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, refections 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 amplifer

In our fndings, 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 diferent 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 diferent 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 fgures. Most of the posts and pictures from social media are vivid and refned, which on the one side, satisfes people who post them by providing a downward comparison, while on the other side, amplifes the stress of the people who read them by revealing an upward comparison.

Figure 26

Visualizing the vicious cycle

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 diferent 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 frst brought it upon our project team to tackle this topic, we thought that it would be difcult 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 afected 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.

Learnings about conducting this study in a densely populated city, in this socio-political context

We also like to take this opportunity to refect 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 crowd…Behind a computer screen, the lonely person has control. But the contact this produces is not the same thing as intimacy”.

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 afected feelings of isolation and anxiety in people. Some participants have touched upon it briefy, but it is too early to tell.

Refection 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-frst mindset was there in the beginning of the course; it was difcult 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 fnal 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-frst, not knowing where the drop might take us but trusting that with every week, we would reach clarity step-by-step.

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 efective 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 verifcation and validation of our design. For example, in the medium fdelity 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.

Better research on efective prompts for emotion

Currently, our research and analysis on emotion and social pressure are not comprehensive enough, and we haven’t found an efective 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 fnd 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 flter 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 eforts spent in the space, which could lead to a unsmooth experience. Some of our testers reported a bit of unwillingness to fnish the task. We haven’t fgured 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 refne 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 benefts 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.

Discussion