Redefining Research Goals & the Pilgrimage to Find Our Concept
Learning something new every meeting
Meeting 6: Are We Ready to Prototype Yet?
Last time, we set the agenda to do some individual ideation and collect inspirations from Pinterest. In today’s meeting, we examined our mood board formed from images we found on Pinterest, and talked about what each of us thought would be interesting to address as prototypes.
Kevin’s Images
The images Kevin added to the Pinterest board was related to social media addiction, or the negatives of using social media. While the images show social media in a bad light, he says that he wants to portray how social media cannot be avoided, but it should be used in moderation.
This could be related back to social comparison, because as people spend extensive time on social media, they distort their view of reality to be what they see on such platforms. However, the images on social media platforms could involve heavy curation. Thus, by immersing themselves in the SNS world, they believe that what they see is the truth and compare themselves.
“We should help users of social media to shift their mindset to distinguish reality from false images.”
However, we should also think about how social media may not be the cause of social comparison because it can happen without images through word of mouth or other things and existed before the internet was created.
Tiffany’s Images
The images Tiffany added to the Pinterest board were generally related to issues regarding social media and self-perception and validation. Although these two topics aren’t completely alike, they both relate to social comparison. The lack of full context in social media prompt us into thinking what we see portrays who a person in. Vise versa, we will be defined by what we post on social media. Thus, it makes us socially compare ourselves without context.
In addition, we are defined by how many likes, comment, followers we get on social media. We use these metrics to define self worth and feed our ego. This also becomes a way we compare ourselves to others on social media.
“People are never satisfied/ always want more even though they already have so many likes and follows”
Juliana’s Images
The images Juliana added to the Pinterest board were generally related to how users paint ideal images of themselves on social media although it may not be true. The lack of context in photo-based platform, Instagram, adds to this effect. When everyone is only trying to show their best self, that are sometimes not even real (editing etc…) on Instagram, we compare ourselves to these ‘perfect people’ without acknowledging that they are just like us.
In addition, she also talked more about the format of possible probes / interventions being like a guerilla marketing technique. It would be interesting to use existing spaces/objects to raise awareness of the problem while using a satirical but also humorous tone to keep it lighthearted.
Emily’s Images
Mock-up of Ideas
Tiff put together mock-ups summarizing some of the main concentrations of our approach. Perhaps the probe/intervention could show how a person ‘loses their face’ on Instagram from creating a fake, curated image of themselves. Or it could show the obsession of getting likes/follows and ‘never having enough’ of it.
So Where do We Go from Here?
Gathering our ideas, it seems like we are focused on identity on social media in which people become obsessed with. Do they really identify with how people perceive them through social media? Are they aware of the identity they create online and how it affects the viewers?
We want to interview some Instagram influencers on campus to find out their perspective and to see if this is a valid problem.
