Design Workshop

In the context of our mobile reputations of sharing economy and collaborative consumption course we were asked by our coordinator Mrs Betty Tsakarestou to examine millennials’ behaviors and their relationship with their mobile phones on a daily basis. Some of the topics that we had to put under the microscope were the time their screen time, their mobile habits, their favorite and most used apps and whether their mobile phones are their personal assistants as well.

For further investigation of this topic we followed the design workshop method, which lasted two days that can be translated into two post-it sessions. After gathering and writing down some insights we partnered with another team so that we could find similar points and create a big canvas about millennials and their habits and relationship with their mobile phones. We concluded that millennials use their phones mainly for communication, well-being , sharing and creativity. After this realization we were asked to choose one specific community that we had to interview. The other team decided to interview people that combine social networking with well-being via their phones, while we decided to interview millennials that might use their mobile phones’ services and the possibilities they offer as a creative output.

So, after finishing our first post-it session with the other team we focused for a while on our own cases and the topics we had to examine. We had already found out that we crave experiences and finding a creative output through our phones. And this is basically the reason why the use we make out of this relationship with our phone is personalized. Topics that we might had to discuss with our case studies were their sharing habits , their editing behavior , their favorite apps, and how their phone assists them when it comes to their work and art. The other teams did the same thing for the communities they picked and after presenting our own discussion points, we concluded on some common threats that would be our main discussion guide. Some of these threads were the time they spend on their phones daily, how addicted they are to them, their point of view on some topics like influencers, social media, actual connection and communication.

After this last session, the teams’ coordinators gathered the common data and created the discussion guide, our common ground. We picked out 13 main questions and then we focused on the more specific ones that emerged from our communities’ particular characteristics. Of course our more specific questions were about editing apps, photography, design and sharing and promoting one’s work via social media.

Finally, after finding 10 creative Millennials that certainly use their phones all day long we interviewed them and asked them to show us their visual content mainly created and shared through their mobile phones. Surprisingly, except for the data and insights that we expected to gather, we came to the realization that each story has given us results that differ from each other based on each person’s location, age, art and of course creative output.

Our Team: Christos Daniilidis Danai Lyratzi Frossini Drakouli Maria Kall

Our Coordinator: Betty Tsakarestou