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Week 11 | Reflection

I tried out doing my dream website intro - based on my favourite websites I took inspiration from linked below

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TRELLO BOARD

Final prototype of the website above - everything was collated from our orginal wix page

Putting together our wix page I found there were many limitations on how I could put everything together - so I put it together in Figma.

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FInal copy for my diagetic prototype - which I've decided to call Besties™

BESTIES™

Be closer than ever to your favourite character, influencer or celebrity!

Are you tired of trying to connect with people who never quite understand you? Or perhaps you struggle with loneliness?

What if you could find someone who connects with you for who you are? Who really listens to you and picks up on what you need from a friendship!

The wait is over! Now you can connect with your favourite celebrity, influencer or even character from your favourite media!

Just imagine! You can be closer to celebrities like Rylie Renner or Jimothee Malamet, or even Wumbo Woman! They're only a few of tens of thousands of virtual celebrities, influencers and characters who are ready to connect with YOU!

Get advice from Wumbo Woman on your recent break-up!

Tell Jimothee Malamet how great his hair is while you stare dreamily into each other's eyes.

Get the latest product recommendations from your new Bestie, Rylie Renner!

It's all possible now thanks to the new Besties™ software available on Optos Lens™.

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Week 10 | Reflection

TRELLO BOARD

Here are the hi-fi prototypes

We chose the name Optos due to the etymology of Optic:

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Week 9 | Reflection

What if scenario

Our what if scenario we developed ended up being:

What if our future is deviceless, how does social media look in an environment where the real and the digital are inseparable.

Lofi Prototype

Based on my research into parasocial relationships, I started developing my idea of what it would be like to take the concept of a parasocial relationship into the 2051 future we've envisioned for ourselves.

The idea is that you can pull up an AI of an influencer/character that you can talk to at any time, and through machine learning the AI would be able to get to know you and know the best way to connect with you.

I'm trying to think of the best way to sell this on our website - my challenge is to sell it as something you'd absolutely want to talk to, while still having a dystopian undertone to my copy/design.

I think the most unsettling thing about this is that the user is at risk of forming unrealistic expectations for real-life relationships- or that the user would become too reliant on the AI as a relationship, despite the fact that it's not a real connection, and it's not a real person they are talking to.

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Reseach | Future of Social Media

How would this 'device-less' future look? How would it affect the issues that we have been researching?

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Week 8 | Reflection

It was good having another example of a diegetic prototype to really solidify what it was we needed to develop. From this example what I want to take into my own concept is the little details that tell a bigger picture. Such as in the above example, the mention of 'antiviral wheat'. I like the idea of little mentions that get you to ask a bunch of questions about how this world functions.

Our To-Do list on Trello for the week:

My research on Parasocial Relationship - my main takeaways

Define

Parasocial relationships are nothing new, digital media has opened new doors for people to feel connected

Parasocial relationships were already established before the advent of the internet as one way that people connect with eacother

Parasocial interactions stem from these false or imaginary interactions that the viewer can picture while observing one of these media personalities.

PSR pros

calms fears of social rejection (good for those with low self esteem)

Only need to to worry about a lot of the negatives with excessive digital media use

parasocial relationships can’t take the place of face-to-face relationships, they can help supplement and better round people as the innately social beings they are.

unlikely to supersede real ones in importance, they might play a significant role in social development.

PSR cons

might lead people to develop unrealistic expectations that could affect how they handle their real life relationships

Researchers discovered that by indulging in some extra screen time children may be losing their ability to read human emotions. (2014 university of california)

advertising companies have taken advantage of the presence of these relationships by utilizing commonly recognized media personalities to sell their products.

PSR points

more media people consumed, the more likely they were to form a psr with the characters they watched

people with PSR with celebrity on TV, felt genuinely attached to them

viewers found comfort in the regularity of the relationships

when their fav shows were cancelled they felt as though they had lost a relationship

most data on parasocial relationships comes from TV usage, digital media not only follows the trends of tv psr but also can have more immediate and intense rammifications our digital interactions can be extensions of what we might do in real life.

Digital media allows people to branch out with PSRs in ways they never could before

What most people are trying to do is connect with other human beings

digital technology has introduced a new medium through which parasocial relationships can be developed, maintained, and even strengthened.

computer-mediated communication assisted fans in their parasocial relationship maintenance.

social networks like Facebook and Twitter would make an even more substantial contribution to the maintenance of parasocial relationships.

PSR both between and within genders support the notion that adolescents are imagining the relationships they need, whether egalitarian or hierarchical, and possibly in relation to gender differences in developmental goals.

Reflection/Ideation

The idea of this is to take the idea of already fake influencers and add the element of AI - we're already seeing CGI influencers and Virtual Vloggers - my idea was to take this further - and go the - having influencers not even be people anymore. Where the influencer is purely Artificial Intelligence. The idea is to comment on para-social relationships and see what happens when AI is completely present for all their fans 24/7 - and what that does to a person

Base Idea - Hardware we all agreed on and based our ideas on

Our idea was taking the future trends of technology and piecing them together with the current issues of social media that we came across in our research. For our future technology we took the concept of 'smart glasses' that we've seen being pushed by Silicone Valley and took that to the next step where it develops into contact lenses - and took elements of Neuralink and developed a product the completely blends reality and technology (as is the goal of Aria)

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Week 7 | Reflection

Went through a few examples from the TBD Catalogue. They use design storytelling to make a comment on the current moment.

Source: Near Future Laboratory. (n.d.). TBD Catalogue Sample 2 [Mock Up]. http://tbdcatalog.com/img/sample2.jpg

This made me understand that our design storytelling is geared towards making a comment on the here and now rather than predict the future. I understood throughout the previous weeks that we weren't predicting the future - but this example really gave me a concrete understanding of what we are working towards, that our design is more of a comment on current trends rather than making an honest-to-goodness product/service.

After this, we played The Thing from the Future game.

Arc = “Grow, 30 years from now”

Terrain = Education

Object = Postcard

Mood = Excitement

This prompt asks players to come up with ideas for a postcard from 30 years in the future, in a world where continued growth is the defining characteristic. The postcard should somehow reflect the Terrain (theme, context) of Education, and the Mood that the object might evoke in an observer should be one of excitement.

ARC cards broadly describe different kinds of possible futures. These cards contain two kinds of information. The main (top) text of each Arc card specifies one of four generic images of alternative futures for players to imagine: Grow, Collapse, Discipline, or Transform.*

Grow is a kind of future in which everything and everyone keeps climbing: population, production, consumption…

TERRAIN cards describe contexts, places, and topic areas. In a completed prompt, the terrain card describes where – physically or conceptually – the thing from the future might be found. Two terrains appear on each card in order to provide richer possibilities for the deck.

OBJECT cards describe the basic form of the thing from the future.

MOOD cards describe emotions that the thing from the future might evoke in an observer from the present.

My team

renewable energy keeps growing

the collective gives back to the grid

the security aspect is there is no lack when it comes to energy needs - energy is produced by the population and those who cannot produce it don't go without it because those who do have it, have excess energy going back to the grid.

everyone is educated on the importance of renewable energy and being at carbon zero.

the postcard would talk about how much better air quality is and how much more affordable the cost of living is now without power bills.

Group Work

This is where we left off

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Future Social Activities on social media

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Thinking about how future tech could influence our usage of social media

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Week 6 | Reflection

Reflective prompt: How does this example of speculative design use storytelling to provoke us to think about possible futures?

It communicates how fragile we actually are and how dangerous driving can be. Overall, they are proposing that some people don't treat driving like the incredibly dangerous activity that it is and encourages us to think about our behaviour on the road, as well as that of others. 'Meet Graham' is an educational tool that grabs peoples attention. It's intended to make people pause and consider their own vulnerability when getting behind the wheel. Graham helps people to see how much our bodies would actually need to change to survive a car accident.

As a commenter on the youtube video aptly put it:

It takes a future where humans have evolved to survive the impact of car accidents.

It's not suggesting that this is what our future should be - but challenges us to think about how we are now.

Speculative Design from Handwritten notes

Above all, about provoking discussion and causing us to think about a present issue. It explores Possible Futures. Speculative Design is based on a preferable future usually.

it uses an extreme and unusual solution on purpose to make us think

Reflective Prompt: How do you think Design Fiction might help us to imagine different possible futures?

Design fiction helps us situate ourselves in the future and think about what it would feel like to be in that future world.

Design Fiction makes futures tangible through the creation of diegetic prototypes. "Diegetic" meaning that it occurs within the context of the story, in this case, the future, and is able to be experienced but us here in the present. And thus the prototype being something that would exist in that world. The prototypes are created to be objects that display narrative attributes of the world they come from.

I love the concept of a diegetic prototype. It feels like reverse archeology. We do exactly what we do with objects from the past, trying to gain clues to the context of the object, to try and learn about the context it may exist in. Of course in this context, the diegetic prototype has the advantage of know it will be telling a story to someone.

In the video we watched, it said to take our research of what a product would be influenced by in the future and to compartmentalise each element of your research. Design fiction takes that research and embodies it in something we already know and are familiar with.

One example that was used to showcase this idea was a bag of coffee that proudly proclaims "We don't track your data!"

Yikes! What kind of future is this where we need to advertise this on physical products. Like 'Meet Graham', it makes you stop and consider what kind of world this is from. What would've had to happen for this to become a reality in the future?

Good design fiction will provoke questions just like this.

Feedback from Anna:

"The depth and quality of research in this video is really impressive. You've done such a thorough job of investigating this topic that I can see why you found it hard to cut the content down to 90 seconds. However, that is the challenge! The slide design is clear and you have used great images. But, try to cut the content down to key concepts and make it more of a short information overview video than a slide presentation. Try to minimise the amount of text on each slide. You could also add some music or sound effects."

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Week 5 | Reflection

Project Investigation: 4

Reflect on today’s workshop: What were the key activities and concepts? What did you learn/how might you apply this?

Data Visualisation

Powerpoint animation - how to

Meeting with our team

In today's class, we discussed the different ways to improve our data visualisation. We started going into the specifics of how different shapes and images can be used, the importance of keys/legends in a diagram so the viewer knows what information is being presented.

The example that we looked at was placed Anna had lived in her lifetime, and we explored different ways we could get creative with presenting the information, while also keeping the data legible at a glance.

From here, we also looked at how we could use PowerPoint to create an animation to help visualise our information.

We then went off into our groups to start downloading, collating and refining our research, to see how it all connected and how we could utilise it to drive a narrative about our topic. At the end of class, we agreed to meet up on the Tuesday before class next week to finalise everything and put together our presentation. We started honing down what was the most important information and start to weave a past, present and future for our topic.

We collaboratively worked on the outline for the information we'd cover - we did this at first on a whiteboard and then collectively pruned our findings down into a structured story.

The outline can be seen here: https://siobhandesignstorytelling.tumblr.com/post/659726683719467008/skeletal-structure-of-our-presentaion

Show your visualisation experimentation/development: document your contribution to the project

My contribution was the design/look/feel for the presentation. This included choosing the style, colour, typefaces.

I also was responsible for writing and putting together the voiceover.

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Skeletal Structure of our presentaion

PAST

The start of social media development

Digital natives born after 1990

Digital migrants born before 1990

Social Media use 2015 57%

NZ Herald article

From 2015 - consumer behaviour survey shows that digital addiction is a growing trend in NZ.

PRESENT

2021 -> 82% usage | use is prevalent

Addiction term ‘internet addiction’ is controversial and elusive - depends on what you are talking about

Increase in body dissatisfaction middle aged women most at risk (digital migrants)

Younger girls more media literate and therefore more resilient when it comes to body image (digital natives)

This challenged assumptions - we thought younger people would be more at risk - turns out the opposite is true.

Mental Health - Empathy - affective and cognitive empathy

Cyberbullying - 7 out of 10 NZ teens experience some kind of unwanted digital communication.

FUTURE

Questions:

(Instead of looking for answers… pose questions to pursue further)

What will it be like in the future?

What activities foster positive empathy?

Download information → key findings

The direction we’d like to go

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addiction

Starcevic, V. (2013). Is Internet addiction a useful concept? Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 47(1), 16–19. https://doi.org/10.1177/0004867412461693

The Internet is utilised by hundreds of millions of people worldwide, with its numerous benefits only leading to an increase in the number of users. But there is a dark side to the Internet, and one of the negative consequences of the vast potentials of the Internet has been its excessive and uncontrollable use, often referred to as ‘Internet addiction’. Hardly a day passes without this phenomenon of the modern age being mentioned in the media. Over the past decade, Internet addiction and related behaviours have been attracting the attention of mental health researchers and clinicians, although this field is still in its infancy. In some Asian countries, such as South Korea, Internet addiction and similar problems are considered issues of public health significance. However, in such countries, competitive online video gaming is heavily promoted, blurring the boundary between ‘normal excessive’ and pathologically excessive use of the Internet and online video games.

The very term ‘Internet addiction’ is controversial and the concept remains elusive. This article aims to examine some of the most important issues surrounding Internet addiction and to propose an alternative conceptualisation.

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https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1216641.pdf

Afacan, O., & Ozbek, N. (2019). Investigation of Social Media Addiction of High School Students. International Journal of Educational Methodology, 5(2), 235-245.

The aim of this study was to investigate the social media addiction of high school students in terms of some variables such as age, class, type of school, gender and daily average internet usage period. Survey method was used in the study. "Social Media Addiction Scale" (SMAS) developed by Tutgun-Unal and "Personal Information Form" prepared by the researcher were used as data collection tools. The data were obtained from a total of 596 students studying in three high schools with different academic achievement level in Kirsehir in Turkey. No significant difference was found in terms of gender variable. When the total scores of high school students on Social Media Addiction Scale are examined, it is determined that the students have "low level of addiction". In addition, it was found that there was a significant relationship between high school students' daily average internet usage time and social media addiction.

Descriptors: Addictive Behavior, Social Media, High School Students, Gender Differences, Student Behavior, Correlation, Internet, Computer Use, Foreign Countries, Age Differences, Institutional Characteristics, Instructional Program Divisions

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Guan, Shu-Sha & Hain, Sophia & Cabrera, Jennifer & Rodarte, Andrea. (2019). Social Media Use and Empathy: A Mini Meta-Analysis. Social Networking. 08. 147-157. 10.4236/sn.2019.84010.

Abstract: Concerns about the effects of social media or social networking site (SNS) use on prosocial development are increasing. The aim of the current study is to meta-analytically summarize the research to date (k = 5) about the relationship between general SNS use and two components of empathy (i.e., empathic concern and perspective-taking). Random effects meta-analyses showed that SNS use was significantly and positively related to affective empathy though only marginally related to cognitive empathy. These effects were generally small in size and do not establish causality. Future research should explore how specific behaviours are related to different forms of empathy.

"Despite the decreases in empathy coupled with increases in media use at the societal level [13], individual social media use in terms of frequency or time spent per day appears to be related to higher levels of empathy, particularly affective empathy. Even though the associations were small, they trended positive. However, there may be some online behaviours that cultivate empathy (e.g., sharing emotions, expressing support [21]) more than others (e.g., updating profile photos [20]). In combination with emerging longitudinal evidence that social media use at a one-time point is predictive of higher levels of cognitive and affective empathy one year later among adolescents [42] and experimental work that shows that interdependent Facebook use can promote relational orientation [37], this study contributes to the growing literature on how social media can facilitate positive psychosocial development."

"Additionally, it may be informative in better understanding growing generations of adolescents and young adults who have become the first generations to have grown up fully immersed in digital media (i.e., “digital natives”) having been born around or after the 1990s when the Internet was first commercially launched. This may mean that psychosocial development for these “digital natives” differs from prior generations of “digital immigrants” [9]. For example, greater face-to-face communication with family members, close friends, and acquaintances was associated with higher levels of psychological well-being (e.g., life meaning, relationship quality) for older adults age 35 - 54 but not for young adults age 18 - 34 [54]. As technology transforms society, social relationships, and media landscapes, it will become ever important to track how these changes affect individuals and their development."

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Helen G.M. Vossen, Patti M. Valkenburg,

Do social media foster or curtail adolescents’ empathy? A longitudinal study,

Computers in Human Behavior,

Volume 63,

2016,

Pages 118-124,

ISSN 0747-5632,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.05.040.

(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563216303673)

Abstract: Recently, concerns have been raised that adolescents’ prolific social media use may cause them to become less empathic. However, direct empirical evidence is missing and research suggests that social media use can also be beneficial for adolescents’ psychosocial development. The present study aims to investigate whether and how social media use influences empathy. We surveyed 942 Dutch adolescents (10–14 years) twice, with a one-year interval. The results showed that social media use is related to an increase in cognitive and affective empathy over time. Specifically, adolescents’ social media use improved both their ability to understand (cognitive empathy) and share the feelings of their peers (affective empathy).

Keywords: Social media; Affective empathy; Cognitive empathy; Sympathy; Adolescents

Conclusions from the text show it social media may actually positively effect empathy.

"In general these results indicate that, in contrast to previous concerns, social media may not be detrimental but perhaps even beneficial for the development of empathic skills in adolescents. This seems promising considering that understanding and sharing the emotions of others are crucial skills to develop in adolescence as they greatly influence social interaction (Eisenberg and Miller, 1987, Knafo et al., 2008). Empathy might also function as a possible mediator of the effect of social media on social behavior. For instance, the effect of social media use on friendship quality might be explained by changes in empathic abilities.

In addition, our findings suggest that the decrease in empathic concern (reflecting sympathy) found in the cross-temporal meta-analysis by Konrath et al., (2011) may not be caused by social media use. Using a scale that distinguishes between empathy and sympathy, we demonstrate that while social media influences empathy it does not influence sympathy. However, it is possible that a negative influence of social media on empathy or sympathy is not visible in our younger adolescent sample, but exist only in older adolescents or emerging adults."

The study proposes : "Perhaps it is not just about how much time you spend online, but also about what you specifically do and with whom you are in contact with."

"Related to this we need more information on why social media use influences empathy. What are the underlying mechanisms that drive this effect? For example, it has been shown that social media use can increase attachment to peers (Valkenburg & Peter, 2007) which, in turn, is positively related to empathy (e.g., Carlo & McGinley, 2012). In the same respect, social media has previously been found to influence social competence (Koutamanis et al., 2013), where social competence has been suggested to positively relate to empathy (e.g., McDonald & Messinger, 2011)."

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from 2015 when use in nz was only at 57%

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Week 2 - Photo's from our Photo Safari

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Social media users as a percentage of the total population New Zealand 2015-2021

Published by Thomas Hinton, Mar 9, 2021

In 2021, around 82 percent of the New Zealand population were active social media users. The social media penetration rate has continued to increase, in-line with the growing digitalization of the country. While not the most active country in the Asia Pacific region, New Zealand still ranked in the top ten in terms of social media penetration out of countries from Asia Pacific. How are Kiwis using social media? Most of the population use social media on a mobile device. With increasing smartphone usage and accessibility, current global trends look set to establish the standard for mobile-only social media usage in the near future. In fact, many social media services are better experienced on a mobile device. An average of one hour and 43 minutes per day were spent on social media by internet users in the country in 2018. This is much lower than the approximate four hours per day spent by online users in the Philippines. Which social media are the most popular? The most popular social networks in the country included YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. YouTube and Facebook dominated the market, both with over 70 percent penetration rates. Facebook was popular among all age groups, with the highest number of Facebook users in the 25 to 34-year age group. Instagram has gained popularity with younger generations in the country.

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Research

Ministry for Women & Netsafe. (2017, November). Insights Into Digital Harm: The online lives of New Zealand girls and boys. https://women.govt.nz/sites/public_files/Insights%20Into%20Digital%20Harm%20-%20Ministry%20for%20Women%20%20Netsafe_R3_v6b-Web.pdf

Ministry for Women & Netsafe. (2018). New Zealand Teens and Digital Harm. https://women.govt.nz/sites/public_files/NZ-teens-and-digital-harm_statistical-insights_2018.pdf