Author: romy

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Project Proposal: visual discussion platform

Update: 22nd of April (due to progression of project)

Findings on Lebanocracia.org case study

After interviewing users of Lebanocracia.org around the possibility of transforming the platform into an topic based open-discussion, most were reluctant because they didn’t imagine how that could change the close mindedness of Lebanese citizens: they thought that people would share their opinion with little intention of changing it even if other people’s point of view is equally shared.

I decided to speculate on new formats of online discussions and opinion visualization, with the following topic: smart cities and urban technology. “Smart cities” has become a buzz word, and more importantly, most decisions around the future of cities have been made with little regard to citizen’s opinions.

HMW design a platform that mediates civic discussion, while allowing for people to learn and design their future city?

Precedents

There are a number of precedents designed to engage citizens around urban topics. Streetmix is one such platform that aims to better understand preferences of street design. Features of sharing allow users to showcase their ideas and view others’ work on other social media platforms.

Streetmix

The project addresses important issues of accessibility and sustainability, but does not tackle a very sensitive topic. This might be a reason for the limited user engagement. Additionally, it doesn’t provide enough of an incentive for designing/sharing a new street and no call to action.

First prototype

My first prototype emerged out of a visual idea that I had in mind: having people customize their avatar city, while also observing the implications of their decisions through a data visualization of people’s opposing comments (on the right, as an output). My goal was to naturalize civic participation and discussion through playful visualizations.

Web interface of first prototype

The questions asked are:

  • Should vehicles be automated? (yes, partly, no)
  • What shape do vehicles of the future mostly take? (public transit/active mobility, ride hailing, private cars)
  • Who owns your data? (tech companies, you, the government)
  • Should you know what happens to your data? (yes, partly, not necessarily)
  • How much should ads be catered to you? (fully, partly, not at all)
  • Should the city deploy facial recognition? (yes, partly, not at all)
  • Would you give your geolocation to city government? (yes, depends, not at all)

(with a feature to add a question)

Trial for avatar generation

Alexis comments

Below are some of the comments of Alexis:

  1. The image generation is actually a great way to promote more user engagement because we can see that with memojis, the more customizable an avatar is, the more people use it. She suggested to make the city even more customizable.
  2. She also pointed out that I needed to make the visual correlation between inputs (left) and opposing opinions (right) more visually apparent. For now it seems messy.
  3. The last point was to focus on the call to action, or how to make the use of the platform beneficial for users. How can they move past the platform, and engage in smart cities discussion beyond the interface?

I would love to hear more thoughts and comments. I am currently in the process of building the interface (for now it is still just a mockup)!

Thank you!

Romy El Sayah

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Media Patterns: mental health vs media exposure

For the past week, I wrote down every day my media consumption, but also my daily mental state (as I always do).

I spoke on the phone and checked compulsively instagram>whatsapp>mail. I also lost my phone and lasted a day without checking my mail. I went into spirals of stalking people in Tech companies on LinkedIn, and binge-listened to a podcast. I also ordered 3 books.

I want to understand what is causing these different patterns of consumption, exposure and compulsion. What I will focus on is the relationship between my mental state as reflected by some daily highlights, and my exposure to media (both deliberate and unintentional).

When I am most susceptible to compulsive behavior? When I most susceptive to procrastination? Are sponsored ads a reflection of my late night googling?

Below is a summary of my media diary this week. The right side shows unintentional media, and the left shows more intentional media (here is a rough gradient from least intentional to most intentional media exposure):

  • Shared WhatsApp media
  • Media from conferences
  • Shared media on Facebook and Instagram
  • Sponsored media on Facebook and Instagram
  • Watched episodes on Netflix
  • Mindlessly spiraling from account to account on instagram
  • Searching for LinkedIn profiles
  • Searching on Google
  • Sharing my media

Each row represents a day, and the red and blue Rhombi (red for high mood, blue for low mood) encapsulate a daily highlight. The dots on both sides of each Rhombus, show the rate of the different unintentional and intentional media exposures.

I discovered that during days that I felt in a bad mental state, I would use google more than on other days (25 min more on average). I searched increasingly for answers when I was feeling dissatisfied. This led to ads on Facebook and Instagram the next day – acting as a reminder and continuously affecting my mood, but on a more unconscious level. I also noticed that when I was in a good mood, I was generally more energetic, and would be more compulsive. I checked my phone much more than on lower energy days. Compulsion came with high energy contrary to what I had assumed (that lower mood causes distraction and thus more compulsive behavior).

The dynamic of intentional and unintentional exposure to media was also affected by my willingness to be sucked in and distracted from my priorities. When I was feeling low in energy, I procrastinated more, and it was easier for me to infinitely scroll. I was also more inclined to click on some of the sponsored ads.

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Phone Withdrawal

Before going to bed, I informed my family and friends that I won’t be easily reachable the next day. I also took out my watch that I hadn’t been using since I received an apple watch for Christmas – figured I would need to know the time as I walk around campus. As I was falling asleep, I thought that keeping my phone charged next to my bed (because I needed an alarm) and starting my No Phone day with a phone next to my head, I was already not off to a great start. 

As I woke up, finished my morning routine, placed my phone far up on my shelf, and sat to start working, I got excited for the productive unconnected morning ahead, and succeeded in focusing for a good 3 hour of work. 

Towards the end of my session, as my attention levels were dropping, my compulsive reflexes of typing “we.” and “fa.” to access the web.whatsapp.com and facebook.com tabs on my laptop, were much more repeated. The slot machine effect was pronounced when I focused on what I was lacking – I had to fill in the gap. I then felt the urge to reach out to grab my phone from the shelf while keeping it face down and placed it right next to me as I was finishing up my last reading. I was not even questioning these FOMSI urges and still believed I needed my phone next to me, face down – for today my phone was technically just a black rectangular plate. Why did I need to keep it close, if I knew I wasn’t going to pick it up and check notifications? 

I left the house for a quick lunch with my friend in Broadsheet, just near my house. As I was waiting for him, I reflected that my most intense urge was not to check notifications, nor was it to listen to podcasts (although I was craving to listen to “Your undivided attention” that I just discovered after reading Tristan Harris’s article) – but it was much more the fact that I wanted to check in with my long-distance relationships. The time I usually spent killing, whether it is while fixing my lunch, or walking to school, I usually call someone from back home. Not having my phone highlighted this attachment addiction, that had been reinforced with the ease of connectivity. I also noticed that I couldn’t satisfy the spontaneous urges of adding a book to my goodreads list (that will most probably stay on this to-read list for a long time), or checking my Hinge likes (that I mindlessly swipe left on, with no exception – but that’s a different story), or just simply… scrolling! I couldn’t scroll, my finger missed the feeling of repeatedly jumping from  mail > insta > facebook > twitter > mail > insta > mail > insta, and this felt like a true addiction.

After a pleasant lunch, I went back home to finish a few of my readings before my yoga session at 7pm. Just as I arrived home, I had a mini subdued adrenaline rush when thinking about all the notifications that I will be checking later at night – eerily, I felt excited.

I still had 2 more hours until class, and laziness started to kick in. I was increasingly tempted to reach out to my phone to waste time. Checking whatsapp on my laptop before leaving, I get a message from Jackson on a group chat, asking to have dinner tonight at 8:30 – right after my yoga class. Pleased with the idea, I had to impose location immediately, and rapidly typed  “Let’s go to Trina’s Starlight Lounge, @jackson @nicolas @sue @isa are you in?” Forcing them all to check their phone, I waited just 7 minutes (it was already 6:52), got positive replied from Nicolas and Jackson, closed my laptop and left the house – spontaneity was not an option without a phone.