INVISIBLE NEON
An experience for critical thinking
OVERVIEW
Individuals are highly dependent on technologies and big data in current society. Algorithms have become the infrastructure in the Internet era. With the support of data collecting from all kinds of human activities, including communication, purchasing, entertaining, and etc…, big data starts to thoroughly analyze every aspect of individuals. Instead of being considered as a unity of emotions, feelings and personalities by the public, individuals start to become a clot of different data. This project, Invisible Neon, bases on this situation and aims to reflect the existing problems of big data systems. It helps individuals to think critically about the usage and effect of being deconstructed by algorithms.
Project Type
Personal Project
Role
Concept Ideation, Research, Data Analysis, UX Design, Sketches
Time
Nov - Dec 2020 (3 weeks)
OUTCOME
CONTEXT
History of Big Data
Applications of Big Data
Every coin has two sides
With the evidence above, the wide usage of big data has been demonstrated. Big data helps individuals’ daily lives become more convenient than ever. However, the effects of big data might not be positive in every aspect. It might result in negative influence in the following areas:
(1) Social Security;
(2) Information cocoons;
(3) Privacy;
(4) Time Consuming;
etc ... ...
Some of the shortages would be discussed in the following experiments.
RESEARCH & IDEATION
Are We Really Living in Information Cocoons?
In this research, I use TikTok as the experimental platform. I test the user to let him keep refreshing the homepage 30 times to see the recommended videos that are being pushed to the user by Tiktok’s algorithm. Then the patterns between the topics (or tags) and all the shown videos are being compared and analyzed.
In this research, with the analysis from the samples, the facts that individuals are living in information cocoons and being restricted by it have been reviled.
In this part, data from 4 different participants has been collected. The purpose of this experiment is to observe that between participants with similar age and background, would the areas of the videos that are being pushed overlapped with the others.
Summary:
By analyzing the data, we could find out that the content that have been pushed is highly satisfied with the participants’ specific interests. The topic that the participants are more interested in, videos that are containing that content would be more likely to appear.
Therefore, I can indeed conclude that individuals are living in information cocoons. People are mainly contacting with information that they are already familiar with, and it becomes more difficult to them to gain information in other areas.
Time & Recommendation Algorithm
In this experiment, the problem about time consuming that is being resulted by big data is being discussed. The time that participants spend on each content are being recorded.
Summary:
With the analysis of data, individuals are likely to spend a long time on the app. Since the contents that have been shown are the areas that they would be interested in. However, vast quantity of similar contexts would result in waste of time and decrease of efficiency.
Experience of Awareness
In this part, the process of the interact space is being shown. The participant would enter the space and then interact with a screen. Online shopping scenes would appear on the screen for the purpose of collecting and analyzing data from the participant. After than, an altered version of the participant would be shown on the screen, talking about all the personal information of the participant. Later, there would be 4 more altered figures appear around the participants which are being projected. These media would help the participant to be aware of the existing issues and cause further thinking toward the current situation.
The Effect Is Like an Endless Loop
Journey Map
REFLECTION
This is a project based on my own critical thinking toward big data, and it also combines with my experiences with constructing art installations. I am always interested in building interactive spaces and trigger participants to think critically after interactions.
Through the process of making, my ability to analyze competitors has been increased. I believe that this project helped me to learn how to better deliver my concept and how to bring it into the digital world.
However, I do think that this project might be too theoretical to produce. Even if this is only a screen that is interacting with participants, a tremendous amount of data is being needed for the anticipatory calculation. Even though being theoretical would not be a problem for conceptual design, I still want to find simpler ways to deliver the idea and give people the opportunity to actually interact with it. Since this issue is already existing in our daily life. Therefore, in the future, I would like to learn more about the algorithm behind big data and find a more practical way to deliver this idea.