Graduation Workshop I

SD5527 Graduate Studio I

Dr. Huaxin Wei

Studying Internet-related social isolation and pressure in adults

Lonelygram photo by Mathis Buchbinder, used with permission

Group Members Lee, Molly Ping Tse, Allen Hanlin Yap, Tata Analyn Lao Zhang, Fish Zhuoyu

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Informances

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Participatory Workshop

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Final Scenario

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Design Vision

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Lonelygram Photos by Participant 2, used with permission

Introduction

Cultural Probes

T

he design space our group will study is within the realm of social isolation among adults. The internet has become a pervasive presence in our adult lives. We wanted to explore the underlying relationship between the internet and our participants’ inner selves: their anxieties, concerns, and loneliness. In a study by Bozoglan, Demirer, and Sahin in 2013, they noted loneliness as a great contributing factor in internet addiction.

O’Toole in 2000 also points out that an increase in internet usage leads to an increase in social isolation because it reduces time to interact with friends and family. Many other studies have confirmed these observations, but our study aims to delve into a more qualitative and reflective inquiry of what activities and behaviors constitute loneliness and isolation, eventually finding an emerging connection to pressure and anxiety in representations of the self in the online space. We use non-rational design strategies and situated participation to conduct the inquiry into this design space.

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Cultural Probes Summary The cultural probes are designerly research methods used to provoke and generate ideas and inspiration about the study at hand. For this study, we wanted to know the factors that lead to social isolation, how people cope with feeling isolated and the severity of this problem among adults. The probes were designed to tap into our participants’ creative and reflective sensibilities to gently and subtly inquire about their most isolated moments, how they verbalized their feelings, the representations they made of their virtual selves, and the interactions they make with other people.

They were distributed on September 30, 2019, and collected on October 9, 2019, left with the participants for a total of 8-9 days.

Participants: Our participants were adults aged 23-31, many of them are foreign, postgraduate students. One of our participants is a local Hong Kong citizen. These are adults navigating new lives and recent socio-political events in Hong Kong. They are also frequent internet users.

Figure 1 Participants’ genders and age

Participant 1 is a 29-year-old German student who is in a long-distance relationship with his girlfriend in Shenzen. He is curious, introverted, but driven to succeed.

He takes photographs as a hobby and he makes it a habit to capture interesting moments he encounters in Hong Kong, from everyday moments to scenes of protest and interesting buildings. Participant 2 is a 31-year-old female Hong Kong local who has been working for several years before studying again as a postgraduate student.

She is a socially-conscious woman who is opinionated and helpful to anyone, including strangers. These days she experiences a lot of stress due to her school work, as well as the tense social situation in Hong Kong. Participant 3 is a 23 year old female postgraduate student from mainland China. She is sensitive, talkative, and friendly. She is interested in fashion and make-up to present herself in the best way she can. Aside from these, she is also an illustrator who likes to draw in her spare

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time. Participant 4 is a 24 year old male who is a postgraduate student who studied communication. Prior to his masters study, he was the co-founder of a startup video production company. He is responsible and family-oriented. He is also fond of shooting videos These are the questions we aimed to answers with the cultural probes: A. What do you do on the internet everyday?

B. When do you feel most lonely? Which place, what were you doing?

C. What do you talk about with your friends & family? How do you contact them?

D. Do you have a virtual avatar?

E. How would you describe yourself offline and online?

Figures 2 & 3 Cultural Probes before being distributed to participants

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Probe 1: Spheres of Contact Description: This is a set of cards and a sphere laden diagram that we asked participants to use when documenting conversations they have with other people. They would place these cards in a diagram arranged from “Very Connected” to “Very Disconnected” in spheres emanating from a center point which represents the participant’s self.

Figure 4 Returned Spheres of Contact

To use this probe, they would have to take one piece of the contact sheet (A) and record every time they talk to someone. The conversation can be long or short, mundane or meaningful, anything. They would also record whether it was an online conversation or a real-life talk by ticking one of the boxes at the bottom left. They will also indicate how they felt by encircling one of the faces. The next step would be to place these cards in a diagram arranged from “Very Connected” to “Very Disconnected” according to the connection level from very disconnected to very connected.

Purpose: The main purpose of this probe is to get an insight into Question C, the friends and family they talked to, what they talked about and how they felt. We also wanted to gauge the feelings of connectedness they experienced with every conversation and see if meaningful talks could originate from all different kinds of people, friends, family, acquaintances, and strangers included.

Results: Our participants’ returned probes reveal that distance from loved ones resulted in more connected conversations online. Conversations with family online also revealed interesting thoughts about “being an equally capable parent” or “I think it’s funny when my parents are flirting”.

Their conversations ranged from pragmatic to reflective. They had conversations for daily matters like meetings and class research, but also deeper discussions of feelings and worries about performing well, their place in the socio-political situation of Hong Kong, safety and security, and the “future”. Another interesting finding is that seemingly trivial and mundane conversations can also lead to a sense of connection for our participants.

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Figure 5 Detailed Results: Spheres of Contact

Probe 2: Small Poems Description: This is a small magnetic board with a set of word magnets that participants can use to create small phrases that answer a certain set of prompts.

Figure 6 Small Poems magnet board

We want them to feel free to create short sentences, phrases, or even poetry (haikus, limericks) using the magnetic pieces provided and then stick them on the board provided. The words chosen was a mix of plain, functional, poetic, and descriptive words that are commonly used. We made sure to include a good mix of nouns, articles, verbs, adjectives, and prepositions. They were also given a list of prompts to follow for their short “poems�. If they wanted to, they could even make the writing prompts themselves. The writing prompts provided were: 1) Describe yourself 2) How do you feel today?

3) Are you excited about anything today?

4) What is the internet to you?

5) Tell us what you think friendship is

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6) What made you happy today?

7) Thoughts about mornings 8) A weird thought you had today 9) A favorite feeling 10) A problem you are facing

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Purpose: The main purpose of this probe is to get an insight into Questions A,B, and E. We wanted them to get in touch with their poetic sensibilities and materialize the words they might not be able to express when thinking from scratch. We aimed to get an insight into the descriptive feelings they might express in describing themselves and their feelings in moments of loneliness and stress.

Figures 7 & 8 Small Poems probe results

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Results: The outcome of this probe was better than expected, we received a lot of creative interpretations of the instructions, several unexpected phrases, and also a piece of feedback regarding the words chosen for the probe. Some participants interpret the poems as graphic pieces and have a very sensorial appreciation of the feelings they experience

The most important finding was that participants were able to express their thoughts viscerally and metaphorically, instead of plainly, so they could be more interpretative about their feelings. They took the effort to be introspective and tap into emotions and thoughts that they would typically not engage in on a daily basis. There were a lot of thoughts and self-awareness about time, silence, and loneliness. An interesting observation is how our participants increased their sense of place and time with their pondering, therefore engaging a sense of physicality.

This is evident with the generous use of the words “sky”, “deep”, “silence”, “shadow”, “time”, “blank”, among others.

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Probe 3: Profile Builder Description: This is an online profile simulator similar to Instagram’s user interface that participants can customize with their own avatars, emojis, text descriptions and pictures. To use it, they would need to access the interactive Profile Builder from their laptop, phone or any other device using the QR code provided in the instructions or by accessing the URL: http://bit.ly/ probeprofilebuilder. This is a one-off probe that the participants need to do only once.

The tasks: Enter a username Select and upload a profile picture Use only emojis to caption the profile Select 6 photos to represent their offline and online self Figure 9 Returned Real-Self profile for P2

Purpose This probe answers questions D and E: “How would you describe yourself offline and online?�. We intended to use this probe to get a look at how our participants would represent themselves digitally and without the pressure of a real social media profile. This is a rich probe that helped us gain insight into the images they perceived to be valuable, beautiful, and ideal.

Results In online-self profiles, there is a desire among participants to show themselves as deep and interesting —to have an interesting personality. The photos posted are also more “high-quality�, there are also more static objects in the online-self: food, scenery, buildings, single beverages. In the real-self profiles, there are more pictures of faces, friends and family in typical settings. The photos are taken with common lighting and, in a way, are “uglier� but also more unique. The real-self profiles also featured more unique images like unfinished drawings, jewellery, stuffed toys, and blurry feet.

Profile pictures were also more stylized & idealized in the online self, while more real faces were in the real self. They were also more likely to use positive and cute emojis in the online-self, but were willing to show some cheekiness in the real-self, emojis such as these đ&#x;¤?đ&#x;¤”

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Figure 10 Returned Profile Builder for all participants

Probe 4: Lonelygram

Figure 11 Lonelygram from P1

Description: This probe asks participants to respond to a simple prompt: Take a photo whenever you feel lonely. Using any phototaking device, the participants were asked to capture anything when they felt they were lonely. The task was open to do as often as they wanted — multiple times in a day, or even just a few times a week. We reminded them via a messaging service from time to time so they would not forget the prompt and the activity. It was important for the photos to be taken as a genuine prompt spaced over a good amount of days, not crammed in a short period of time.

Purpose: The intention of this open-ended probe was to answer question B. We aimed to get an insight and visual inspiration of what our participants most observed in their surroundings while lonely. Loneliness is typically an inwardly felt emotion or feeling; with this probe, our group was curious if our participants could manifest an inward feeling, outwardly, by capturing and interpreting scenes they experienced in real life.

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Results: The results of probe 4 revealed very compelling insights and observations.

While lonely, our participants’ sense of self-awareness heightened, as mundane moments like waiting were captured a lot. Our participants also tended to identify their loneliness with singular objects (bell, single beverage cans, road signs), as if increasing their sense of comparison. This same sense of comparison is also evident in an abundance of pictures that show a juxtaposition of objects expressed through layering. They’re also able to project their feelings into solitary and steady objects like buildings and landscapes.

Figure 12 A selection of lonelygrams from all participants

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Cultural Probes: Analysis The richness of the probe results led to some notable and perceptive findings about the nature of people in isolation or loneliness. One thought-provoking insight reveals the physicality of isolation. We realize that loneliness is not just a mental and emotional state, but also a physical one as revealed in the photos our participants took, the way they related emotionally to various static objects in the city, the poems they wrote, and the identities they crafted. Being alone increases the sense awareness of time and place.

Another interesting finding is that people are more solitary, performatory and individualistic online, while being more social and spontaneous in real life. This led us to think that a certain pressure to perform, excel, and stand out might exist and that the internet feeds this endlessly due to social comparison. For participants, they have no choice but to use the internet, as it is a source of functional needs and is so embedded in our daily responsibilities. What makes the matter complex is that it is also the source of deeper feelings like relationship stress, guilt, shame, pressure, and anxiety.

The internet and real life are caught in a vicious cycle of pressure for individual expression and feelings of isolation.

Figure 13 Analyzing the interactions of lonely selves within 3 levels: self, friends & family, and society

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Informances Summary We inferred that internet usage probably led to one’s social isolation and adult-onset pressure, so we conducted field observations of the behaviors when people are alone, usually in public transport and retail spaces using their phones. We knew more about how people disconnect themselves from the world and gained inspiration of our design situations. Inspired by field observation and some secondary reading, we generated our first draft of two scenarios— each one containing the settings, agents or actors, goals, actions and events.

Field Observations We did field observations in some places like buses, streets, restaurants, shopping malls, and so on. We observed people who were not accompanied by anyone and looked at their behaviors to overcome the awkwardness of isolation, one particular behavior is focused mobile phone usage

Figure 14 Field Observation

In a bus, a boy was playing with his phone and also wore the headphones, while the woman beside him was reading a book. They both disconnected themselves from the world in their own way.

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A man on the street was watching some videos on his phone with one hand while waiting for the bus.

Although it was hard to use just one hand to hold a phone horizontally, he insisted to do so and really focused on what was going on in his phone.

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11:30 PM, there were two persons in each side of the road, waiting for the light to turn green. However, they were both so focusing on their phones that they even did not notice the light had already turned green.

In a restaurant, two persons shared one cup of drink. We think they were probably a couple. However, they both looked at the phones but did not talk with each other.

Observation Findings: Being alone leads to the act of disconnecting oneself from the world via phone use or any other private activity (reading a book). There seems to be a sense of physical unease or discomfort in engaging with the real world if one is not with others so headphones are almost always present to disconnect more easily from the world.

Usually, strangers and even friends in close proximity with each other get over this awkwardness by using the phone. Real-life important signals, such as pedestrian lights, bus alerts may be missed due to being on the headphones.

We used these small habits, idiosyncrasies, and actions of people observed to make our informances more realistic.

The First Version of The Informance Scenarios

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Scenario 1.1 Actions and Events: M has a lot of problems in study and human relationships. He wants to have a girlfriend but gets rejected all the time, so he passes his time with the internet and online games, particularly Fortnite, Arena of Valor, and PUBG. One day at home, after he finished an essay for school, he finds a fan community where someone posted a link to a beautiful Twitch streamer which he immediately becomes a fan of. He loves to chat with his online friends about gear, their characters, and favourite streamers but finds it so difficult to talk about these to his family and classmates, as they cannot relate to his interests. They would rather talk about colleges, career paths, daily events, and their boyfriends / girlfriends. He suddenly gets awkward and panicky, as a result, he retreats back into the internet, where he somehow has more confidence.

Goal: He wants to have more normal social contacts with others in real life, to talk about his upcoming transition to college but doesn’t know how to gain confidence.

Scenario 2.1 Actions and Events: F has been studying undergrad Chemistry in Hong Kong for 5 months already and exam weeks are coming up. During this same time festivities are happening in her home country and she cannot attend. Due to her budget constraints, she also cannot attend activities her classmates organize. When she sees photos of her friends and family via Instagram, she feels lonely but somehow cannot stop hitting refresh on the app. She wants to talk about these feelings, but feels that it is more appropriate to just give likes and comment niceties in her friends’ posts. However, she cannot help but feel inferior to those who are enjoying their life and have pictures and stories online to show for it.

Goal: She wants to escape from the stream of social media because it makes her feel miserable, but at the same time, she does not want to lose contact with others.

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Body-storming and Role-playing We modified our scenarios, roughly scripted them, and did bodystorming. During the body-storming, we gradually add more details about the actions, characters, emotions, and moments. And then we completed two scenarios, did role-playing and took videos of them.

How we modified our scenarios: - We grabbed out more clear actions, not general routine and made the scenarios more specific on space, time, action, like ‘when he opened the computer and started watching a stream of his favourite streamer’.

- We brought more external behaviours when describing the agent, not hidden emotions. For example, ‘he got even sadder and started scrolling phone like a zombie’.

- We brought more characters to further depict the agent’s miserable situation, to see how would she or he react when other people involved in the scenario.

For example, we add the character of a person who sat beside Karen noticed her crying and felt weird.

- We added more conflicts to find opportunities for us. For instance, ‘Michael’s mother scolded him about his unsatisfying behaviors and wanted to take away his credit card and laptop’.

The Second Version of The Informance Scenarios

Scenario 1.2 Actions and Events: Michael has a crush on Ann, who is one of his classmates. One day, he was planned to told Ann about his feelings. He drew a lovely picture with ‘I Love You’ and wanted to show it to Ann. When the class was over, Michael got up the courage to confess to Ann, however, Ann rejected him and said she liked someone else. After she walked away, Michael was very dejected and muttered to himself. When he came back home, he opened the computer and started watching a stream of his favourite gamer. He was immersed in the gamer’s live show and gave lots of donations to her. At that time, his mother got a phone call from his teacher. The teacher told her about Michael’s misbehavior. His mother got very angry and went inside his room. She scolded him and also took away Michael’s laptop and credit card. Michael got very upset and walked alone in the street. When he sat at a bench and read the news, he saw that his favorite streamer got married. He got even sadder and started scrolling phone like a zombie.

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Scenario 2.2 Actions and Events: One day, Karen got her Mama’s call and started chatting with her Mama on a video call while leaving the classroom after class. Mama talked about dogs, studies and the sick relative, which made her feel very homesick. But she had to say goodbye to her Mama. When she went downstairs, she met two of her local classmates. They were talking in Cantonese. When they saw Karen, they asked her if she can come with them to go bowling. She rejected the invitation because it cost 300 HKDs. She only had a little money in her purse. Before she came back home, she got a message from Maria, which is one of her best friends in Indonesia, inviting her to a wedding.

All friends would go except Karen, so Karen got even sadder. Karen went home via crowded bus and cried in public. The person sat beside Karen noticed and felt weird. She tried to stop crying and proceeded to take out her phone and browse awkwardly.

Informance: Analysis It is hard to role play one’s mental activity sometimes. Social isolation and adult pressures are more evident inwards, sometimes difficult to notice from the outside.

It gave us some inspiration that writing and focused talk activities should be added in our workshop. It would be easy for us to better know our design situations and targeted users.

Some unexpected behaviors happened when we did the body-storming. These behaviors make sense and happened naturally. We would not notice if we did not do the body-storming. For example, when Michael’s mother tried to take away his laptop, one of our teammates who played the role of Michael held the laptop with his arms tightly to show his resistance. And also, when Michael saw his favorite streamer got engaged, he went to the bathroom and put the water to his face. This reaction is unexpected before we did role-playing. In the final scene, when Michael receives the bad news, he clenches his fist in anger.

Adding other characters let us better see how the agents would react to the situations.

In scenario 2, when the two local classmates of Karen spoke in cantoness beside her, her awkwardness and loneliness revealed more obvious in the situation. And also when she cried in the bus, the person sat beside her could not understand her and even felt annoyed, which made Karen much more sad and lonely.

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More conflicts happened in the scenarios than before, which made us easier to find some opportunities. For example, in scenario 2, for ‘Karen could not join her local classmates’ conversation’, we can design for reducing language barriers and building good connection between people from different countries. For ‘Karen could not join the social activity because it cost a lot’, we can think of some ways that let them be easier and convenient to attend activities. For ‘Karen could not join her old friend’s wedding’, maybe there are some chances for her to make new friends abroad easier so that she would not feel lonely. And also, the person in the bus might not understand her feelings, maybe there is a better way for her to release her negative feelings.

Refining the Scenario We chose scenario 2, and combining with finding from the cultural probes we wanted to dig deeper into the reasons why they feel lonely and isolated. So we tried to re-find the answers of what are their anxieties, what makes them happy or unhappy and their motivations.

From one participant’s probe results, the contact map, he had a conversation with family online, which contains the thought of ‘being an equally capable parent’. So we inferred that he is anxious about whether he can be a good parent and well take responsibility of a family or not. This probably is a common and typical pressure for an adult aged around 30 years’ old. They are going to start a family and worried about the future.

And also, some lonelygrams and the notes reveal great anxieties about their school work, like ‘does my work can be submitted on time or not’, ‘I am still waiting for my teammates to finish their parts’. Besides, anxieties about their school work can be inferred from the thoughts and self-awareness about time and loneliness of ‘small poems’, and also the conversations for daily matters like meetings and class research.

What’s more, in online-self profiles, there is a desire among participants to show themselves as deep and interesting —to have an interesting personality. And one participant gave the answer that ‘Shame, because most of my friends show better life than me’ to the question of ‘what is the internet to you’ in the ‘small poem’ probes. So a certain stress to perform well is a factor leading to social isolation.

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Thus, we ended up realizing that pressure is a key factor in social isolation. In the scenario, a study abroad student, who is in the age around 30, might have pressures from school work, going to be a parent, and also comparing himself with others in social media. When the student sees others’ great lives on social media, he feels down and much more pressure. Then he tries harder to be the ‘best’ self on the internet to impress others, which makes he feels much lonelier and isolated. It is a vicious circle.

Figure 15 Visualizing the vicious cycle

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Participatory Workshop Summary Based on the findings from the probes, informances, and some reading on the Social Comparison theory, we designed a cohesive workshop in the spirit of Participatory Design, an emerging design practice that involves different non-designers in various co-design activities throughout the design process to explore potentials for design on feelings of isolation and pressure from the Internet. The workshop leads participants from reflective writing, to physical activities that release pressure, to emotional expression and roleplay by conducting multiple activities. The workshop was held on October 22, from 7:00PM-9:30PM in V701 of the Innovation Tower in the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The total process lasted for 2.5 hours.

In contrast to our cultural probes and informances, where we used divergent methods to study the matter, the participatory workshop was designed to be highly focused and convergent.

Goals - Gain an understanding of what causes social pressure in adults - Know how people express themselves - Know what people would do when they feel lonely - Involve participants act out an experience of conflict based on their own sharing and observe the ways they overcome the conflict.

Roles of the Team Tata Yap: Facilitator Molly Lee: Helper, Yoga Facilitator Allen Xie: Video Recorder Fish Zhang: Note Taker Working Process Pilot Testing -> Pre-workshop -> Workshop Proper Pilot Testing We invited 1-2 students in our class to pilot testing, in order to get feedback and improvements.

Our pilot tester suggested that we cancel one very difficult yoga movement since he felt uncomfortable when doing it. When asked about diary sharing, he said he did not feel awkward when another person was reading his personal story. We confirmed that people may not react so negatively when their deep thoughts are said out loud.

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The pilot tester also suggested some labelling changes in the User Journey Map: “touchpoints” and “what” into “Where” and “What can help”, which would be easier to understand. He also suggested adding some more time to do the roleplay.

Pre-Workshop We sent the questions of the workbook to the participants so that they can think about the stories in advance and send us.

- Describe yourself - What is your hobby?

- A problem you are facing right now?

- What made you feel stressful, lonely or anxious these days?

- Does the feeling have any impact on you? If yes,what is the impact?

- How did you cope with it?

Workshop Proper Activities:

Participants The participants are 4 male and 1 female aged 29-35, who are postgraduate students or staff, each of them come from different countries. Most of them feel the anxiety of Internet and social media from time to time. During the workshop they were divided into 2 groups for team-work.

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Schedule

Figure 16 Workshop Schedule

Activity 1 : Diary Writing

Figure 17 Diary writing and collected diaries

Description Before starting activities, each of the participants need to complete the questions on the diary sheet within 10 minutes. Since we have sent the questions by online message a day before the workshop, the participants have already thought about it before they come. The questions are about their experiences of loneliness and self-reflection.

Purpose The diary sheets are fundamental to the following activities of the workshop. When people concentrate on writing, it is also a way to help them to calm down and immerse themselves into the atmosphere we created. We put on soft music and specifically instructed them to not write their names on the sheets, to preserve their identities and to make it comfortable for everyone to read their experiences out loud.

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Activities 2: Icebreaker Yoga

Figure 18 Yoga exercises

Description We moved all the objects to the side of the venue to keep the center empty.

Participants were asked to form pairs to do partner stretching together. We made sure that they were partnered with someone they did not know so well. They followed the instructions from the facilitator who also demonstrated the pose. There were four stretching poses ranging from easy to difficult, participants were allowed to skip any of the poses if they felt uncomfortable.

Purpose Most of the participants didn’t know each other very well before taking part in the workshop. The yoga exercise is designed to break the physical and metaphorical barrier among participants. It is said that the more interaction with body movement the more connection between people would be built. Stretching can warm-up and relax tensions in the body— something we specifically intended as our study has something to do with the concept of pressure.

Results Surprisingly, the more difficult poses get more reactions and responses from them.

We noticed that they quickly felt relaxed and chattier after. Even the pose we planned to cancel from the pilot testing was willingly done by the participants.

Activities 3: Diary Sharing

Figure 19 Diary sharing scenes

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Description To encourage people to tell the stories from the depths of their hearts, we tried to create a meditation space where was dedicated to silence and stillness. We turned off the lights to keep surrounding completely dark and played soft music in the background. Then, participants were asked to read out the diary sheet they picked randomly and give some personal advice to the anonymous writer afterwards when facilitator held the lamp approaching them. After all the stories had been shared they had a lengthy discussion about the topic they resonate with.

Purpose The intention of activities is to get an insight of where their pressure and loneliness come from as well as an inspiration of the scenario for the next activities. This activity was designed to externalize their problems and have it be read by another person. The intention was to introduce a new sense of perspective. The darkness and silence, akin to a meditation space is also a way to help them release pressure and gain more self-reflection.

Results We organized and synthesized the problems they had the most and realized that even if each of them came from different countries and different backgrounds, the obstacles they faced were quite similar: feeling anxious and stressed about school work, facing difficult relationship and language problems as a foreigner, and time management. Most of them spoke easily and candidly as they related to each others’ problems because the same thing happens to them as well.

Food and Refreshment Break: Rapid Scenario Writing Purpose Another key moment in the workshop was when we rapidly synthesized the six (6) experiences from the diary sharing into two (2) distinct scenarios that contained bits and pieces of everyone’s sharings. We intended to represent a facet of each and everyone’s problems into the two scenarios so that they could recall and recognize their own contribution to the scenarios.

These scenarios were written in preparation for the next activity where two groups would map out one scenario each in a journey map.

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The two prompt scenarios rapidly generated during the break: Scenario 1 I’m the youngest in the family and my parents have a lot of expectations from me because I studied the most and was always in the honor roll. I am currently a foreign student, have leadership positions in some organizations as well as representative of the class. I have a part-time job to manage my finances and I feel very anxious every day. One day I was presenting a project I worked really hard, but was ridiculed very harshly by my professor in front of the whole class. I see my classmates posting their projects online on IG and I just wanted to throw my phone out of the window. I feel like my reputation is ruined. I have to work even harder to catch up on them.

Scenario 2 I’m working in a field where my colleagues admire and have a lot of regard for me, but it’s a job that requires me to talk to so many people (HR). Most days I just want to rest and not think about anything or even go out of my room but my boyfriend/girlfriend is also expecting me to spend more time with her/him. We’ve been together for just a year but I already feel quite burdened with everything, my parents mentioning marriage and all. I still like him/her, but I just feel very aimless and blah and just want to go with the motions. One day, my boyfriend/girlfriend said he was thinking of breaking up with me.

Activity 4: User Journey Map Description We took stories and tried to create a new scenario out of them. The participants were first grouped into 2, one group with 3 members, then they had 30 minutes to map out a “User Journey Map” with their experiences based on the scenario we assigned for them. We also prepared small notes and a diagram to fill out as well as pens for writing.

The brief was to simply write anything that came to mind in each of the empty boxes.

The diagram we prepared as following: (Try to imagine the situation in a journey map)

Figure 20 User Journey Map

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Figure 21 User Journey Map Activity & Results

Purpose To let participants to map out processes and events, or their understanding of categories or systems for us to further gain insight into specific thoughts and behaviors they may have while embodying a scenario’s protagonist. It was important to break their thoughts down into emotions, thoughts, actions, where, and what, to ignite unique and interesting findings, ultimately preparing them for roleplaying and prototyping.

Results For scenario 1, The emotional process starts from anxiety - frustration - slowing down.

Before - Anxious, insecure about too much being demanded of them,

causing a reduced social life. Willing to self-reflect.

During- Frustrated and shocked as a mix of anger and inferiority makes me

want to seek shelter, shut off and vent to unrelated people.

After- Slowing down,becoming more reserved than before. I try to reduce

my responsibilities as I seek a fresh start.

There are key findings we got from the map:

Social comparison is apparent, a fear of losing role model status.

People sometimes feel comforted when facing unrelated people.

“Unrelated” people don’t have expectations, so they don’t have to prove

something. They feel less stressed.

Fresh Starts — Newness is comfort.

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For scenario 2, The emotional process starts from feeling stressed feelings of giving up - self-reflection.

Before- Pressure and frustration make me not want to think anymore and

just “turtle”. I need a long vacation or self-analyse.

During- Feeling unstable, lonely, and weak make me want to give up. I feel

like everyone is looking at me and I want to punch a bag. I want to ask for

feedback from friends and family.

After- I feel lonely and helpless, keep thinking I made a mistake. I have to

stay in a private space to read, watch, and think about what happened.

There are key findings we got from the map: Loneliness and pressure — Physicality.

There is a visceral factor — sensation of having a shelter, “all eyes looking at me”.

Thinking about nothing > thinking good thoughts.

People crave blankness in times of trouble.

There will be a time for recovery after.

Activity 5: Role-play

Figure 22 Roleplay scenes Activity & Results

Description The participants were asked to take user journey map and select the most interesting timeframe to enact. Usually, it would cover 2 columns of the map (Before, During, After) and their in-betweens. We also prepared paper, clay, card, scissors, pen, mockups for them to use as props. appreciate your input so feel free to speak as you act. They had 15 minutes for preparation and 2 minutes for role-play.

Purpose This final workshop activity, synthesizes and externalizes all the built-up activities from the participatory workshop. The goal was to see how the participants acted out and used their speech and bodies to depict a situation. With the tools provided (clay, paper, card, scissors, etc), we can see how they used their natural creativity to use items to their benefit. By focusing on acting scenes instead of making “products”

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we are able to better observe their behaviours as well as emotions by acting out. From these scenarios we could point our interesting and specific actions that inspired our design vision.

Results For scenario 1, the role-play was focusing on During and After the stories: A guy felt frustrated and disappointed at school work. While he received a phone call from his friend inviting him to meet unexpected people to show them how good he is on playing the video game. Suddenly he regained his confidence back.

Figure 23 Roleplay scenes Activity & Results Group 1

Here are key findings we got from their behaviours:

Rationalizing to prove himself

Needing clear answers from the source of problem (teacher).

Social pressure to answer calls and messages even if he did not want to.

Wanted to “dodge” the invitation, but was not able.

“Don’t ask”, not wanting to talk about the problem at all to his friend.

A sense of relaxation when new friends compliment him.

“Sudden appreciation that is not expected from”

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For scenario 2, A guy had a conflict with his girlfriend while he was unable to meet the teacher’s expectations. When he noticed that his girlfriend even want to break the engagement he felt totally burned out and want to turtle himself.

Figure 24 Roleplay scenes Activity & Results Group 2

Here are the key findings we got from their behaviours:

Girl: “You never think about me”

Throw away the phone.

They want to hide (physical covering with the vest) “Shelter”

Leave phone far away to not listen too clearly.

Posting on social media, but with a threshold, they cry for help initially but

when they get really bad embarrassing news, they definitely do not share.

Stuttering usually happened.

Conclusion After the roleplay we concluded the workshop by showing our appreciation to all the participants for their participation. Meanwhile, we also asked for some valuable feedback for future improvement.

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Participatory Workshop: Insights There is comfort in physicality and the visceral Stress is an inevitable part of life, and there are ways to manage our mental pressures by physical and visceral externalization. We tried to manifest this in activities like the icebreaker yoga exercise. Furthermore, in the user journey map one of the participants also mentioned that he felt the need to have a punching bag to do physical exercise when under pressure or anxiety. Another participant mentioned sensation of having a shelter or try to “turtle” himself when coming across frustrating moments, not as a way of giving up, but as a coping mechanism The effect of the workshop ambiance to our participant is also evidence of the impact of physical states. During the diary sharing activities, we helped them reach a mentally clear and emotionally calm state by keeping the surrounding completely dark and quiet.

The value of newness and fresh starts; no expectations Another vital insight gained from the workshop is the realization that “newness” plays a key factor in coping with isolation and pressure. For our participants, feelings of loneliness and social pressure oftentimes carry a lot of past baggage. Expectations from the self, family, friends, and society all snowball into an overwhelming weight that our participants find too difficult to bear. A refreshing, unexpected, and new experience gives our participants a momentary respite from all past baggage and helps them gain a new perspective on their problems.

Many of our participants gave us feedback that they appreciated the probes and workshop, as it was an unusual, new activity that gave them time to think about feelings and emotions that they would have otherwise forgotten or ignored.

These insights delightfully mirrors and recalls findings from the earlier probe and informance activities.

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Scenarios Summary Combining the deliverables of the probes, the informance, the participatory workshop and our insights, we generated the main story arc as well as three possible resolutions for the problem that the protagonist confronted. Essentially, the scenario is based on the two scenarios in our informance which illustrate stories of being lonely because of the language issue, the ageing issue, the Internet-addiction issue and the peer pressure issue, etc. However, we wanted to particularly focus on peer pressure, in other words, the social comparison issue in our refined scenario, as it stood out distinctly and could be regarded as an umbrella term of all the other issues.

We first defined the key scenario—the main story arc—using Gustav Freytag’s pyramid for drama, which divides the scenario into five stages: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and denouement. Then, we decided on three possible scenarios which act as the design solution for the main conflict by absorbing ideas generated during the participatory workshop. In the next step, we analysed them, ranked the three possible scenarios and further refined our scenario.

Figure 24 Freytag’s pyramid of dramatic structure

Scenario - Expositions Agung is a 29-year-old Indonesian graduate student who has been studying for an MSc Chemistry in Hong Kong for 7 months already. He is kind, independent, introverted, but very driven and goal-oriented. Although studying abroad keeps him away from his family, girlfriend and friends, and takes him much effort to get familiar with the new surroundings, he is still hopeful and sees this as the turning point of his life.

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- First Turning Point One day, Agung worked hard on his project and was the last one to leave the laboratory. Because he had done a satisfying job and felt proud of himself, he took a photo of the front door of the laboratory and posted an Instagram with a hashtag “#researchlife”. However, he spotted a story from his groupmate Chen, who posted about giving a speech in an important conference, in a neat suit and with a confident smile, with the same hashtag “#researchlife”. He felt that his post now looked so shabby that he immediately deleted it. The satisfaction he just gained vanished. He tried to be distracted by browsing Instagram randomly but felt even worse when he saw that his cousin had gotten married recently and one of his friends had successfully found a start-up.

- Rising Action / Confrontation Agung begins to think that he is less intelligent with the others. In order to maintain his dignity, the only way to do is to work even harder. He sets the goal to finish his project one month ahead of all his groupmates. Besides that, he takes a part-time job to be a student assistant to help undergraduate students with their laboratory classes.

Since then, Agung gradually cuts down the meeting with his friends and peers to avoid feeling inferior to them. He keeps his stress secret to his girlfriend and families because he wants to perform well in front of them. He documents his studying and working on Instagram stories and gets a lot of likes and positive comments. He feels that his confidence is regained in spite of the fact that he’s getting more and more exhausted.

- Climax Agung’s advisor asked him to make a mid-term presentation of his project a week later. He’s psyched to do an amazing job to impress his peers. He prepared so hard for it that he slept only 1-2 hours a day. Still, the difficulty of the project was out of his expectation and he couldn’t finish the presentation until the last moment. It’s 6 AM and he has just finished his preparation. Unfortunately, he was so tired that he dozed off and slept over his 9 AM group meeting, waking up at 12NN, still in his pyjamas. He was surprised that nobody called him. He called his adviser and he scolded him and gave him a D for the presentation. After the call, he feels dizzy and suddenly became spaced out. He plops on his bed, puts a blanket over his head and felt burnout.

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- Resolution There are three possible resolutions, namely: confession, disconnection and catharsis, that are generated from the findings in the participatory workshop.

1) Confession Design Space: Service Design - Confess Café The next day, Agung recalls a place mentioned by a friend he met briefly at an orientation, Ian. He contacts Ian and tells him about his situation. Ian tells Agung that he might know a good place to discuss it more and they plan to meet at a bookshop. They met inside and Agung was not expecting to be led to a hidden door leading to a cosy, dark, cafe-type space with people sitting inside booths, talking to other people over coffee, while hidden. He sits at an empty seat and not before long he hears a voice talking to him. He stammers while telling this person about his horrible day and she does the same. After around an hour and a half of talking, Agung feels a huge weight lifted off his shoulders. He thanks Ian for the new experience and goes home a little comforted, though still a bit sad.

2) Disconnection Design Space: Interactive Space Design - Isolation Cocoon As Agung goes out he sees a booth that is lit up with a gentle, pulsating, light. He becomes curious and checks out the booth. He enters a small, dim space with a sofa cushion and some music playing. It asks for payment for an hour’s use of the booth. He pays and gets inside, laying down and relaxing. When the door of the booth closes, he realises it’s soundproof and he feels like he is disconnected with the outside. He finds an eye mask and wears it blanking out his mind.

After a while, he finds out that the booth provides karaoke and some ambient music, so he searches his favourite songs via the panel in the booth and sings cathartically. After twenty minutes, he just decides to rest and think of nothing for the next 40 minutes; he gradually calms down, he comes out in a pensive mood.

3) Catharsis Design Space: Product Design - The Punching Ball Agung’s feeling of desperate turns into anger. He looks for a place to relieve his pressure on-line and finds out there is a campaign of a product called the punching bag, which is currently open for people to experience in a pop-up store in Hong Kong. Agung goes to the store and finds out that there are a lot

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of people who come here to relieve their pressure. He notices that there are punching balls that are free for people to punch on and there are different labels on each of them. The one with the label “peer pressure” is the most crowded.

Agung realizes that there are also many people who suffer the same issue. He tries to punch on the product too while shouting out some keywords related to his pressure. In no time a young man near him wants to have a conversation with him. Agung finds out that both of them are a postgraduate student and they share the same stress. Agung opens his mind and chats with him gladly. He exchanges his contact with the young man and leaves the store with a relieved mind.

Key Scenario: Analysis The key scenario we generated is based on the common phenomenon that people experience discomfort when compared with someone they perceive as better than them. According to American psychologist Leon Festinger, this kind of discomfort appears when our thoughts, beliefs, or behaviour are inconsistent with each other.

When it happens, we tend to either adjust our beliefs or behaviour in order to “act like others”. This is called cognitive dissonance.

Figure 25 The mismatch between what we do and who we think we are induces tension —cognitive dissonance—and that we tend to want to resolve that tension.

In Agung’s story, his initial belief in himself is matched with his abilities. However, when he confronts someone that seems to excel him, he starts to feel discomfort. In order to relieve that pressure, he could either adjust his attitude towards the situation, in other words, justify his failure or inferiority by saying that “Maybe it’s because I still need time to accommodate to the new surroundings” or “I’m already better than many people around the world”, or adjust his behaviour in order to perform better to match his aspirations. Tragically, he chooses to fake his performance. By pushing himself too much, he experiences an even stronger mismatch between his performance and aspiration and gradually enervates his mind. Eventually, he cannot bear and experiences burnout, causing side effects in human relationships and real life.

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Our design solution focuses on after the social comparison has taken place, which implies that it should somehow help the protagonist to resolve this tension.

Possible Scenario: Analysis Our key objectives of the possible scenario go as follows: - To serve as a reflective experience which informs people about the social comparison phenomenon and its possible negative effects.

- To create a “shelter” for people to shelter from social comparison, which provides a) comfort in physical and the visceral, b) the feeling of newness and fresh starts and c) the channel to vent their negative emotions.

- To encourage re-connection between people which we think is necessary in order to rebuild self-esteem.

Scenarios

Strengths

Issues

Scenario 1 Confess Café Service / Experience

· Spontaneity · Connection with strangers

· The hurdle for an introvert to go for a confession is too high

Scenario 2 Isolation Cocoon Interactive Space

· Physical comfort · Encourage selfreflection through meditation

Scenario 3 The Punching Ball Product

· Physical catharsis · Connection with strangers

Opportunities

1. We can combine reflection with catharsis.

2. We can encourage downward comparison in a · Unable to improve users’ healthy way. social communication skill 3. It’s better to start from the connection between the user and his/her acquaintance (semistranger). · Insufficient in promoting users to speak out their problem

During the participatory workshop, we asked the participants to generate the journey map. We observed them gave different solutions to their stress and categorized them into three types, namely self-reflection, abreaction and downward evaluation.

Self-reflection is the interaction between people and their own self. It reduces pressure by simply thinking in a positive way like trust yourself and don’t compare with others. However, it’s not easy, especially for people with low self-esteem because it does require vigorous mental training.

Abreaction is the interaction between people and the objects around them. It is a type of catharsis that helps people vent their negative emotions and escape from reality temporarily. It provides physical feelings and distracts people from bad memories. Catharsis could be particularly helpful when the situation is not easy to

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change. However, it does not support people to change their way of thinking, thus it is only effective in a short period of time.

Downward evaluation is the interaction between people and the people who are inferior to, or less fortunate than, themselves in some way. As upward comparison induces stressful feelings, downward comparison promotes grateful feelings. It is natural for people to relieve their pressure in this way. Although it sounds like pointing at others’ misfortune, it actually encourages understanding of the situation and the surrounding environment and building empathy to others, which eventually helps gain self-esteem. The problem is it is not easy to find the proper downward comparison, as people tend to hide their true self and perform the best self.

Our three possible scenarios roughly focus on each of the three types of solutions respectively. After the analysis, we decided to refine our scenario based on the third one (focused on catharsis) but combine it with reflection, in other words, encourage people to speak out and share their issues in a cathartic way, allow people to gain an understanding of each other and build new connections with people who are also suffering similar issues. After considering the hurdles for an introverted person like Agung to go for a sharing activity, we decided that it’s better to set the entry point of the design an acquaintance of Agung’s, which is Ian. We believe that the distance between Agung and Ian is particularly apropos because Ian would not have a certain expectation in Agung and Agung would be happy to have a conversation with Ian. In crafting the final resolution for the design vision, we have decided to focus on the insight of catharsis (Resolution 3). If the resolution manages to integrate an unexpected social element into the scenario, this finding beautifully summarizes the major insights we have gathered so far.

Final Resolution The next day, Agung happens to be invited to go play games at the net cafe by a friend he met briefly at an orientation, Ian. Ian tells him that he has gotten into some trouble and want to relax. Feeling very blank and passive, Agung just agrees to go with on a whim.

On the way to the net cafe, the two of them notice a strange pop-up outside the mall, colored blue and black with curtain door, and a notice to come inside.

They become intrigued and want to have a look. Inside is a large room, which is divided into three sections. They go into the first section and see a huge wall made of a soft cushion. It encourages people to punch at any place on the wall.

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There are different sections on the wall. Agung punches hard on the section called “THESIS” and “School” while laughing. He notices that Ian punches on the section “RELATIONSHIP” and starts to chat with Ian about each other’s problem. After that, they feel a kind of relief in both physical and mental way and their friendship becomes stronger.

Then they move on to the second section, which is for shouting. There are several sound-absorbing devices, which allows you to shout out loud but keep it secret from others. The device asks them to shout out one of thing that makes them feel inferior and isolated to others and records it, then would randomly play audio of others that talk about their inferiority. During this secret sharing, both Agung and Ian hear the statements of others: “I’m not smart enough for my family!!”, “I think my girlfriend is cheating on me!!”. They realize they are actually not alone in their troubles.

Next, they go to the last section, which contains a touch panel and a projector. The touch panel asks them to answer some questions related to their pressure. When they are finished, they see their posts are projected onto the wall. Agung soon notices there is a post that talks a very similar story with his. He looks for the person who wrote this and finds Candy, a girl who is also studying in postgraduate. They laughed out loud when they complain about the same stuff. Leaving the pop-up, Agung and Ian talk openly about the troubles that bother them and find comfort in the company of each other.

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Design Vision Problem statement Nowadays, adults around 30 years old have pressures of families problems, schoolwork(for students), struggle for good performance on social media and so on.

Sometimes they are so immersed themselves with the pressure or so busy that have no chance, time, encouragement or objects around them to talk about the pressures and release their negative feelings. Those pressures and anxieties make them feel lonely, even social isolated.

Design vision We desire to build a cathartic installation experience situated at a public space containing three stress-relieving activities. It can help adults release their pressures, forget about comparing with others in society and be themselves, and also get comfort from strangers. After they have experience with it, we desire that they can feel more relaxed and come back to the real life with more optimistic attitude.

Design Requirements The cathartic installation experience contains three stress-relieving sections, which are ‘Shouting Game’, ‘Punching Board’ and ‘Telling Board’. It is situating at a public space with three entrances. Each entrance leads to one activity section, so people can join one of the activities randomly.

1. Shouting Game The purpose of this section is to help people release their pressure by shouting and also build up their confidence by hearing what other people say about their disadvantages.

There is a voice recognizing device in the middle. The instructions here guides participants to shout about their fears and things that make them feel unconfident.

When participants shouting at the device, the content of what they shout should be recorded, and they will hear a piece of voice message from others. People outside can not see what happens inside so that the participant who is shouting would not feel awkward.

2. Punching Board The purpose of this section is to release pressure by punching and get comfort by seeing how many people have the same problems or pressures with you.

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There is a big punching wall in the space, which is divided into several areas for different categorization of problems or pressure, such as family problems, school work pressure, relationship problems and so on. Participants can choose one or more areas to punch according to what problems or what pressure they have. Every time they punch the wall, the shape will be distorted and fully recover after a few seconds.

Besides, there is a digital display beside the wall to show how many times each area gets punched.

3. Telling Board The purpose of it is to help participants release their feelings by writing down their stories and also getting comments from other people.

There is a big screen for showing the stories and their comments randomly, and also a handwritten board and a hand writing pen for participants to write down their stories or leave messages for other people. There are some questions in the handwritten screen for well guiding participants to write down their stories, like ‘A problem you are facing right now?’, ‘What made you feel pressure, lonely or anxious these days?’. The telling board will clear all the messages every three days. There are words limitations for stories and comments. The words of each story should not be more than 200 words. And each comment should not exceed 100 words.

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SD5527 Graduate Studio I

Dr. Huaxin Wei

Studying Internet-related social isolation and pressure in adults Group Members Lee, Molly Ping Tse, Allen Hanlin Yap, Tata Analyn Lao Zhang, Fish Zhuoyu

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19093096G 19092594G 19096936G 19104488G

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Executive Summary Our objective is to find a therapy to the phenomenon of social isolation, loneliness, and pressure among adults in the Internet era. In our findings, the feeling of being isolated, anxious and concerned often happens when people compare themselves with their surroundings -- friends, family, even society, and the internet, particularly, social media reinforces this feeling.

By conducting designerly research methods that focus on learning by doing, such as cultural probes, informance, participatory design, iterative prototyping, and user evaluation, our findings can be summarized in the following three points: 1) Loneliness is not merely a mental phenomenon, it is highly physical and visceral; 2) Revealing our vulnerabilities to each other is beneficial in alleviating our loneliness; 3) Newness and serendipitous, unexpected social situations can be helpful in addressing social pressure. With these findings, we proposed and built a physical-digital installation experience called cathâ located at a public space containing three stressrelieving activities.

Rationale

p3

Usability Test

p24

Salient Findings

p5

Final Solution

p29

Design Process

p10

Final Scenario

p35

Evaluation Protoype

p17

Discussion

p38

Figure 1: Lonelygram from Participant 2

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Design Proposal The objective of the space is to manifest physicality, vulnerability, and newness into a combination of physical, mental, and emotional activities. The first activity is called “Word”, which helps people release their feelings by writing down their stories of what’s been troubling them currently and also getting comments from other people.

The second one is “Sound”. It encourages people to speak out about things that they feel inferior to others as well as listen to people talk about their feelings.The third activity, which is called “Force”, people are able to vent their emotions physically by punching. There is no fixed order in the three activities and they aren’t related to each other, but they all aim to help people feel more relieved and unburdened. cathârsis is “the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions.” The goal is for catharsis to happen so people can release, reevaluate, and return to the grind of living with a more positive attitude.

Figure 2: The structure

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Rationale Social Isolation and Loneliness Modern society has developed with the exponential increase in internet usage. With the advent of social media and the increased capacity of digital on mobile, many of our social interactions are now mediated online. Many adults live a substantial part of their interpersonal and personal experience through the lens of a fast-paced, highly comparative digital stream of information.

The irony of a hyperconnected digital era is that despite the ease and speed it imparts to social interactions, people feel lonelier than ever. A 2016 study affirms that heavy use of internet-mediated social media was associated with higher rates of depression in young adults. The negative effect of increased Internet use on social interaction is considered to be one of the disadvantages and may be associated with feelings of loneliness. It is not surprising that despite knowing more about our friends and family through these platforms, this constant flow of information contributes to the stress of “keeping up”. “Keeping up” refers to the intense pressure of maintaining the image of a good life on the internet by endlessly being compelled to post and respond to every distraction. The pressure of seeing others’ well-documented life moments and perfected digital self-curations compels adults to perform similarly and may even lead to a “fear of missing out” on these social interactions. (Hampton, K., Rainie, L., Lu, W., Shin, I., & Purcell, K, 2015). Now that social interactions are manifested clearly in engagement numbers, curated image grids, friend counters, view counts, and the like, social comparison becomes more pronounced.

Hampton, K., Rainie, L., Lu, W., Shin, I., & Purcell, K. (2015) Psychological Stress and Social Media Use Hebebci, M.T., & Shelley, M. (2018). Analysis of the Relationship between University Students’ Problematic Internet Use and Loneliness International Journal of Assessment Tools in Education, 5(2), 223-234.

Nowland, R. Necka, E. Cacioppo, J. (2017) Loneliness and Social Internet Use: Pathways to Reconnection in a Digital World?

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Social Comparison and Virtual Makeover Social comparison theory originates from Leon Festinger (1954). Humans are considered to have a natural desire to compare themselves with others, often for several purposes such as evaluating their own selves, making decisions and being affiliated within groups. Traditionally, social comparison happened within a socalled “offline context”, where people would compare themselves with close others (e.g. colleagues, friends, relatives) and the source of comparison was often limited.

With the growth of the Internet, the paradigm of social comparison has changed from offline to online, and people receive much more comparative information from social media.

Making people feel lonely is not the only contradiction of social media. Given the opportunity to showcase their personal characteristics, many people are obsessed to convey their success, personalities and positive emotions on SNSs. People may even feel that they are forced to undertake a virtual makeover, or portraying the best self version of oneself the Internet. For example, research has found that individuals engage in social comparison and resulting selfie-editing is not because of their dissatisfaction with appearance, but because of the desire for more ideal online selfpresentation (Chae, 2017).

There are two kinds of social comparison, upward social comparison occurs when comparing oneself with superior others, whereas downward social comparison occurs when comparing oneself with inferior others. According to a research, “results revealed that participants’ state self-esteem and relative self-evaluations were lower when the target person’s profile contained upward comparison information (e.g., a high activity social network, healthy habits) than when the target person’s profile contained downward comparison information (e.g., a low activity social network, unhealthy habits)”.(Vogel, Rose, Roberts, & Eckles, 2014) It is hard for people not to compare with one another, therefore when people encounter a feeling low self-esteem, it is said that downward comparison can be a good way to gain a realistic and more forgiving perspective about the situation. That is the reason why nowadays influencers start to post their real selves or vulnerability (e.g., a beauty influencer posts pictures without any makeup) to attract more followers. While the pressure for virtual makeover could possibly promote a vicious cycle online, being more authentic, accepting, and open of one’s vulnerability and weaknesses could promote a healthier relationship between ourselves and our digital contacts.

Festinger, L. (1954). A Theory of Social Comparison Processes. Human Relations, 7(2), 117–140.

Chae, J. (2017). Virtual makeover: Selfie-taking and social media use increase selfie-editing frequency through social comparison.

Computers in Human Behavior, 66, 370–376 Vogel, E. A., Rose, J. P., Roberts, L. R., & Eckles, K. (2014). Social media, social comparison, and self-esteem. PsycEXTRA Dataset.

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Salient Findings 1. Loneliness is not merely a mental or internal phenomenon, it is highly physical, externalized, and visceral During our research in social isolation, we found out that the feeling of loneliness and isolation is not only a negative emotion buried in one’s heart but also a feeling that one would like to vent physically. The main reason is that loneliness manifests situationally in a particular space and time. For example, in our cultural probe research, the four participants illustrated their loneliness by taking photos of static objects around them. In Figure 1, the participants were able to associate loneliness to physical single items in their surroundings that they could “relate” to.

Figure 3: Three separate participants associate their loneliness with similar depictions

This suggests that loneliness potentially has also something to do with one’s spatiotemporal experience and is not just a feeling occurring in the mind. Another piece of evidence that suggests the same things is the frequent use of tactile and descriptive words such as “deep”, “dark”, “smell”, “silence”, etc. in the “Small Poems” cultural probe.

Figure 4: Small Poems

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In our field observation, bodystorming, and scenario exercises, we also observed this insight emerging in the way we naturally acted out the scenes we described. Even without specifically planning or instruction, many small actions and idiosyncrasies were unconsciously enacted in our two scenarios. It was interesting to note behaviours like head-bowing, fist-clenching, walking in isolation in an empty street, washing one’s face with water, holding the laptop tightly to show resistance, fidgeting, and etc. as manifestations of physicality.

This finding was most strongly supported in the participatory workshop where we aimed to help our co-designers temporarily escape from the isolated or stressful situations they were experiencing. We conducted a participatory workshop to observe how people cope with this negative feeling, and we got a result which surprisingly matched with our assumptions. Body exercises such as stretching and yoga proved effective in getting the participants to a relaxed and refreshed state. The two groups of participants were told to act out two different stressful scenarios respectively, and both of them addressed the conflict of the scenario by devising a “shelter” to protect them. A group reported they want to “turtle”, as in, to retreat inside a shell with everyone for a while, using clothing and jackets to physically hide themselves while enacting the conflict.

Given this finding, during concept development, we researched existing stressrelieving products and services that promoted a sense of physical relief. Although these products and services are designed to help people deal with all kinds of stress rather than a specific cure to the social isolation phenomenon, we still think they are good references because most of them encourage physical and visceral behaviour.

Figure 5: A roleplay scene from the Participatory Workshop

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Catharsis therapy Catharsis therapy is the therapy that encourages aggressive behaviour to help people vent their negative emotions. There are cathartic products and services. There are a lot of examples of cathartic products, such as “the Boxing Toy” or squeezable toys.

One good example of the cathartic service is the “the Breaking Room” which allows customers to break plates and destroy things.

Sense deprivation therapy Another kind of therapy that is becoming popular is the sense deprivation therapy.

It is a therapy that deliberately blocks one’s senses by putting him or her in a floating tank which is pitch-black, light-proof, soundproof etc. It is described as relaxing and conducive to meditation and matches with the finding in our PD workshop of “being turtle”. However, the health effects of this kind of therapy are not proven.

These kinds of products and services are already common. However, they may be too straightforward that they do not provide any useful insights and the interaction among people, which we think are more important when dealing with social isolation.

That is to say, although we consider the cathartic and physical approach as a useful way to deal with loneliness, it is not the only way to do it.

Figure 6: The Break Room, https://thebreakroom.com.au/

Figure 6.1: Floatation Therapy SPA, https://www.floax.com. hk/Floax

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2. Revealing our vulnerabilities to each other is beneficial in alleviating our loneliness The social comparison phenomenon caused by the social media is pervasive. In our cultural probe research, we also observed a similar phenomenon, where participants were asked to build their online self and real self profiles separately via an instagramlike pseudo website. Generally, participants showed a more positive and successful self in the online version than the real one where they showed less attractive, stranger images. People were also more willing to show their actual faces, their friends and families in the real self-profile. This suggests that there is a threshold of personal vulnerability that the online space obscures behind a wall of online self-curation.

However, despite showing the best of themselves online, participants also revealed on the probes that online media is also the source of deeper feelings Figure 7: A vulnerable moment from Participant 1’s like relationship stress, guilt, shame, and Lonelygrams anxiety, because of the pressure of seeing perfectly-curated, idealized profiles of others but they have no choice but to use them everyday. People kept perpetuating a vicious cycle of loneliness and pressure because no one wants to be the first to tear down the proverbial wall and allow oneself to be vulnerable.

It is said that a deliberate downward comparison can be a cure to this issue. That being said, we are not encouraging people to look down upon others but to somehow reveal our vulnerabilities to each other and learn a lesson from each other. During our participatory workshop, we designed an activity called “diary sharing�, where participants wrote down their stories anonymously in advance and the stories were then read by one of our participants randomly in a silent and dark space. After reading the story, participants gave their heartfelt suggestions. It is reported that participants enjoyed this process and their stress was relieved because they have gained insights that they were not the only one to experience extreme pressure in their life and they were not alone. It was important for us to conduct this activity in the dark, in person, and in silence to heighten the sense of vulnerability. These findings could not have been possible had our participants not been open to sharing their personal secrets and fears with us.

Figure 7.1: Probe- Profile Builder

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3. Newness and serendipitous, unexpected social situations can be helpful in addressing anxiety and pressure People can not only gain insights and suggestions from people close to them, but also from strangers, which can often provide a brand new point of view. We observed people’s desire to connect with strangers or new friends in the participatory workshop; our participants were glad to be paired with people they didn’t really know well and even perform stretching exercises that required them to be in extra close proximity to someone else.

In the workshop, the second group of participants also came up with an idea to relieve stress and loneliness by engaging with “friends of one’s friends”. In the scenario they generated, the protagonist was invited to play video games and gained confidence from new friends who complimented him from the point of view he had never thought of. It was hinted in the contact sphere probe where our participants sometimes had very meaningful interactions and conversations with acquaintances like roommates and strangers.

In addition, we also observed that people sometimes are more willing to reveal their deep feelings to strangers or acquaintances rather than close friends if they can reveal them anonymously. This kind of behaviour has already existed since the invention of “message in a bottle”. It is because the anonymousness ensures privacy and therefore encourage people to vent their true feelings. It is also very common that people would like to listen to strangers’ stories or opinions because of curiosity. That’s why newness and serendipity can possibly be a good cure to one’s social pressure.

Modern smartphone applications allow people to communicate with friends and strangers easily and remotely. There are tons of stranger social media application that featured in sharing stories and feelings anonymously. These apps provide good references, despite the fact that Figure 8: Probe- Spheres of Contact there are negative side effects they could result in. For example, there is a Chinese app named ”0305-天涯共此時” which provide no other function but to post stories anonymously. User cannot even set their profile or username. Another example is an English app named “Vent”, which allows users to post messages with emotions and others can “hug”, “like” or “yay” for them.

Obviously, these apps emphasize the importance of newness and unexpectedness.

However, just like the cathartic therapy, there are hidden risks within this kind of apps that people might stray from the point and not be able to find a solution to their real pressure. What’s more, the use of mobile apps might also result in the addiction to the online world, which might ironically deepen physical isolation. and fears with us.

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Post-Midterm Design Process Low Fidelity Prototyping - Sketching Based on our final resolution and design concepts, we rapidly prototyped the three major functions of the cathartic experience with quick sketches to jumpstart the discussion and feedback within our team. From our initial thoughts, in the telling space, there is one big screen for showing the stories left by participants randomly and one kiosk for participants to write their stories and also give comments to others.

For the punching board, it is divided into several sections. Each section represents one kind of stress, and there is a counter for counting how many times the section is punched. The design of division and counters are aimed to make the space more playful and motivate participants to easily join it. In the shouting board, the main activity is that participants can speak out their disadvantages by microphones and also listen to others’ shortcomings by headsets.

Figure 9: Telling Board sketch

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Figure 10: Punching Board sketch

Figure 11: Shouting Board sketch

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Physical Mock-up To further develop our idea and prepare for a microtest, we built a physical mockup with cardboard to represent the pop-up shop and its key functions. In this way, the design becomes more specific and concrete than sketching. The shop has three entrances with curtains so that people outside can dimly see what is going on inside the shop, which can make it more mysterious and curiosity-inducing. The main big entrance leads to the telling board section, and the other two entrances lead to the punching section and the shouting section separately.

We also wanted to get people’s reception and reaction towards the act of punching so we borrowed a pillow, wrapped it in paper and wrote words on it to see how people would hit it. Similarly, we prepared an empty box to simulate how the shouting receptacle should feel when yelled into. Additionally, we also made two little “people” by paper for representing the testers. The mock-up and tools can enable testers to take an active role in experiencing our concepts. In this way, users can apply their practical knowledge, and complex use situations can become more concrete.

Figure 12: Cardboard Low Fidelity Prototype

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Microtesting We went over the major steps of usability test during the microtest with two pairs of testers. Each pair represents two acquaintances that meet with each other and encounter a pop-up by chance in the scenario. The visiting order depended entirely on them. We rotated the cardboard prototype showing them the three entrances and asked them to pick a first one. When they have chosen a door to go into, we explained the space and invited them to do some tasks by other props we prepared for them.

For the participants They can easily understand the evaluator and the tasks they were invited to do. They didn’t feel awkward. Conversely, they did talk aloud. A lot of thoughts, comments and advice sprung up during the process.

For the note taker The note taker wrote as fast as possible, but missing something was still probable.

So, audio or video recording, waiting for note-taking before moving on to the next step, increasing the number of note-takers and other methods will be considered in the following usability testings. Besides, a more clear, detailed, well-structured note sheet is needed.

For the design We also gained some feedback for the design from the participants. During the telling activity, one participant hesitated to give comments since he is not good at giving advice. Some participants think it’s fun to know what the companion wrote about.

A participant thinks the punching activity is engaging and makes her feel better.

One suggestion is that the punching bag should be bigger. A bigger size can bring a totally different experience. Thus, this point is taken into consideration when we are planning out our later prototypes. For the shouting, there was one participant that took time to think about what to shout before his shouting, which reminds us that we should let participants take as much time as they want to prepare before recording their voice.

Figure 13. Microtesting Scenes

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Medium Fidelity Prototyping For the medium fidelity prototype by planning out more specifically what we envisioned per section of the space. Particularly in terms of the shape of the interactive surfaces, the equipment to be used, and the general flow of the user interface screens.

Figure 14: Initial sketches of the spaces

We started 3D modelling, determining the overall style and tone colour. We made the prototype closer to reality, and further refined the details of each section, like the specific locations, entrances, exits and size of the devices.

Upon rendering the space, a few considerations became pertinent to address: the dimensions of the space and how many people could fit it in comfortably, the color of the walls, lighting, and the level of exposure the space should have to those viewing it from outside.

Figure 15: 3D Modeling in Solidworks

This was also an appropriate time to determine the visual style of the space. We chose a gender-neutral calming hue and a simple typography style that would be easy to adapt for UI design as well as signage. The graphic and illustrative style we wanted to achieve was abstract and thought-provoking. We used geometric shapes contrasted with liquid textures to create textures that we artful and simple, but not corporateslick

Figure 16: Visual style

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Overall Render The main colours were also determined, which are light-green, white, black and grey. Light-green is the dominant tone. The relative space sizes of the sections were also set to form a square overall space.

Figure 17: 3D modeling with simple styling

Telling Board The big screen with a light-green background can present about 6 messages together at the same time.

The message boxes are moving towards one direction slowly. Each message box is rectangular, in a white color. For the kiosks’ system, there are 4 pages in total.

The first page directly invites participants to write stories.

The second page is for editing the stories by using the virtual keyboard. In the third page, they are requested to answer some questions. And the final page says “Thank you!� to participants. Thus, the whole system is focusing on writing activity, with only 4 clear and simple pages.

After participants submit their stories, the stories will appear on the big screen immediately.

Figure 18: 3D modeling of Telling board

Figure 19: Telling board interface, Medium Fidelity

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Punching Board In the punching space, there are about 5 punching blocks on one wall and about 10 blocks on the other wall. They are coloured in light-green, white and black, with a little bit different heights, which makes them look more aesthetic. The word on each block means one kind of pressure, which is in English or Chinese.

Figure 20: 3D modeling of Punching board

Figure 21: Punching board interface

Shouting Board In the shouting space, the devices are only for one person to use. The three key screens of the shouting system are the tutorial page, the recording page and the listening page. In the recording page, participants can record and stop by pressing the same button.

In the listening page, participants are able to play or stop playing the voice message by one button.

Figure 22: 3D modeling of Shouting board

Figure 23: Shouting board interface

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Medium Fidelity Feedback For the writing space, the message box design could be more intuitive-looking and light-hearted, like a speech bubble. Additionally, an optional question page for instructing users about sensitive information collection and information collected should be created. Lastly, we were challenged to find an opportunity to facilitate interpersonal interaction by writing stories in this public wall.

For the shouting space, we were suggested to adjust the Chinese instruction, consider the factor of language as well as privacy, and test the shouting part one user after another using real recording devices like headphones.

Lastly, in the punching space we would have to consider ergonomics when deciding the height of devices and try as much as possible to simulate feedback through a counter, change in color, audio and/or tactile feedback.

Further Development In response to the feedback we received, we also worked on developing the evaluation prototype further by working with different kinds of software and actual hardware to simulate more accurately the tactile aspects of our interactive space. We paid particular attention to the kinds of soft surfaces appropriate for punching and the experience of recording and hearing sounds with a headset Axure Software For prototyping with actual user text input. It was non-negotiable for us to simulate with user-generated text input. For this, we needed to use Axure to create a text box that could accept a text submission and project it on a different interface.

MIT AppInventor MIT AppInventor’s easy integration with an Android phone made it the best choice for prototyping a user-generated sound recording and playback.

Arduino and Piezoelectric Sensor Simulation of feedback was important in the cushions to be punched in the Force space. For prototyping the punching space counter, we used a Piezoelectric sensor hooked to a web interface that displayed a changing number counter.

Figure 24: Punching Board Circuit Prototype

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Evaluation Prototype High Fidelity Prototyping In addition to the low and medium fidelity prototype, the high fidelity prototype rendered through 3D modelling serves as a representation of a realistic facility, allowing the user to simulate or experience the product as closely as possible, to the tactile space that does not yet exist. Also, the prototype with hardware and software to simulate more accurately the tactile aspects of our interactive space.

Exterior and Top View The top view gives a clear overview of the size and the shape of each room. Pure white wall with logo in order to catch passenger’s eye. There are three entrances, allowing people to enter the space from different sides. People can enter any of the three spaces in any order or succession.

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Word: Telling Space (1) Purpose Helping participants release their feelings by writing down their stories of what bothered currently and also getting comments from other people.

(2) Description The large screen is for displaying participants’ stories randomly. The title “Hey, what’s been troubling you?” shown in the middle is for participants easily understand the meaning of this screen. The message boxes are changed to speech bubbles, which looks more light-hearted, when compared to the design in medium fidelity prototype.

The portraits are randomly colored, which makes the screen looks more lively. If a story receives its comment, the comment will appear with this story in the form of a dialogue.

The kiosks are used for participants to tell about their troubles. For each kiosk system, the very first page is focused on guiding participants to write.

When finishing writing down stories, participants are invited to give comments to one story that is posted closest to his in time, which is a kind of interaction between two participants. The reason why we add this interaction is because the one

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who writes closest to this person in time is probably still in this space, or even standing by this person and using the other kiosk. It may lead to some unexpected dialogues between two strangers or acquaintances.

After that, participants are requested to answer some optional questions, including gender, age, and suggestions for us. The gender and age are collected for statistical analysis, and the suggestions aim at helping us refine our design in the future.

The instruction about how we’ll use the personal information is shown with each question, for kindly reminding that their privacy is safe with us. Participants can skip those questions if they are not willing to give answers.

(3) Interactive prototype In addition to the rendering and the interfaces, an interactive prototype is also prepared for further evaluation. Two real kiosks and the main display screen are simulated by one Axure prototype. It requires a pair of participants to test for each time by one computer. For instance, when the person who uses the left “kiosk” finishes his writing, his story will be shown on the “big screen” as a form of a circle portrait and a bubble-like message box with his words. Assume that he is the closest one of the people who wrote before the person using the right one. Thus, when the right one completes his story, he can see a request of giving a comment to the story of the left person. After he gives the comment, the comment will appear on the “big screen” with the story of the left person. In this way, the participants can experience the key process of the whole activity by this interactive prototype.

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Sound: Shouting Space (1) Purpose Helping people release their pressure by shouting and also build up their confidence by hearing what other people say about their disadvantages.

(2) Description There are two screens that are used for guiding participants to perform each step of the shouting activity. The user flow design becomes more complete and the height of the devices has been adjusted to be more appropriate for people in the high fidelity prototype. Participants will follow the instructions to record their voice based on the prompt: “What makes you feel inferior?� by the microphones and hear playback messages from others by the headsets. The system will automatically help to match the language used in case people.

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As regards the activity sequence, firstly, participants should touch the screen to start as it says. In the next page, participants are kindly reminded that the microphone will block out their voice so that others will not hear it. In this way, participants can know that their privacy is well protected and feel free to speak out their secrets. When they move on to the next step, here comes the theme of this activity: shouting out about what makes them feel inferior within 15 seconds. The time limitations are to encourage them to shout more targeted and direct. In the recording screen, they are able to press the buttons to record, stop as well as playback. When completing their own recording, they will receive a message from others randomly.

Participants can repeat the message as many times as they want in case they don’t hear clearly for one time.

Figure 25: The special mute microphone can block out user’s voice

(3) Interactive prototype The interactive prototype completely simulates the functionality of the shouting board.

With a mobile app made by MIT App Inventor, participants can record their voice and hear playback recordings from others. The two audio playbacks we prepared are made by designers, which are about their jobs.

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Force: Punching Space (1) Purpose Releasing pressure by punching the “source/s of their anxieties”, besides, by reading the numerical display offers a way for them to know how many have similar problems to get comfort from it.

(2) Description The punching blocks are in different colors and well-spaced. Each block has one word on it, in English or Chinese, for representing one possible source of pressure and stress, such as “Social Media”, “My Boss”, “Money” and so on. We keep the words that the participants liked to punch during the microtest, and also add more words that we think possibly belongs to adults’ pressures. Participants can choose whichever block to punch according to what type of stress they are suffering recently. Since there is more than one block, participants can punch together. Having more than one person participating in this activity creates a better atmosphere. Participants will be more willing to join it.

Each block has one counter on top of it, which shows how many times this block has been punched. Thus, to some extent, the number of the counter reveals the level of this kind of stress of people. The counters make the space more interesting. People may be more motivated to vent their emotions when seeing the counter changes after each time they punch.

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(3) Interactive Prototype We mimic the punching scene by a pillow and a screen with a built-in counter which is made by Arduino WebSocket. When the pillow is punched, the number on the screen will count up. Participants will be able to easily understand the feature of the counter, which is on the top of each punching board.

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Usability Testing

Figure 25: Scenes from Usability Testing

In order to obtain rich feedback from potential end-users, we executed our highfidelity prototypes as closely as we possibly could to show the important details of our concept. We invited 8 people to participate in the usability testing and received rich feedback for each aspect of our design. Four participants were able to test the whole prototype that consisted of the 3 spaces: Word, Sound, and Force. It was held from December 4-5, 2019. The 4 participants tested the product in pairs in a session that lasted around 45 minutes to an hour The 8 participants were aged 22-25, most of them adult students. Our usability test aimed at testing if users could successfully achieve 5 tasks centered around the three spaces, and at the same time obtaining feedback about the functional and formal qualities of the prototype. To gain more information, we also had a set of pre-test questions to ask: Pre-test Questions - Have you ever participated in platforms where you could express feelings anonymously?

- Have you ever visited interactive spaces where physical activity was encouraged?

- Do you have experience visiting pop-up stores and experimental retail experiences situated in public spaces?

- When have you last experienced loneliness? What have you done to address it?

- How do physical and expressive experiences help you?

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Our participants have previous experience in visiting art installations, exhibits, and pop-up stores and their level of interest in them depended on the appeal of the space’s exterior and if the space potentially offered some sort of product or deal. One of our participants also has experience using an anonymous online platform where they could express their opinions in secrecy. To prime them on the nature of the study, we also asked them about their most recent or significant feelings of loneliness. Interestingly, many of them have remarked the recent socio-political situation that had reached its climax in the siege of the university and the suspension of all face-to-face meetings.

It was fascinating to discuss how the loss of a physical place to work in and not seeing classmates, teachers, and friends in the flesh have caused them to feel alone and demotivated.

We also asked them about their feedback on the aesthetics of the space, how provocative it was, and if they found themselves appealed to go in. According to the users, the exterior seemed too formal, corporate, and too much like a cosmetic booth.

The logo treatment outside also made it look like a bank. These were important points for improvement regarding the look and feel of cathâ These are the results of the usability test centered around five tasks: Word Space Task 1: “We’d like you to write “What troubles you currently?” using the following screens” Goal: Successfully write a text-based narration For task 1, writing a text based narration with the prompt, all users were able to complete it but privacy and ease of input emerged as an issue, as the kiosk construction was too public and too visible, and a touch keyboard on the kiosk would be difficult to use. Users also wanted more options in general, in choosing if they could only comment on others or just write a story.

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Task 2: We’d like you to give a comment on the message that had just appeared.

Goal: Successfully write a text-based comment For task 2, giving a comment to others, relatability and feedback mechanisms were the issues. It was important for users to be able to control what messages they could give comments to. Additional categorization of stories would help users sort out stories they would relate to. Additional feedback was given to accommodate delayed posting and email notifications.

Sound Space Task 3: We’d like you to to follow the instructions in the screens & shout “What makes you feel inferior?”

Goal: Successfully shout a voice-based narration The main feedback for Task 3 was the awkwardness of talking to a screen, an audio instruction with a human voice would be better.

Proximity was also an issue as privacy was important to the user.

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They were quite guarded when saying their answers out loud.

Task 4: We’d like you to listen to the audio that will play after. You may think and reflect on the messages Goal: Listen to audio playback from others Relatability emerged as an issue again in task 4 as users expressed a desire to listen to specific categories stories they had interest in. However they enjoyed the experience of hearing someone’s voice even if that person was unfamiliar. The unfamiliarity of the voice piqued their curiosity as they showed intent to listen to more. We had only planned that they listen to one playback only, so this was a hint for us to adopt a more open and explorative listening experience. A more visually-appealing user interface where people could tap on random areas on the screen to play messages would be more engaging.

Force Space Task 5: We’d like you to to punch any board to your heart’s content.

Goal: Punch the board Lastly, Task 5 had comments on relatability and punch feedback.

Customization was suggested to accommodate user’s own prompts, as many times, sources of stress may be very personal and specific. Feedback factors such as the shape and feel of the board, the punch count value and punch strength value were also weighed and discussed.

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Usability Test: Analysis Our usability test in summary leads us to 3 main actions points for the future. One is addressing how to better simulate a state of vulnerability. Because the actions and input our space asks from the user are very sensitive and personal, we need to think of more effective ways to coax users into this all-important, open-minded state.

Currently, it is a challenge because people are by default, on guard about their feelings.

One of our users even termed it as “feeling naked�. It is tricky to make them feel at ease with showing weakness because society has ingrained in us otherwise.

A future step to addressing this could be working on a preconditioning application or experience, that might involve narratives, context-setting, and clearer instructions.

The second point is improving the relatability of content, user stories, and punching prompts in terms of their emotion-inducing qualities so users can internalize the messages more effectively. We can address this with better research and application on effective prompts for emotional expression. Another future step could be a better collection and information tagging of user-generated stories Lastly, the usability test revealed that we needed to further enhance a sense of provocation and exploration in the physical space. Our prototype can improve the provocativeness and allure factor of the space, make it more appealing to the users.

The overall aesthetic and feel of the space could invoke more curiosity in the user. The UI and surfaces inside could also be improved to encourage playful interaction. We can address this in the future by improving visual design and color theory research, possibly even using art therapy and semiotic studies on what users found visually stimulating. From a material standpoint, we could also explore better options for surface material, construction, lighting, and sound.

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Final Solution Prototype Refinements

Based on the feedback garnered from the usability test, we revised the high fidelity prototype once more for the final solution. Many features were discussed and weighed against each other. Some future improvements were not feasible given the physical, financial, and time constraints, but we have iterated one last time to produce the final solution.

Exterior Space - Rename all the spaces Telling Board->Word, Shouting Board->Sound, Punching Board->Force - Enlarge the space by a factor of two A bigger area is needed in order to afford more people at a time.

- Change the texture on the outside wall as well as move the logo from outside to the inside board to make it less like a cosmetic shop.

- Improve the visual texture and make it look more artful and abstract.

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Word Space - Add the logo and change the shape of the main board, visitor can easily recognize the theme by walking pass the entrance.

- Move kiosks from open to an insidious space to protect user’s privacy. Due to ergonomics concerns, we modified the shape of the input device into a vertical screen and physical keyboard.

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The word space has been revised to accommodate, translation, the new horizontal screen and to make the writing and commenting separate tasks. The main screen has also been updated with an enhanced visual design. For writing we made sure to revise with new user input, such as a toggle to delay posting, an input box for email and a tagging feature to categorize stories into different groups. For browsing, we made an additional screen to let users choose what type of comments they would like to read. Long and short stories can be accommodated as the boxes can be collapsed and expanded.

Word Space: Writing a story mobile UI

Word Space: Commenting on a story mobile UI

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Sound Space - Leave more space between the two sets of devices for privacy concerns.

- Originally, the instructions are merely displayed on the screen. We added voice instructions to make the human-machine interaction smoother and more like talking to a person.

- Allow users to choose topics before listening to others’ stories.

- Changed the way of the interaction of listening to others’ stories. Before, users can only listen to one recording and it plays automatically. Now, they can select three from a playful bubble display.

- The instructions are more detailed and refined. The interaction of the recording and listening to others is improved.

Sound Space: Screen Instructions and UI

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In the sound space, we focused on streamlining the experience from recording to listening. the main revision we made is to add a listening screen that sorts recorded messages by category, and a playful bubble interface where people can press to play any message randomly.

Force Space - The original punching board looks not comfortable to punch, replaced it with a softer cushion, besides, it built with a counter to calculate how many times of punch.

- Instead of printing prompts on the board, there will be a projector hanging on the ceiling to project on the cushion so that people know where to punch on the “source/s of their anxieties�.

Finally, in the punching space, we revised the punching surface to be more 3d. We also added a counter that could detect the strength of the punch. To clarify, this punch strength value is only visible once because we don’t want to turn this into a competition. Another major revision was to add a customizable board with a QR and mobile input so users can personalize the board they want to punch.

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Force Space: Prompt projections with punch counter and strength gauge

Force Space: User-generated customization on the prompt, mobile UI

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Final Scenario Exposition Agung is a 29-year-old Indonesian graduate student who has been studying for an MSc Chemistry in Hong Kong for 7 months already. He is kind, independent, introverted, but very driven and goal-oriented. Although studying abroad keeps him away from his family, girlfriend and friends, and takes him much effort to get familiar with the new surroundings, he is still hopeful and sees this as the turning point of his life.

First Turning Point One day, Agung worked hard on his project and was the last one to leave the laboratory. Because he had done a satisfying job and felt proud of himself, he took a photo of the front door of the laboratory and posted an Instagram with a hashtag “#researchlife”. However, he spotted a story from his groupmate Chen, who posted about giving a speech in an important conference, in a neat suit and with a confident smile, with the same hashtag “#researchlife”. He felt that his post now looked so shabby that he immediately deleted it. The satisfaction he just gained vanished. He tried to be distracted by browsing Instagram randomly but felt even worse when he saw that his cousin had gotten married recently and one of his friends had successfully found a start-up.

Rising Action / Confrontation Agung begins to think that he is less intelligent with the others. In order to maintain his dignity, the only way to do is to work even harder. He sets the goal to finish his project one month ahead of all his groupmates. Besides that, he takes a part-time job to be a student assistant to help undergraduate students with their laboratory classes.

Since then, Agung gradually cuts down the meeting with his friends and peers to avoid feeling inferior to them. He keeps his stress secret to his girlfriend and families because he wants to perform well in front of them. He documents his studying and working on Instagram stories and gets a lot of likes and positive comments. He feels that his confidence is regained in spite of the fact that he’s getting more and more exhausted.

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Climax Agung’s advisor asked him to make a mid-term presentation of his project a week later. He’s psyched to do an amazing job to impress his peers. He prepared so hard for it that he slept only 1-2 hours a day. Still, the difficulty of the project was out of his expectation and he couldn’t finish the presentation until the last moment. It’s 6 AM and he has just finished his preparation. Unfortunately, he was so tired that he dozed off and slept over his 9 AM group meeting, waking up at 12NN, still in his pyjamas. He was surprised that nobody called him. He called his adviser and he scolded him and gave him a D for the presentation. After the call, he feels dizzy and suddenly became spaced out. He plops on his bed, puts a blanket over his head and felt burnout.

Resolution The next day, Agung happens to be invited to go play games at the net cafe by a friend he met briefly at an orientation, Ian. Ian tells him that he has gotten into some trouble and want to relax. Feeling very blank and passive, Agung just agrees to go with on a whim.

On the way to the net cafe, a mysterious and strange looking pop-up shop caught their eyes. They feel curious and want to check it out. The space is divided into three sections. They go into the first section- FORCE section, and see the wall covered with a huge soft cushion, which has several blocks with names on it such as “Family”, “Time”, “Career”. Some people were punching while laughing. Agung follows the instruction and punches hard on the section of “Schoolwork”. He is very engaged with it and takes some time to warm up before he punches. Once he punches, the number of counter increases and the other counter shows the level of the strength.

He also notices that Ian customizes the word “no will 2 work asdfghjklkj” on one of the blocks. They then start to chat and joke around as they hit different parts of the board. Somehow, despite panting and out of breath, they feel somewhat refreshed and relieved both physically and mentally. It was unusual for Agung to see Ian acting this way, but it made him understand his friend better.

Then they move on to the next section- SOUND section. He puts on the headset, chooses the language on the touch screen and shouts out what makes him feel inferior: “No matter how hard I work, nothing I do gets anywhere, maybe I really am a talentless failure who just managed to pass university!”. He has been holding it in heart for a long time. After he finishes recording, the next activity pops out that allows him to hear problems from others. There are six categories of problems for him to choose. He selects “Time” and randomly presses one bubble. Suddenly a voice comes out from the headphone:“I am so disappointed with myself because I’ve already wasted a lot of time changing careers to no good result.” Agung selects more bubbles to listen to and feels sorry for the problems he hears from the people whose voices

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were new to him. Strangely this also makes him feel a little comforted as he could relate to some of what the voices were saying. Ian asks Agung what he shouted and Agung laughs while sharing what happened to him in the past week. Ian says he can completely understand his situation as well. They both move on to the final section.

A huge screen draws their attention once they enter the word space. “Oh, the name of the space is Catha. That’s why it let us punch and talk about what we are anxious about before.” Agung said to Ian. “Yes, this screen shows a lot of messages and comments. They must leave by someone who visited here.” Ian responded and noticed that there are two ATM-looking kiosks hidden on both sides of the door. As they try to interact with it, they found that this activity only has a slightly different from the previous section, that is this time is by writing down what has been troubles currently and choose whether to give comments to others. They feel comfortable with the design of the kiosks as it well protects privacy when doing something secretly.

The story he writes is about missing an important deadline in school due to poor time management. After writing, he sets that the system will post his writing to the wall 15 min later. Besides, he leaves his email because he is looking forward to receiving others’ comments. Ian doesn’t want to write anything down but would like to see if there is a story that makes him want to comment. He scans the QR code and operates the system by his mobile phone since it’s more convenient for him. He selected the topic of “Time” and soon notices there is a post that talks a very similar story with his.

He then makes a comment to it.

After they leave the space, on their way to the net cafe, Agung suddenly gets an email.

He checks it by phone and sees it is a comment left from someone else, to what he wrote in the Word Space. The comment says “Things happen. I have the same experience like you before. I believe you won’t miss next time.”

“That was a strange place but it was really fun,” Ian told Agung. Agung agrees and replies “Everyone’s struggling with their own things, I guess. I had the most horrible week”. They both walk to their destination while chatting about their problems.

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Discussion During this design research process, we have come to learn of several things through our investigation. We have divided them into discussions about the nature of our design problem, reflections on the research methods we have undertaken and recommendations for the future.

Nature of the design problem There are situational factors that lead to social isolation and loneliness, and the Internet acts as the role of an amplifier In our findings, social isolation is mostly situational. An individual may server from social isolation when she is being excluded from a certain group of people or social events. Our research subjects reported different factors of their social isolation, such as the language barrier because of studying abroad, ageing crisis or bad performance at school. However, all of these feelings are essentially caused by the comparison with superior others and can be changed if they think in a different way.

The pervasive social media strengthen the feeling of being excluded because it allows people to observe the lives of not close friends, strangers or even famous figures.

Most of the posts and pictures from social media are vivid and refined, which on the one side, satisfies people who post them by providing a downward comparison, while on the other side, amplifies the stress of the people who read them by revealing an upward comparison.

Figure 26 Visualizing the vicious cycle

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Loneliness is intertwined with anxiety, feelings of self-worth, anxieties about the future People tend to distinguish self and others with labels. When they experience that part of their personalities, beliefs or behaviours are different from the group they want to belong to, or their performance is inferior to the average of the group, they would start to feel isolated. As one of our participants indicated in her probes, she is anxious about the future and feels like everyone else has perfect lives other than her. In fact, she might just happen to fall into a vicious circle where everyone tries to be the best self on the Internet and impress others, which makes everyone looks perfect and eventually increases the pressure of everyone.

The importance of new social and material interactions As discussed above, we found out that people have three salient common behaviours to cope with feeling isolated, namely, venting emotions physically and viscerally, having downward comparison through vulnerability, and experiencing new and unexpected things. When we first brought it upon our project team to tackle this topic, we thought that it would be difficult to study because of the highly internal nature of sensitive feelings and emotions. However, as we proceeded, it was revealed that a big part of the issue had something to do with externalized social and material interactions. We realized that people in social isolation experiencing feelings of loneliness are still beings in the world, they were not necessarily trapped in their own thoughts as one may have easily assumed, but rather were continuously affected by the physical and digital world surrounding them.

The value of vulnerability Brene Brown, as a result of 12 years of social work studying shame and weakness, famously said that “Vulnerability is the core of shame and fear and our struggle for worthiness, but it appears that it’s also the birthplace of joy, of creativity, of belonging, of love.” Vulnerability is very challenging to elicit in people, as society’s norms and ingrained expectations on the meaning of strength form very rigid barriers that keep people from being open about their less-than-ideal emotional experiences.

Despite this, we learned through the probes and the participatory design workshop that when given an opportunity, people are more than willing to show more than a glimpse of their inner selves. We have spent a lot of time knowing our participants more deeply with the co-design artifacts they have graciously accepted to make for our study. They are willing to expose the deepest problems about their work, self, or family; communicate their immense worry for the future, their feelings of futility and meaninglessness, and their most idiosyncratic behaviors. We are grateful that our participants responded to our call. It seems like all it needed was a willing and listening ear.

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Learnings about conducting this study in a densely populated city, in this socio-political context We also like to take this opportunity to reflect on our learnings on conducting this kind of study in a densely populated city, in this particular divisive socio-political context. An article titled The future of loneliness published in The Guardian by Olivia Laing reads “But proximity, as city dwellers know, does not necessarily mean intimacy. Access to other people is not by itself enough to dispel the gloom of internal isolation. Loneliness can be most acute in a crowd‌Behind a computer screen, the lonely person has control. But the contact this produces is not the same thing as intimacyâ€?.

These lines make us think of the spatial and societal context this design problem was studied in. Hong Kong is a densely-populated urban area of 7.5 million people. With access to a free internet, thousands of applications for contacting people, we tried our best to uncover what factors led to feelings of loneliness in an urban setting like this.

Although we did not tackle it in any capacity, we are also curious how recent political events have affected feelings of isolation and anxiety in people. Some participants have touched upon it briefly, but it is too early to tell.

Reflection on the design process We have an abundance of learnings on the iterative design process. With design toolkits, informance, and participatory design, the amount of collected information was more than we expected and was also much more interesting to follow through than the common approach.

Taking the process step-by-step The temptation to think in a results-oriented, product-first mindset was there in the beginning of the course; it was difficult to imagine how a distinct product could emerge from a seemingly vague process of non-traditional making. We are so used to seeing design work as final products, not realizing the wealth of information embedded in the process that comes before it. Eventually, as we powered through week after week, focusing on the task at hand, we realized that the insights began to uncover themselves, as we let the chips fall where they may. Taking from our own insight of vulnerability, it seems that we needed to let ourselves fall into the process head-first, not knowing where the drop might take us but trusting that with every week, we would reach clarity step-by-step.

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Informances are an underrated design method Especially when studying an issue like anxiety and loneliness that has everything to do with human behaviour, users can drop non-verbal clues from bodystorming and acting that help materialize insights. Admittedly, as designers who are used to drawing, reading, working with visual tools, etc., the informance methods were outside our comfort zones. However, looking back at this method, it was actually very helpful in revealing realistic and honest insights that we might have missed with typical design methods.

Co-design in eliciting creative thinking The participatory design workshop was an open way to let non-designers take part in design through the process of making. It was as if our participants possessed a latent design sense that could only be unearthed through the process of following the workshop exercises diligently. Designerly and participatory methods can support secondary research and vice-versa, sometimes they may even contradict them.

Small details do matter in prototyping Building physical props to simulate accurately, it was important for us to simulate the sensation of users’ input --- writing a story, recording their actual voices, punching an actual object with a corresponding reaction. As users, we always like to think that we have a comprehensive way of thinking, but in reality, we are also quite drawn to small details and stimuli. An effective human-interface usage is dependent on both the general idea of the product and the minute sensations that form the product interaction. We realized this when we insisted on collecting actual user-generated input (words, sounds, punches) for the usability testing.

The importance of user-testing When we immersed ourselves into design, the situations and scenarios sometimes are based on our imagination and we didn’t realize it. The user-testing likes a diagnosis for verification and validation of our design. For example, in the medium fidelity prototype, we add interaction between two kiosks since we believe it brings opportunities for unexpected dialogues among strangers or acquaintances. However, it turns out that it’s not very necessary and some of the participants feel naked if someone knows the story is his.

Participatory design also happens during the user-testing process. For instance, the ATM-looking kiosk idea came out of the brainstorm between participants and us when we were considering an appropriate way of protecting users’ privacy when they are writing stories. Besides, they reminded us of taking mobile terminal into consideration, because typing by phone should be more convenient.

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Recommendations for the future Better research on effective prompts for emotion Currently, our research and analysis on emotion and social pressure are not comprehensive enough, and we haven’t found an effective way to serve as the resolution of the social comparison issue. Since there are still a lot of unsolved problems in the psychological and sociological studies on human emotion, we assume that it is not easy to find a design solution. However, we can still tackle this problem by further research on users, literatures and competitive products.

Better collection and information tagging of user-generated stories Our design solution contains user-generated stories and we encourage users to participate in the process of sharing and discussing these stories. During our usability test, the majority of the testers reported that they want to hear stories that are relevant to them. However, in order to filter the desired content, they need to choose from given choices of topics. For the people who write the stories, they also need to label their stories accurately. These requirements increase the time and efforts spent in the space, which could lead to a unsmooth experience. Some of our testers reported a bit of unwillingness to finish the task. We haven’t figured out the best way to collect and label these user-generated contents. We can leverage the power of machine learning, collect users’ data to train a system that automatically label and recommend these stories. If so, we will need to ensure the transparency of the system and protect users’ data privacy especially because those stories are most private.

Improve the provocativeness of the design Our design is planned to set in public spaces. So far, we haven’t had a clear thought of the commercial feasibility of our design, nor the desirability of it. In order to improve the design and make it more provocative, we need to make the space more attractive.

First is to refine the experience within the design space, including the visual and the physical interaction. We can further establish the concept we created or turn it into a brand or culture. Second is to connect to the local service in order to ensure there is convincing commercial benefits in our design space. We can either make it more like a pop-up store with open space where people can see clearly from outside and it actually sales products, or make it more like an artistic space that can be more enclosed and to put in museums. Lastly, we need to consider that how would people know and get access to the space and make sure it is practical to do so.

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Appendix Part I

Part II

Iterations of the prototypes

Usability testing protocol and scripts and other documents

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Part I: Process Rough Sketching

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Space 3D Models

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Visual Style Process

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Word Space: Studies Medium Fidelity

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Word Space: Medium-High Fidelity

Access the Axure prototype here: https://xj786j.axshare. com/#id=w0rgqz&p=telling_board

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Word Space: Final

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Sound Space: Studies Medium Fidelity

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Sound Space: High Fidelity

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Sound Space: Final

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Force Space: Studies Medium Fidelity

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Force Space: High Fidelity

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Force Space: Final

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Usability Test Script Studying Internet-related social isolation and pressure in adults

Design Prototype: A cathartic installation experience situated at a public space containing three stress-relieving activities. It can help adults release their pressures, forgetting about comparing with the successes of others in society and be themselves, and also get comfort from strangers.

The cathartic installation experience contains three stress-relieving sections, which are ‘Shouting Board, ‘Punching Board’ and ‘Telling Board’. It is situated at a public space with three entrances. Each entrance leads to one activity section, so people can join one of the activities randomly.

Pre-test Questions 1. Have you ever participated in platforms where you could express feelings anonymously?

2. Have you ever visited interactive spaces where physical activity was encouraged?

3. Do you have experience visiting pop-up stores and experimental retail experiences situated in public spaces?

4. When have you last experienced loneliness? What have you done to address it?

5. How do physical and expressive experiences help you?

Usability Test Script Hello, my name’s is [member], and I’m going to walk you through today’s session.

Before we begin, I want to talk about this testing session and how valuable your feedback is. We encourage honest and open comments about the experience. This is not a session to test you, our users, but our product. I’d like to begin by thanking you for making time to speak with us. We’d like keep this session to [30-45 minutes]. Does that still work for you? We will do this test in pairs.

[Yes or No]

Good. Please let me know if you need a break.

There are no wrong answers, if you have doubts or questions, we’d like you to think aloud as much as possible: to describe what you’re looking at and what you’re trying to do. We will be recording the session if that is okay with you?

Finally, I want to confirm that you’ve received and read the informed consent forms for this process? If you have signed the agreement, we will collect them later. Do you have any questions?

We’d like you to assume an imaginative state of mind and internalize a certain scenario.

Imagine you are walking in a public area to relax after an extremely difficult week of bad luck in school or work and you feel a deep sense of loneliness and frustration. You are walking and you see this space.

Describe to us your situation and thoughts -- What are you thinking, are you alone or with a friend? What kind of public area do you imagine encountering this?

Show slide: Whole render of the physical space

This is a render of the physical space.

What are your thoughts on it? Would you go in?

Which entrance would you take?

What would make it more interesting for you to be curious enough about it?

Show slide: Show 3 entrances

Space 1: Telling Board

Show slide: Telling Board mock-up

We’d like you to read the instructions on the small screen and follow them accordingly

Task 1​: We’d like you to write"What troubles you currently?" using the following screens Kindly let us know your thoughts while doing this by thinking aloud

Task Goal: Successfully write a text-based narration Notes:

After inputting your text, a message on the screen appears

Task 2​: The second task for this space is to give a comment on the message that had just appeared. Kindly let us know your thoughts while doing this by thinking aloud

Task Goal: Successfully write a text-based comment Ask about the formal qualities of the user interface, functions, appropriateness of the task Notes:

Follow-up Questions: 1) Interface - How was the interface 2) Comments 3) What similar things have you used before 4) Suggestions

Space 2: Shouting Board

Show slide 3: Shouting Board mock-up

We’d like you to read the instructions on the small screen and follow them accordingly

Task 3​: We’d like you to follow the instructions in the following screens and shout "What makes you feel inferior?" Kindly let us know your thoughts while doing this by thinking aloud. Let us know if you need privacy for this task

Task Goal: Successfully shout a <15second voice-based narration Ask about formal qualities of the user interface, functions, appropriateness of task Notes:

After shouting, a message on the screen appears

Task 4​: The second task for this space is to listen to the audio that will play after. You may think and reflect on the messages you will hear. Kindly let us know your thoughts while doing this by thinking aloud

Task Goal: Listen to audio playback from others Ask about the formal qualities of the user interface, functions, appropriateness of the task

Notes:

Follow-up Questions: 5) Interface - How was the interface 6) Do you think it was effective to hear others’ problems in this way?

7) Privacy matters 8) Comments 9) What similar things have you used before 10) Suggestions

Space 3: Punching Board

Show slide: Punching Board mock-up

Task 5​: Given all the prompts on the wall, we’d like you to punch any board to your heart’s content.

Which one would you like to punch

Task Goal: Punch the board Ask about formal qualities of the user interface, functions, appropriateness of task, the feedback mechanisms, replay factor Notes:

Concluding

This concludes our usability test. Before ending, we like you to answer a post-test questionnaire:

Post-test Questions 1. I found the space interesting and curiosity-inducing a. 1 2 3 4 5 6 2. I would willingly enter a physical place like this in real life a. 1 2 3 4 5 6 3. I had an easy time understanding what to do in general a. 1 2 3 4 5 6 4. The space was effective in getting me to a self-reflective state of mind a. 1 2 3 4 5 6 5. I had an easy time understanding the “writing” part of the space a. 1 2 3 4 5 6 6. The “writing” part of the space was effective in helping me express my feelings a. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. I had an easy time understanding the “punching” part of the space a. 1 2 3 4 5 6 8. The “punching” part of the space was effective in helping me express my feelings a. 1 2 3 4 5 6 9. I had an easy time understanding the “shouting” part of the space a. 1 2 3 4 ​5​ 6

10.

The “shouting” part of the space was effective in helping me express my feelings a. 1 2 3 4 5 6 11.

Do you have any feedback about the experience?

Please be open and frank about your feedback and specific experiences. We would be happy to discuss the project more after the test is over. Thank you so much for your time and contact us anytime after the project if you are curious about its outcome and we would be more than happy to share the findings.

Tester 1

Tester 2

Tester 3

Tester 4

Task 1: Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d like you to write "What troubles you currently?" using the following screens

Roger

Katherine

Amber

Carol

Correct?

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Problems

1. It is pity that people cannot receive comments from others of their problems immediately.

2. The relationship between each question and response of the thread is not clear enough to match. One problem with one chat bubble might be better.

3. If shows age and gender can also help to classify the type of problems.

1. The objective of the telling board is not very clear when I first see it. I don't know why I need to write my story.

2.Bad feeling: I know I'll be on it the next second after I've written it, and then people will know I wrote it.

Anonymity makes it easier to communicate, and not everyone wants to interact with strangers around them.

1. There are only two machines for 1. It's not private enough. writing. It seems that everyone in the 2. If I want to tell, it would be a long space can see me writing. It's story, which I won't type it. awkward. So it may be better if there are more machines and the space is bigger so that no one can know which machine the latest story in the big board come from.

2. If it likes the floating bottle, which is totally anonymous, I will be more willing to join it.

Comments

It is definitely a good way to arouse people to think about the phenomenon/issue.

1. I don't want everyone can see my story. Just a few people can see it.

Showing the story randomly can resolve this problem.

I may scribble or just don't write when I may scribble or just don't write when I see it.

I see it.

Yes

Yes

Yes

Task 2: The second task for this space is to give a comment on the message that had just appeared.

Correct?

Yes

Tester 5

Correct?

Problems

Comments

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Tester 1

Tester 2

Tester 3

Tester 4

1. To catch people's attention, the question on homepage can add more element such as animation.

2. The arrow on the keyboard is confusing.

3. User allows to choose the problems they want to give comments.

Otherwise the problem that the system gave may not always interest them.

4. Can provide more than one ways to give comments. i.e. emogji, drawing.

1. I would not write my story if it tells me to write firstly. But if I see a interesting story from others firstly, I might write a comment on it.

2. It would be better if I can receive others' comments.

1. The order of giving comments and writing own story should be exchanged.

2. Scanning code and then writing by mobile phone may be more convenient.

Is there any way that I can give comments to others' stories?

I will ask my friend directly for details if I see her story in the screen.

1. The process is clear.

It's like a blind date 2. If it lets me give comment first, I might give comment and then be willing to write my own story. Because I will easily understand its meaning when it invites me to give comment to someone. I'll know what I do is meaningful. But if it firstly tells me to write down my trouble, I don't know why I need to write. Actually I have no desire to write.

Tester 5

Pre-test Questions

Katherine

Amber

Carol

1. Have you ever participated in platforms where you could express feelings anonymously?

yes, the university BBS

no

no

2. Have you ever visited interactive spaces where physical activity was encouraged?

dancing party

group game

ice-breaker activities

3. Do you have experience visiting pop-up stores and experimental retail experiences situated in public spaces?

No

No

No

4. When have you last experienced loneliness?

What have you done to address it?

I never feel lonely, just feel great pressure.

I did exercise to release it.

A month ago, No, I'm fine with when I was myself alone. crossed in love.

I did exercise like runing to address it.

5. How do physical and It helped a lot. expressive experiences help you?

It helped a lot. /

Post-test Questions I found the space interesting and curiosity-inducing

3

8

4

I would willingly enter a physical place like this in real life

3

8

3

I had an easy time understanding what to do in general

7

8

6

The space was effective in getting me to a selfreflective state of mind

2

3

5

I had an easy time understanding the “writing” part of the space

7

7

7

The “writing” part of the space was effective in helping me express my feelings

3

7

4

I had an easy time understanding the “punching” part of the space

7

8

6

The “punching” part of the space was effective in helping me express my feelings

4

8

6

I had an easy time understanding the “shouting” part of the space

3

8

6

The “shouting” part of the space was effective in helping me express my feelings

3

6

5

Do you have any feedback about the experience?

Katherine

Amber

What kind of public area do you imagine encountering this?

Art district, shopping mall

Appearance

It looks very nice and high-class.

Punching

1. It's weird to translate It's nice and interesting.

I can do it by little cost.

"Money" into "é&#x2021;&#x2018;č&#x17E;?".

2. The word "society" is too broad. The broad or ambiguous word may make people feel confused.

Shouting

It's negative. No matter what others say, I will feel bad. Either I feel they are better than me or they are not doing well. Something is unmodifiable.

Carol

1. It doesn't look like something that you can punch.

2. If the number reaches a certain value, will it has some animation?

It's a little bit weird. The It might work I think. shortcomings of others are not a comfort to me.

And I don't want to know.

Tester 1

Tester 2

Tester 3

Tester 4

Task 1: Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d like you to write "What troubles you currently?" using the following screens

Zeco

Wentao

Blake

Amogh

Correct?

yes, wrote a long and thoughtful answer

yes, writes a medium-length answer

yes, writes a short answer

yes, writes a short answer

Problems

1. It is hard to type on a touch panel which is perpendicular to the ground 2. When he type the message, he don't want to show to others. But the place looks like the entrance and it's open to others. He recommends the ATM display

No problem

Blake thought that you could press How to deal with people write the letters on the UI, not type it on the nonsense? keyboard

Comments

1. He don't want people to know who wrote the story on the screen. He want a delay of at least 30 min, enough time for him to get out of the space.

2. Actually the story he wrote is something he don't want to tell to even closest friends. Even if he goes with friends he would not want to show it to them.

He prefers a more private way of writing stories, like on an app

1. He said: this paragraph is too long, don't want to finish it. 140 characters would be comfortable.

2. For him it is too many steps, two more steps than he expected. One is the personal information part, the other is the preview of the message I write. (maybe remove the preview?)

1.He said I like to give comment without the people knowing who I am.

2. I don't think I would talk about super personal thing with friends. 3.

Maybe they can type this long, they can press "more".

Task 2: The second task for this space is to give a comment on the message that had just appeared.

Zeco

Wentao

Blake

Amogh

Task 2: The second task for this space is to give a comment on the message that had just appeared.

Zeco

Wentao

Blake

Amogh

Tester 1

Tester 2

Tester 3

Tester 4

Correct?

Zeco don't want to give comment

yes

yes

yes

Problems

He don't want to comment. He don't know what to comment. He don't know the person anyway.

He needed to scroll a small speech bubble to read the full comment

Blake thought the sample comment was too long to read Is the width of the path enough?

Comments

1. For the display. I feel like it would be hard to type on a touch panel.

When I type this message, I don't want to show it to others. Feels "naked" Because it looks like the entrance so everyone would be there.

Remember the ATM? I recommend the ATM display.

2. I don't want to comment. I don't know what to comment. I don't know the person anyway.

3.I don't want people to know who wrote the story on the screen. Delay at least 30 min. Let me get out.

Do it on the app would be better.

1. He cannot feel related to the story, 1. He would be ok if it is anonymous. because he think this is not for him.

He also tries not to see what is his If he can choose a topic, a relevant friend is typing. story or paragraph, it is easier to give advice. " If it is an unrelevant story or paragraph. I don't want to comment" 2. He recommemds a mobile app called 0305-天涯共此 时. You can create a space in it and people can come inside the room anonymously 3.

If he go alone, he would not give comment.

They both suggested a notification feature for alerting people when someone had replied to their stories

If the paragraph is too long, maybe they can stil type this long, but the user can press "more" button to show the whole.

Tester 1

Tester 2

Tester 3

Tester 4

Task 3: Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d like you to follow the instructions in the following screens and shout "What makes you feel inferior?" Kindly let us know your thoughts while doing this by thinking aloud

Zeco

Wentao

Blake

Amogh

Correct?

Yes with playback issues

Yes with playback issues

Yes with playback issues

Yes with playback issues

Problems

Recording and playback bug The UI in the playback screen was not obvious that you could click it and hear a recording

Recording and playback bug

1. Recording and playback bug 2. He asked if the width of the path enough?

Recording and playback bug

Comments

1. These two screens are too close. It 2. It would be better if there were is a Men's toilet issue. more recordings and playback 2. He felt like he is speaking to a screen, not talking, just recording. 3.

Listening to others' stories was interesting, there was a moment that I could reflect

He thinks it is kind of similar to the first activity. If the thing related to him, it will be more engaging. Like multiple bubbles, each bubble is a recording.

Task 4: The second task for this space is to listen to the audio that will play after. You may think and reflect on the messages you will hear.

Zeco

Blake

Wentao

Amogh

Task 4: The second task for this space is to listen to the audio that will play after. You may think and reflect on the messages you will hear.

Zeco

Wentao

Blake

Amogh

Tester 1

Tester 2

Tester 3

Tester 4

Correct?

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Problems

1. To a person he don't even see their Recording and playback bug, also face, it is difficult to linked to him/her. privacy If the question can be adjust, it related to his problem, he would listen.

Recording and playback bug, also privacy

Recording and playback bug, also privacy

Comments

He said: Last year I was very pressured. A random commercial (Standard Chartered), a girl is so busy and pressure. The message at the end, everybody is still fighting their own work. He was touched by the commercial.

It is better to choose topics, in terms to the privacy problem, gender, age range and occupation is fine. The message could be more categorized to play narratives from more relatable topics. He loves listening to the issues. It's not like they don't want to give comments, just that they couldn't relate

1.Kind of similar to the first activity. you cannot review and think. If the thing related to me, it will be more engaging.

He wanted the see more different problems. The playback of other people. People are suffering from more than his

1. He don't know if the playback is related to his recording. Tata answered no.

2. He think the instruction can be in voice, because the user would wear headphone anyway. And it is more humanly.

3. He suggest only one equipment in one space? [zeco: others would be in the queue]

2. Suggested multiple bubbles of recordings.

Tester 1

Tester 2

Tester 3

Tester 4

Task 5: Given all the prompts on the wall, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d like you to punch any board to your heartâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s content.

Zeco

Wentao

Blake

Amogh

Correct?

yes

yes

yes

yes

Problems

1. He think the labels are confusing, because he is frustrated with person, or a thing/object, not with situation.

a custom input of problems is better so the prompts can be more effective

He thinks the topics are not on the same level.

He thinks don't care about other people (means the counter)

Comments

1. Measuring the power of one punch would be more important than count the number.

2. He wants a punching ball that allows user to punch in different directions.

1. He would like to punch at the 1. The counter is maybe helpful but things he feel regret to. So it is okay it not interesting the topic fit his situation.

2. He thinks we can use memory foam.

Most of them punched in rapid succession

1. He wants like a hollow cylinder, where you go inside and punch every direction.

2. He recommend customizable pillow

1.Have you ever participated in platforms where you could express feelings anonymously?

Wentao: A cube. There is a button on each side. It can relieve pressure Zeco: A culture in Hong Kong named wish tree. you are given a paper and write things you want to. tied it on an orange. Throw it on the tree. and if it hang on the tree, your dream will come true.

Kind of love lock in London Blake: ç§&#x2DC;č&#x153;&#x201A;. Not much response.

Amogh: Their college had an anonymous FB platform where you could talk anonymously about profs. Anonymous is good bc It makes a difference when your name shows up, it effects how people are looking at you.

2.Have you ever visited interactive spaces where physical activity was encouraged?

Zeco: Japan. Tokyo. The awareness of warm issue, pollution. the kid is being hit by the trash.

Nike has some installation. They measure the athletes.

Wentao: VR glasses. one of them is the eyeball from different creatures. you can see different perspective from the eyeball.

Blake: in art exhibition. one has a metal wall, show how is people throwing thing. another exhibition: all kind of white model ( like circle) they ask the people to change the shape. They observe how will they change the shape.

3.Do you have experience visiting pop-up stores and experimental retail experiences situated in public spaces?

Wentao: yes. Because if there is a pop-up store, there must be something special they want to sell. There is a collab with pokemon.

Zeco: Personally I am not a fan. The theme is make-up cosmetic shop, boring to me.

There is no focus point. I see people coming from different places, I would think confusing.

4.When have you last experienced loneliness? What have you done to address it?

Wentao: last weekend. Become very free, don't know what to do, done nothing.

Zeco: When you are put into a new environment, e.g. a new company. Neumerous tasks to do. You don't want to reveal all of your personality. You cannot get help from the surroundings. You want get things done. But you are not getting.

Injured my knee. watching others on the bench. No one can understand you.

Wentao: loneliness come from the outside world. E.g. you cannot do something outside a certain circle. But your friends are doing that.

5.How do physical and expressive experiences help you?

6. Would you go in?

Wentao: I would look at if there is keywords outside the wall. Cuz I would think it is a branding of something.

Zeco: Depends on where you put that installation. The installation has to fit in the environment. I imagine this would not fit like a park. For me now it looks like a store than a pop-up store.

If I can see what's the store for.

User Testing Notes First pair: Hu,Wentao; Tai, Zeco

Pre-test Questions 1.Have you ever participated in platforms where you could express feelings anonymously? wentao: A cube. There is a button on each side. It can relieve pressure Zeco: A culture in Hong Kong named wish tree. you are given a paper and write things you want to. tied it on an orange. Throw it on the tree. and if it hang on the tree, your dream will come true.

Kind of love lock in London

2.Have you ever visited interactive spaces where physical activity was encouraged?

Zeco: Japan. Tokyo. The awareness of warm issue, pollution. the kid is being hit by the trash.

Nike has some installation. They measure the athletes.

Wentao: VR glasses. one of them is the eyeball from different creatures. you can see different perspective from the eyeball.

3.Do you have experience visiting pop-up stores and experimental retail experiences situated in public spaces?

Wentao: yes. Because if there is a pop-up store, there must be something special they want to sell. There is a collab with pokemon.

Zeco: Personally I am not a fan. The theme is make-up cosmetic shop, boring to me.

There is no focus point. I see people coming from different places, I would think confusing.

4.When have you last experienced loneliness? What have you done to address it?

Wentao: last weekend. Become very free, don't know what to do, done nothing.

Zeco: When you are put into a new environment, e.g. a new company. Neumerous tasks to do. You don't want to reveal all of your personality. You cannot get help from the surroundings. You want get things done. But you are not getting.

Injured my knee. watching others on the bench. No one can understand you.

Wentao: loneliness come from the outside world. E.g. you cannot do something outside a certain circle. But your friends are doing that.

5.How do physical and expressive experiences help you?

Would you go in?

Wentao: I would look at if there is keywords outside the wall. Cuz I would think it is a branding of something.

Zeco: Depends on where you put that installation. The installation has to fit in the environment. I imagine this would not fit like a park. For me now it looks like a store than a pop-up store.

If I can see what's the store for.

Which one would you go?

The largest one. [Speaking board]

Zeco behaviour: don't want to give comment Wentao behaviour: answered comment

Wentao reply function: If I come alone, I would not comment. Cuz I think this is not for me.

If I can choose a topic, it is easier to give advice There is a mobile app. You can create a space in it. Unrelevant story or paragraph. I don't want to comment

Zeco For the display. I feel like it would be hard to type on a touch panel. When I type this message, I don't want to show to others. Because it looks like the entrance.

Remember the ATM? I recommend the ATM display.

I don't want to comment. I don't know what to comment. I don't know the person anyway.

I don't want people to know who wrote the story on the screen. Delay at least 30 min.

Let me get out.

Do it on the app would be better.

Question: would the person get a feedback. [tata: you would get the feedback immediately when you are there] [wentao: how about you get the feedback from their mobile phone, would it be complex?]

Actually I don't want to tell this to even closest friends.

Next is Sound part

Wentao: it the playback related? [No it is random.]

The instruction can be in voice. Only one equipment in one space? [zeco: others would be in the queue]

I don't feel better if I listen to people saying back to me.

Zeco: This two screens are too close. Men's toilet issue. I felt like I am speaking to a screen. For now I Feeling am not talking, but recording.

To a person I don't even see their face. It is difficult to linked to him/her. If the question can be adjust, it related to my problem, I would listen.

Last year I was very pressured. A random commercial (Standard Chartered), a girl is so busy and pressure. The message at the end, everybody is still fighting their own work. He was touched by the commercial Gender, age range and occupation is fine.

Next is Punching part

Zeco: frustrated with person, not with situation. Or a thing/object The power of one punch would be more important than count the number.

Wentao: I would like to punch at the things I regret. The counter?

General Zeco: I would not go to I drinks Wentao :Ok with rooms parallel, not like close together Custom Input would be good

Second pair: Kulkarni, Amogh; Yan, Blake

Pre-test Questions 1.Have you ever participated in platforms where you could express feelings anonymously?

Blake: 秘蜂. Not much response.

Amogh: Their college had an anonymous FB platform where you could talk anonymously about profs. Anonymous is good bc It makes a difference when your name shows up, it effects how people are looking at you.

2.Have you ever visited interactive spaces where physical activity was encouraged?

Blake: in art exhibition. one has a metal wall, show how is people throwing thing. another exhibition: all kind of white model ( like circle) they ask the people to change the shape. They observe how will they change the shape.

3.Do you have experience visiting pop-up stores and experimental retail experiences situated in public spaces?

Amogh: legal massage

4.When have you last experienced loneliness? What have you done to address it?

Blake & Amogh: the situation two weeks ago.

5.How do physical and expressive experiences help you?

Blake: throwing something. Like balls Amogh: hiking. the building, allows people to throw things onto the steel wall. the stronger you throw, the louder it would sound. A form of let the frustration out.

Would you go inside?

Amogh : looks from outside, looks like a bank for atm. The color inside is not like a retail store.

Blake: Looks like a formal place

Which one would you go?

B, telling board

Blake: this paragraph is too long, don't want to finish it. For me it has too many steps. Two more steps than I expected. One is the collecting info part, the other is the preview. 140 character would be comfortable.

I try not to see what is he's typing. And I would be ok if it is anonymous.

Amogh: I like to give comment without the people knowing who I am.

Maybe they can type this long, they can press "more".

I don't think I would talk about super personal thing.

People write nonsense?

Next?

A Blake: is the width of the path enough?

Shouting

Amogh: I wanted the see more different problems. The playback of other people.

People are suffering from more than me I was thinking what to say. If I have a frustration than I would not need to think of what to say.

Blake: kind of similar to the first activity. you cannot review and think. If the thing related to me, it will be more engaging. like multiple bubble.

Next?

C Amogh: it's time I don't care about other people (means the counter) Like a hollow cylinder, where you go inside and punch every direction.

Customizable pillow

Blake: the topics are not on the same level it's schoolwork The counter is maybe helpful but not intersting you can use memories foam.

Blake: the place can be more visually apealling

Amogh: the language should be more casual, people would not talk very formal I would rather go alone. Don't want people evan friends to listen to me.

User Testing Analysis Aspects

Problems

Problem Description Possible solution 1.Looks like a bank 2.Too formal Change the design of the outer Cannot tell it is a pop-up store 3.Outside the wall only LOGO, don't know wall what it is for 4. Looks like a cosmetics pop-up

General Appearance

make each of the 3 spaces the equal shape maintain homogeneity

Everyone goes to the biggest door first

Hard to enter

1. type on the touch screen is tiring

relatively high

UI issue

done

don't want to write the story

don't have things to share

writing story & giving comment can be two parallel tasks, not linear

medium

UI issue

done

more ways to write

want not only type in words, but also emoji, drawing

high

UI/UX issue

done

change the way to input

low optimize the experience Add a button to "skip"

done

low high

UI issue

done

Feature addition

done

Can't relate to comments that might be given to them

have no interest in giving comments

1. let people to choose topic at medium the beginning 2. let people to choose problems

want to receive others comment

want to receive even after leaving the space

collect their email address, send high an email if they receive comments

UX issue

done

add a "collapse / more"

medium

UI issue

done

the paragraph is too long to read

Punching

rebuild 3-D rendering

1. provide a keyboard 2. make a ergonomical touch panel 3. type on their own smartphone on a mobile website or miniprogram on WeChat

Don't want to give comment

Listening to others

low

done

the steps are too much

Speaking

rebuild 3-D rendering

UX issue & 3-D rendering

no interaction between two friends

Shouting

medium

Done?

1. set a ATM-like display 2. give option to delay the display high of the comment (e.g. 10min.)

Writing stories

Giving comments to others

Feasibility

1.Don't want people to know what are they writing

privacy when writing

Writing

Emergency

two booths are too close to each other

don't want others to listen to

give more space

high

rebuild 3-D rendering

done

want to speak to a person-like object instead of a screen

record with a screen is not comfortable

1. have the instruction in audio 2. the display can be a personlike object

high

UI issue

done

can't relate to others recordings

don't want to listen to recording they have no interests in

1. provide different stories (bubbles) for users to choose from (still random or customizable)

relatively high

UI issue

done

cannot feel related to the topics

1. want to punch to people/object, not concept (e.g. work)

1. change the topics 2. add one space allow user to customize the label on the bag use smartphone

high

Feature addition

Punching

want more comfortable punching

1. want to punch in different directions 1. change the shape, like use a 2. want to punch hard enough 3-D shape (ball shape, cylinder 3. don't care about how many times they shape) punching bag punch

relatively high

3-D rendering

done

want a different feedback

1. want to know the strength instead of the counter

medium

Feature addition

done

still have the counter, but also show the strength of the punch