After talking about my ideas with the class last week, I found myself more stuck than before. Here’s a link to my ideas if you didn’t look at them yet: https://www.immtcnj.com/thesis_fall_20/2020/09/26/courtneys-3-thesis-ideas/
Both Idea #1 and Idea #2 are where I was stuck. Yeah, I said was because I’ve actually have decided to go with Idea #2. The reason why I was able to make up my mind was that there just seems to be so much more to go off of with Idea #2. Ault brought up this site that breaks itself as you keep using it and you begin to see things that you shouldn’t be seeing; this concept kind of plays into the idea that there are many things going on beyond the screen you’re looking at that you don’t even know about. It’s like the apps you use are spying on you and getting information from you while you use them.
The site doesn’t work anymore (at least for me it doesn’t but here’s a Youtube clip about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNuZjwX7Xxk ) But apparently there’s a movie called Reqiuem for a Dream it’s a psychological thriller that is somehow related to the website…I don’t know how someone please let me know haha.
Anyway, I had reached out to IMM alum Amanda Vuocolo on Linked-In (I messaged her when Ault mentioned her about 2 classes ago I think) and she was open to meeting up on Zoom to hear my ideas. I linked her to my blog post and she managed to read it and we chatted about each one. Primarily, Idea #2 took over the conversation since it just seemed so different and compelling. We went into a deep dive into the whole topic about privacy and how much of an issue it is. She directed me to 3 different resources for ideas based on what she has saw so far:
- https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ This is a visual representation of wealth disparity in the U.S. and the reason why Amanda showed it to me is that we figured out that my project could be very simple as a visual such as this. We marveled at the simplicity of its use solely based on the interaction of scrolling to the right, representing just how freaking wealthy Jeff Bezo is. I really enjoy how the scroll takes into account how much $1 billion “feels” like with a scroll and then it doubles that $1 billion to $200 billion and the endless scrolling just emphasizes how wealthy Bezo is.
- https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/01/opinion/voting-suppression-videogame.html This is an interactive game by the New York Times that shows how voter suppression can work; depending on your background and ethnicity, your ability vote can be hindered and therefore it makes it harder for you to exercise your right to vote. I started the game, but haven’t played it fully through. Amanda had brought up as another source of inspiration for me to use. However, with this game, you’re given choices of who you are (an African American or a white person, or another POC) and then from there, you’re on a journey of your voting experience. This game ultimately demonstrates how difficult it can be for you to vote just based on your ethnicity, socioeconomic status, etc. With my project though, it wouldn’t be necessarily like this because there is no “target” user or audience in a way; anyone who goes on my app/website my project would have a similar experience (at least that’s what I think right now it could change)
- https://www.o3world.com This company is where Amanda works and she brought it up because of the home page feature that gives visitors an option to “Personalize their Experience”. By clicking on this feature, the site asks you what you’re looking for which gives you a better idea of what the company has to offer. This was important because it gave users more control over their experience and didn’t feel like it was forcing users to “personalize their experience”
To build on what I said in resource #3, Amanda and I ultimately began to ask ourselves this question:
Does the quality of a user experience rely on the amount of data you’re “giving” as you’re using a product?
I could probably phrase this question better, but the basis is that many things these days seem to be built out of convenience. An example that easily comes to mind is being able to use your Facebook or Google account to log into other services or apps. I admittedly do this often simply because it’s convenient for me; I don’t want to remember another set of usernames and passwords, why not just use my Google Account? It’s killing 2 birds with one stone; but what’s really deceiving about this is that now both Google and let’s say, GrubHub, can exchange info about me between each other; Grubhub now knows stuff about me from Google and Google can learn stuff about me from me using GrubHub….
That’s my problem, we don’t even realize that we’re willingly just giving our information away anymore. Another example is Amazon. Let’s say I was looking for a portable charger on Amazon and I was just browsing some, looking at the reviews and prices. But ultimately, I didn’t buy anything yet because I didn’t need it immediately, or that I was going to put it on hold. Amazon is smart because they want you to buy it-and so, couple days later they send you an email saying “Still looking for a portable charger? Here are our recommendations” or something BS like that, you know what I’m talking about. The angel user experience designer in me tells me “Oh Amazon, thanks for reminding me I forgot I needed a portable charger” but then, devil advocate is also saying, “Is this really necessary? Is this really just a reminder or is it a bit excessive that you’re sending me emails about a product I was looking at a few days ago?” Where is the balance between privacy and enhancing someone’s user experience? Since we’re in a capitalist society, the devil’s advocate wins in my opinion. It’s really about how the problem is framed!
An idea that Amanda gave me was to design a fake game app. I brought up a game because I kind of want to change up my work a bit; I’ve never really made a game and although it won’t have characters and such, the concept could still be applied.
She told me it would be really interesting if I made a game “where you can’t win because you can’t “win” over these companies that are taking your data”. Confused?? So the issue now is that social media is here to stay as much as we hate it. Like, you could say “Oh, let me delete my social media accounts”, but then how on Earth are you supposed to connect with anyone? Especially right now, we rely so heavily on the idea of being connected with each other and we need these platforms to some extent.
An interesting concept to me is when you download a new app and it asks you like right off the bat to turn on the app’s notifications. I’ve learned to deny that because those notifications are made to make you go on the app more ultimately. But if I made an app that basically excessively asked you for certain things such as:
- Can we have access to your contacts?
- Can we have access to your camera?
- Can we access your microphone”?
- Can our app use your Location services?
What’s bad about these questions is that the app doesn’t say why it needs all those things. There’s a lack of transparency in how these things are being used to “enhance” your user experience. And we say “allow” anyway! That’s not good!!! So it would be interesting if the app tricked a user to tell all these things about themselves and then at the end, it would spit out all the information you gave to it and then the app says “Yeah, so I can do x, y,z now with all this information you gave me”. At the end of the experience, I want people to feel scared, because in the grand scheme of things, that’s exactly what is going on and they should feel scared. This in a way is spreading awareness like I had initially conceptualized.
Here’s a brief sketch of what I’m thinking of:
Ideas discussed on discord:
I read thru your revised concept and a game like that sounds awesome! you could even use fake pop-ups asking for those permissions so you don’t actually have access to all that stuff (could be a safety issue, furthering your point). You also discussed including ads in the app
also, to address your paragraph about deleting social media accounts: my only social media is LinkedIn, which I use to have something ping when people Google me, and luckily it’s got my resume there too lol (I simply haven’t ever made a twitter, instagram, tiktok, snapchat, etc.). So I think it might be interesting to investigate why some people view social media as absolutely necessary and others not, maybe look into the middle ground– How do those without social media “stay connected” in quarantine? is there a form of balanced social media that could be a “crowd pleaser”? Who should control social media? What age should people start using social media? How did our ancestors connect during previous pandemics?
This right here is a good thesis idea. As far as “constructive feedback” goes, I want to ask what the app would do besides just that. It’s a good concept but what’s the point of it past the criticism of how apps spy on you? Right now it seems more like a basic art project which, while not bad, might be missing depth. I hope that didn’t sound mean, Warren wants me to give “constructive feedback” and that was what I thought of when looking over your app idea.