Graphic Design (User Generated Content)

On the 13th of October, a short lecture was done on UGC (User Generated Content) a new trend among designers that focuses on making design system that the content is provided by the users instead of the designers/organizers. The term user indicates that the content in the campaign or project is provided by the target audience with a little guidance by the designer such as a title or just simply a hashtag #

There were total of 5 campaign shown each with their own unique way of making content. The first one is Belkin

Belkin

Belkin is a world renown brand that manufactures router modems and now moving toward technological electronics. They launched a campaign called "legoxbelkin" as in the title it is a collaboration between Belkin and the world's famous toy brand Lego.

Focusing on iPhone for its world popularity, Belkin developed an iPhone case with a lego board on the back of the case.

Using that as a base, the campaign is asking the users of this cases to build and showcase the creation they have done and share it on a portal they made to both promote the case and show the creativity of the people that posted the pictures. Fully using the content that was send and shared by users, Belkin or Lego did not add anything for the content itself.

T-Mobile

A telecommunications company launched a type of promo that is named "Breaking Up" which is a promotion that allows users to convert from one telecommunication service to another by writing a breaking up letter. Not just that, they also will pay the fees for early termination of the contract all the users need is to write a break up letter and post it on the portal they created

Estee Lauder

Estee Lauder contributed to the breast cancer awareness campaign using a UGC campaign that uses the hashtag #BCAstrength. What it does is that instead of telling the people, they let people tell stories about the action that they did for the awareness. A platform for people with breast cancer, or a survivor of breast cancer or those around the person that has breast cancer to share their stories on what they did.

Independent Lens

An independent group of people that released a project that is called "Don't Stop Believing" which required people to sing a cover of the famous song "Dont Stop Believing by Journey" and post it up on the platform they created. This project has 2 purpose one is to celebrate the upcoming launch of the documentary movie on how the main vocalist of Journey got into the band called "Don't Stop Believing: Everyman's Journey" the other is that if a talented person is recording the cover they can be picked up and recruited by a record label.

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/dont-stop-believin/

TEDxPortland

TED is a talk where creative people meet and discuss and debate on technological advancement. In 2014 TEDxPortland released a campaign called "Perfect" which is an app that take a picture with a word PERFECT in the middle

The idea of this campaign is to let the people who download the app take the picture that they think its PERFECT because creativity in everyone is different. Over 3000 pictures were collected and taken and used as the backdrop from the TED 2014 conference

The lecture was a very eye opening experience and I've learned a new thing which is UGC User Generated Content which I have come upon but never knew its existence until now

Generating Ideas (Graphic Design 3 Part 1)

In the first discussion with the module leader after finalizing the topic on thesis which is Handheld Device Addiction. At first she ask what is it that is inducing the addiction what is it that keeps these people addicted to the device. First thing that comes to mind is social media like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Time recording application and alarm

She asked how am I going to solve the problem which is teenagers spending 5.4 hours on average a day on their device. She gave a suggestion is to create an application within the device that records the time usage on the device even in the background, the application will initiate an alarm when the time usage has reached a certain point of time like for example 2 hours or 4 hours. That way when the alarm goes off, the affected person is reminded that he has used this much time on his/her device which will spark some kind of awareness. After some time of consideration and thinking, this idea is good however the application record on the device usage time that means even when the user is using the device for legitimate uses like calling a parent or a work related call it is still being recorded by the application for the addiction count.

*Edit*
After meeting for a second time, I told the module leader about the issue I just said which is the application will also record the time usage for legitimate reasons so I don't think that will supply an accurate results.

She replied to me that no the application even when it is recording the usage of all the alarm that goes off is just a reminder for the user that he/she has used the device for a certain period of time. Instead of like telling the user to stop, the application works like a reminder to him/her that you have reached this time frame giving indications to the user to slow down his/her usage on the device.

With that in mind, I proceed to making just a simple sketch of the application from a phone perspective:

Objective based picture portal (#shareaday)

This is an idea I had after the lecture on User Generated Content. It is a project that uses pictures and objective on a website. What it is, is that the project starts from a website which gives out an Objective on daily basis and resets after 24 hours. In that 24 hours, the users is required to know the objective and find a way to take a picture that is achieving the objective and post it on social media or the website. Once submitted the picture will appear in a gallery where users now can go and look around and also vote for the picture they think it is best describing the objective of the day. Before the 24 hours time limit ends and change to a new objective, a winner is selected for the objective of the day.

An example: Today's Objective is "Spending time with mom"

With the objective released, users have the objective in mind which is spending time with mom so now they have to take a picture which is related to the objective and post it with the hashtag #shareaday and post it on the website. Once submitted, they cannot submit another picture so they can look and discuss with family and friends on which picture to submit onto the website. Here they can also view a gallery of photo/pictures submitted by others and give a like as a vote for the best picture of the day. At the end of the day before the Objective is changed into a new one a winner is selected with the highest vote.

Fig1: Main page of website (Share a Day)

Fig2: About page where details of the organizer is and also information on what is the campaign or website is about

Fig3: Picture submission page where users will submit their photos for the objective of the day

Fig4: Gallery page where users can view other photos of other users and vote by giving a 'Like'

Design Sketch (Graphics Design 3 Part 1)

To provide a overview of the project, a design sketch of the website is needed to give an impression of how the final design is going to look like and also get feedback from the module leader and lecturers for fine tuning and improvements as the project gets carried on.

HOME PAGE

Home page consist of photos and videos that is most recently submitted by participants and also serves like a cover page of a proposal. From here the participants can move the photo in the middle like a roller and also their Instagram account is also listed below the photo for those who wants to follow him/her and make a friend. Also the tabs above allows them to move to other pages like Submit page, Gallery page, Contact Us page and About page.

SUBMIT PAGE

The submit page allows the participants to submit the final photo or video that they wanted to use for the day. They could use the # system of Instagram but they could use that and submit multiple photos or videos so in order to make sure that everyone gets the same chance they are only allowed to use 1 photo or video for the submission of the objective of the day.

GALLERY PAGE

In the Gallery page they can view all the photos and videos that has been submitted to the campaign/objective of the day. Viewers will begin by looking at a grid formation of photos and thumbnails of videos they can have a closer look when they click on it.

When clicked the background is darken and the photo that is selected will be zoomed in and centered on screen with details of the submitter and a like button which can be clicked if the viewer likes the photo. There are no limitation to how many times a viewer can like but it is limited one like per photo or video. This way the project does not limit the freedom of the viewer to express their opinion.

CONTACT US PAGE

The Contact Us page has a brief explanation about the person who organized the campaign project and a summary of the personal information like the background of education, name, age, and etc. Other than that is a list of links that will direct people to certain sites like Facebook, Twitter and such to contact the organizer about certain issues.

ABOUT PAGE

In the About page, is where the explanation of the campaign project is. Here the viewers and participants can read about what this campaign is actually about and what is it trying to achieve. What is the purpose of the campaign and what is the main goal of the organizer, which is to make the teenagers the participant uses the time on the mobile phone more efficiently. The project also wishes more teenagers would accompany friends and family especially the parents more rather than they just look down on the phone all the time even during meet ups.

This is a draft version, the colours, fonts and design is not final and would be changed in the final design this is just a guideline design.

Proposal (Graphic Design 3 Part 1)

1.0 Introduction

In this campaign proposal, I have decided to use “Handheld Device Addiction”. Handheld or more commonly in particular is smartphones that is now a device that almost everyone on earth owns and uses everywhere. With the connectivity of the internet now done to such degree that anyone can go online anywhere, these devices has become the sole door to that world and the younger generations are keen to this world more so than the older generation but that doesn’t mean the older generation does not participate in this internet world, they do too. The one thing that is making us attracted to the device is social media or network such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. More and more social media applications are rising as time goes by and users are using these application to create a sort of ‘trend’ in their own society such as Vines and Snapchat videos. The other reason for this is how easy it is to use these devices, just a few taps and you get what you wanted. And as time goes by, we already have become addicted to the device before we even know it.

2.0 Problem Statement

As stated in 1.2 the problem that BBC says is that teenagers are using their phones for 5.4 hours a day on average. Wall Street Journal written an article on how long should a normal person should sleep which is 7 – 8 hours a day by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (WSJ, 2014). In other words 24 – 8 = 16, we have 16 hours left to do whatever we do in our daily lives, 5.4 hours is 1/3 of 16 hours, and these teenagers are using 1/3 of their day on their phones alone. (Heather Chen, 2015)

3.0 Objectives and Purpose

3.1 Aim: To create an objective based campaign using smartphone devices and social media as tool to lessen time usage facing smartphone devices and increase the time spend using human interaction with friends and family members on teenagers in Kajang town by using themed based objectives.

3.2 Objectives:

To research on smartphone device addiction and the social impact it brings focused on teenagers aged between 13 – 19
To survey the statistics of smartphone device usage on teenagers in Kajang using questionnaires to create a smartphone device usage statistics based on surrey results
To identify the issues in teenage daily life using research, articles and reports
To select the theme for the campaign project objectives based on teenage life issues
To reduce the time usage used facing the device and increase human interaction with friends and family members of teenagers using objective based campaign

4.0 Assumptions

We can slowly but surely divert the time used facing the mobile devices to something that uses more human interaction with friends and family members on the teenagers.

5.0 Project Explanation

5.1 Project Purpose and Procedure

5.1.1 Introduction

The project uses social media as the main component, even with the problem statement is the addiction to social media and made teenagers face the phone longer than they supposed to, a discussion with the module leader she stated that making people to stop what they are doing is near impossible therefore I have to approach the problem from another perspective. After sometime of thinking, I decided to instead telling people the bad and slow down their usage on the smartphone I thought of since they are going to spend such a long time on the phone why not change the time spend on the phone into something more positive without compromising or develop a feeling of telling them to stop using the phone.

Without a doubt when I think of smartphones, social media comes to mind as most people uses smartphones will normally have social media applications installed and used very often. After a few discussion with the module leader, she suggested using Instagram a photo sharing social media application that is popular now. Therefore, I thought of a simple game mechanic that uses objectives per day that will reset everyday with theme that requires the user to do things with another person basing it on the theme of friends and family.

5.1.2 The Basics

The campaign project is split into 3 parts the objective, the submission and the result. Each day the objective will change and as time goes some objective will repeat itself however how the participants interpret the objective is different therefore the results that collected will be different as well. The whole process of the project will be, every day the main website will release an objective at a specific time (0200 hours, for example) and the participants will have to check and read the objectives (Having fun with friends, for example) each participants will have to interpret the objective as to what kind of photo or video fulfills that particular objectives. At the end of the day the final hour a victor among the participants will be announced and submission will be null, the 1 hour of break is treated as a maintenance.

5.1.3 The Objective

Each day the website will release an objective on a specific time, once released a timer of 24 hours will begin to count down. The objective released will be themed towards family and friends such as (Spending time with the siblings, Shopping with mom, Outdoor activity with friends, Having fun with brother). Once the objective is released the participants will have to interpret the objective to their very own understanding as to what is the best photo describing the objective, for example if the objective is Spending time with Mom, it can be a picture with us the participant and the mother in a single picture or it could be a picture where the participant is doing some activity with the mother.

5.1.4 The Submission

As the objective timer countdown each participant is able to submit a single photo or video that describes the objective and will be locked with their social media identification to avoid multiple submission. After the submission they can browse the pictures that has been already submitted and vote what they think suits best for the objective themselves and leave a comment on the photo. Similar to social media it could help the participants in making friends through sharing of ideas and activity.

5.1.5 The Result

Once the day is done and the final hour is approaching the submission will be nullified for an hour, and during that hour the moderators of the website will need to find out which picture or video has the highest votes and published it along with the 1^st and 2^nd Runner Up.

5.1.6 The Purpose

The campaign project uses the focus of social media as a platform to help the teenagers even when social media is also the problem here. Taking Instagram as a reference to the project, photo sharing is very addicting as it attracts attention from various kind of people, may it be future friends, a future job opportunity or a future significant other. While taking photos can be done anywhere, the project uses objectives to ‘force’ the participants in this case the teenagers to engage in human interactive activities with friends and family and drag them away from the ‘zombiefied mode’ with the mobile phone.

Fig.1: Smartphone addiction, courtesy of Google Images: https://gmagazine.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/smartphone-zombies-759x500.jpg

5.2 Project Overview

Using a website as the main portal for the participants to get their objective of the day and also view the pictures and videos posted by the various participants. The website consist of a few pages, the Home page where visitors can view the recently submitted photos and videos and the buttons that will bring them to Gallery page, Submit Photo page, Contact Us page and About page.

5.2.1 Home Page

This is a draft version, the colours, fonts and design is not final and would be changed in the final design this is just a guideline design.

HOME PAGE

5.2.2 Submit Page

This is a draft version, the colours, fonts and design is not final and would be changed in the final design this is just a guideline design.

SUBMIT PAGE

5.2.3 Gallery Page

This is a draft version, the colours, fonts and design is not final and would be changed in the final design this is just a guideline design.

GALLERY PAGE

5.2.4 Contact Us Page

This is a draft version, the colours, fonts and design is not final and would be changed in the final design this is just a guideline design.

CONTACT US PAGE

5.2.5 About Page

This is a draft version, the colours, fonts and design is not final and would be changed in the final design this is just a guideline design.

ABOUT PAGE

6.0 Conclusion

As much as we want to make a change towards smartphone addiction we cannot force people to do so, it must be done through their own will. As a designer, I can only encourage and help communicate to the target audience through a different perspective other than words to tell them the message differently and get a response. We cannot control how a person reacts towards a certain subject matter or issue as different people has different opinion on the matter depending on their background, surrounding and knowledge.