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.

If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you can visit a prototype at metame.jamin.org.

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.