Domain map
Insight
Social media was first invented in the 1970s and is getting more and more popular and common along with the development of the Internet and smart devices. As a bunch of computer-mediated technology that facilitates the creation and sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks, social media has changed our perspective of information in a revolutionary way.
In China, on the one hand, the rise of social media is bringing democratic transformation because it provides better access to information, creates bigger space for free speech, forces more openness in government, and creates opportunities for democracy advocates to spread their ideas and connect with each other. On the other hand, however, the openness and freedom of information reversely will lead to unstable system and problematic environment for public opinions to spread.
Under this circumstance, in this project, I want to explore the factors that have impact on the process of creating, editing, disseminating and receiving contents on social media. By doing research about the information transmission model, I want to find a proper representation of that model using design methods and create an experience for the audience to actually go through the process by themselves. By providing this game-like experience, I want to demonstrate the invisible part of content generating process on social media and encourage the audience to reconsider their behavior and reactions to the content that they receive from the Internet.
Design Proposal
“Fragmentation” is an interactive game-like experience through which the audience could participate in each stage of information transmission process and generate a final result based on their unique choice. By representing the information transmission model graphically and abstractly, the user will have an experience of slicing, editing and recombining a piece of information visually. By providing an integrated story at first and letting him/her go through the whole process as an editor and a disseminator, the user will be able to compare the final piece with the original story, thus have a better acquaintance of fragmented online content he/her receives every day.
Objectives
By providing the experience of information transmission, I hope to inform the audience with the “invisible” communication process behind the online content that they receive from social media or online platforms, and encourage them to be more cautious and objective when receiving and making judgement about online content. By translating a complex abstract model into interactive and graphic experience, I would like to help the audience to learn about the phenomena easily and be aware of what is happening around them in the context of the era of Internet.
Prototypes & Iterations
(1) Visualization of the revolutionary online protest
My first insight comes from the increasing power of China’s social media protests. As an experiment, for the first prototype, I made a web based illustration that represents the revolutionary features about protests in China before and after the rise of social media. I used a big red circle to represent the power of authority, and used small, blue circles to represent the power of single protesters. When the user generates small circles by clicking the mouse, the circles will stay longer and interact with each other in second canvas, which demonstrates the stronger connection and powerful network between protesters in the ear of Internet.
(2) Find the truth by collecting pieces
In second prototype, I used different geometric shapes to represent different edition of the original information. For example, if the original one is a whole circle, when someone deletes some part from the original truth, it will become a triangle, which is incomplete. If someone makes up something and adds into the truth, it will become a rectangle, which is larger and shaper than the circle. The audience will have to find the missing parts or remove the additional parts of the shape in order to find the original truth circle.
(3) Attract public’s attention by editing a shape
While second prototype places the audience into the position of a receiver, the third prototype lets the audience play from the view of an editor and a disseminator. With a goal of getting public’s attention as much as possible, the audience have to edit the initial story to match public’s interests. For instance, making up some dramatic part and adding a strong orientation into the story will both gain more attention. Again, by using geometric shapes as metaphors, I make a visualization of the editing process.
(4) Slicing a Story
After several iterations and user tests, I found that using geometric shapes as metaphor is an efficient way to represent complex model behind online content’s transmission. The experience from the view of an editor instead of a receiver has more novelty and charm to the audience. At the meantime, since it’s hard for the audience to get the context of online content only by abstract metaphors, it’s necessary to provide detailed content and to give them a sense of the idea behind metaphors. Thus, I decided to combine geometric metaphors and connect them with a real case “A selfie taken in an operating room”, which was a landmark happened in China’s largest social media in 2014, representing how serious the impact of fragmentation information could have.
Demo
Major Major (Pop up Show)
Future Iterations
Create an evaluation system for the result
Use live news feeds as input
Consider the impact of gestures ("scrolling" etc.)
More flexible for multiple input stories
Use machine learning to generate headlines