jamin.org

THIS PAGE IS NOT UP TO DATE.
Since graduating in May, I’ve been a big slacker and haven’t updated this project. I will soon. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you can visit a prototype at metame.jamin.org.

Abstract

When people switch jobs, move to a new city, start school, or have a child, aspects of their identity change. For designers, this presents an opportunity to help people invent and discover who they would like to be in their new roles. But there is little evidence of design attempting to support this behavior. By looking at one of these groups (incoming college freshmen) I am developing a mobile application called MetaMe that allows students to project meta information about themselves in the physical environment and adjust that information to project and prototype aspects of their identity in order to get to a more desired self.

Advisors

• Shelley Evenson
• John Zimmerman

Process

Interviews were conducted in students’ rooms to see how they expressed their identity through their artifacts.

Research was documented on large boards to visualize the findings.

Me, taking notes during a participatory design session.

Participatory design session where participants were asked to visualize their social network.

Early sketch for a concept scenario.

Example concept scenarios.

Visualization of some of the survey results.

Visualizing the concepts against the main themes.

Prop used during a concept validation session where participants were asked to enact scenarios.

A participant enacting a scenario.

A representation of ambient information during a participatory design session.

“The System” of the MetaMe concept as understood by a design session participant.

According to BusinessWeek, it’s all about me in 2008. Identity will replace experience in design.

This bodes well for my thesis project, which is all about identity design. I’m so ahead of the curve.

Over the weekend I was talking to a designer who created a skirt that lit up when you twirled. That’s great and all, but it seems like a lot of wearable projects do only that: light up given some condition.

This got me thinking about wearables and the challenge of making a wearable that really enhances human life. I then wondered if my thesis project proposal, which dabbles in the world of social networking and representation of self, is what I really want to be dealing with.

Here is my current proposal (not to be confused with my thesis paper proposal):

Co-creation of Identity

Social networking and online personas provide opportunities for people to design their representation of self. But these representations may be difficult for people to articulate accurately or may be bias toward a flawed perception of self.

I want to explore a system that allows others within the social networking community to help in the creation process so that instead of an identity created with the bias of the individual, the identity becomes a truer reflection of both the self and perception of others.

The aim of this project would be to help young adults better understand themselves and how they are perceived by the community. Specifically, my project will focus on college freshmen, who are going through a transition in understanding their identity within a new community.

A goal of this project is to help the target group proactively work to improve there representation within the community, with the hope of also improving their understanding of self in the analog world.

The end product will be specifications for a service that would facilitate the aforementioned interaction.

I still think this is interesting, and touches upon my recent observation people creating Miis. But I worry that I’m not pushing boundaries, not treading in the territory of interaction design challenges on horizon.