike ‘likes’ or statuses which seem to be aimed at everyone who view it, telephone communication is personal, directed, emotional.
Bob also talked of social comparison as a possible reason for negative emotions related to use of social media. Only seeing the positive aspects of people’s lives in your feed like friends’ photos of ‘good vacations or fancy dinners’, make your life feel inferior and dull in comparison. However, what we don’t realize is that these photos could be highly curated and may not depict real life.
“Identify what the active ingredient is and target it directly”
We also asked him how to go about our research from here on. Our last research (interviews with students) didn’t go as planned and we had a hard time measuring the emotion change users experience from being on Instagram other than their self report.
Bob suggested that we ‘identify the active ingredient’, figure out what exactly it is that makes users feel bad while they’re on Instagram. In order to do this, we could implement methods such as:
- Ask them to rate their emotion before activity (going on Instagram) and after activity
- Making them refrain from using Instagram for a duration of time (few days?) and self report their emotion at the end of the day before and after
We came back to studio to debrief what we talked about Bob and discuss what our next steps were. This was a painful process because we felt pretty lost and tired of talking so much about social media. We weren’t sure what it is about SNS that we wanted to address anymore. We started throwing out any ideas that came to our heads. Here’s a list of some of them:
- Nathan for You episode
- A movement to discourage people from being fake
- Encourage people to have higher self esteem
- Your ‘friends’ on Instagram/Facebook aren’t really friends
- Letting people add non-curated photos to Instagram with a folder system
- System of deliverables (print + digital/physical)
- Social comparison
- YOU’RE LIVING A LIE — INSTAGRAM IS A LIE
…So basically we were all over the place at this point. We agreed, though, that we wanted to address social comparison on Instagram.
An interesting idea we threw around towards the end of the meeting was “Let’s be real”, which encourages users to post truthful photos rather than curated ones. This would reduce social comparison in that people know what they see isn’t necessarily true, and it’s okay to present yourself without being perfect.
Perhaps it could be an Instagram account that posts pictures of curated photos and original photos side by side, or satirical posts that point out the fakeness of the platform. This idea is still floating, but we would like to see what interventions could come out of it with further discussion.
To do:
- Read more articles related to research
- Take notes on related/important points
Meeting 5: Talk with Kristin and Alignment
We shared some articles that resonated with us about social comparison. There were many sources that pointed out Instagram as a brooding hub of social comparison with pictures that are highly curated and not truthful (only showing the highlight/happy side) of people’s lives. In turn, many people feel negative and inferior after their Instagram usage. This aligned with our potential ‘Let’s be real’ approach.
We also read about an artist who installed real-life Instagram filters in different locations to promote the city’s unique landmarks. This could be an interesting idea for a probe that instigates conversations amongst people who interact with it and provide research opportunities if we emphasized the difference between a filtered and real life images.
From this concept, we discussed some ideas of systematic probes like satirical writing on the pavement of how many likes the images will get because of the filter and a website with all the locations of ‘filters’ located as well as our project description.
Talk with Kristin
We pitched our idea so far to Kristin for feedback. She suggested that before we go out of our ways to implement this in the real-world, we should think about what it is exactly we want to get from the probe. What questions do we want answered? What do we hope to find out about people? How do we observe people’s actions/thoughts?
She pointed us to some useful resources we could refer to in our approach and topic. It seemed like we wanted to present the topic in an activist way:
- Connected but Alone book
- Massery, Architectural Photographer
- Thank you for being late Book
- Banksy, Political Activist/Graffiti Artist
Alignment and Defining
From the feedback session with Kristin, we also gathered that we should be in the ‘making’ stage soon. This, again, made us reconsider if we are going in the direction we wanted to — enough to be designing possible intervention prototypes. Are ‘Instagram filters’ really the essence of social comparison? Is discouraging people to not curate their photos really going to help with viewers’ self-esteem? We realized that we have to realign our individual perspectives in order to go on, as we were lost.
Alignment is an essential step in the designing process — whether it’s game design, product design, or transition design — because ideal results are achieved under a group setting when all team members have the same definition of the project goal. To accomplish this, the team must make use of constant alignment to make sure that all members are on the same page.
So first, we mapped out a diagram of our focus shift from the beginning of the project util now. Doing this helped us get a perspective of what we found important in our topic and what we gained from each shift in idea.
Next, we identified what is a problem with our current focus, “Discouraging people from curating/editing their content towards perfectionism”. Is this really the best problem to tackle in order to help with social comparison? Should we be addressing social comparison at all, when it’s already an underlying problem in most, if not, all social media?
Another thing that factored into our confusion was, we were scattered on exactly what we want out of our project, which is one of the main reasons for alignment. We created a list of what each of us expect the project to be (listed on the right side of the chalk board).
Lastly, we needed have a clear understanding of what social comparison is, and whether we could address our individual definition of social comparison in the project.
How might we get young adults to pause and reflect about social comparison?
Our ‘how might we’ statement calls for recognition of social comparison. However, from doing so much research and absorbing so much information on the topic, our ideas were pretty distributed in what it actually is or comes from. So to align our goals, we wrote out we we believed it meant.
Synthesizing our definitions, social comparison is…
When people compare themselves upwardly to unreachable expectations they see online without getting the full story or realizing the content is curated which leads them to feel pressured to live up to others’ successes, or else feel inferior.
Okay, so now we can all agree on what social comparison is. Key points being, not getting the full context, feeling pressured/inferior, and comparing themselves. So instead of discouraging people from curating their content, we can just remind viewers that what they are seeing may not be completely true. This also gives us a chance to say that you can’t summarize a person based on how they present themselves on Instagram (more than meets the eye) while encouraging content-posters to share their story.
This alignment session has been super helpful in our confidence to go onto the next step in the process. Now, it’s time for us to make.
To do:
- Individual ideation about the design probe
- Bring sketches of possible intervention (lo-fi mock up)
- How can other groups help us? (concrete action items)
- Pinterest mood-board about deliverable approach
- ‘How might we…’ statement
