Spring 2021 Week 4: User testing

For this week I decided, along the development of prototypes to ask my friends, who know nothing about my project, how they feel about the 2 different feedback mechanisms I have: receiving superfluous amounts if candies vs little amounts. I used 120 minutes on Instagram and Haribo Cherries as a reference.

This is the paragraph I have sent them:

Hey! I really need your feedback as a viewer for my thesis project. It is a critique of our consumption of social media.

I have two user scenarios I would like to discuss.

In both scenarios, the users visit a candy stand located in the exhibition space, where they give their daily social media screen time to the cashier in exchange for candy.

Scenario 1: for 120 minutes of Instagram, the user gets a bag entirely filled with candies. The price on the conversion app corresponds also to the equivalent 120 minutes of your time generate in minimum wage in France. (Images 1, 2, and 3)

Scenario 2: for 120 minutes of Instagram, the user gets one candy only. The price on the conversion app corresponds also to Instagram’s revenues generated from 120 minutes of your time. (Images 4, 5, 6, 7)

Question 1:What do you get from the images of scenario 1 vs the images of scenario 2?

Question 2:Which feedback mechanism works best? Seeing your investment of time in social media as a lot of candies, or as very few? Why?

 

Answers I got:

Question 1:

• From the 1st scenario, the bag filled with candies represents the time we have lost on Instagram. From the 2nd scenario, although the screen time is also 120min, there is only one candy in the bag. This shows that time invested (120min) only generated a minimal gain. It made me realize that I waste 120min of my time on Instagram just to get one candy (or for Instagram to gain 1 candy) which is relatively nothing compared to the time spent. I could invest the same amount of time in something else that would be more beneficial and candiful
• Having this much candy in scenario 1 for spending 120 minutes will make laugh at first but I will then realize that I am wasting a lot of time in social media because I earned a lot of candy whereas in scenario 2 I might be thinking that 120 minutes is too little compared to other people because I only got one candy. I would say that these 2 scenarios are contradictory because one of them might be triggering people into spending more time on social media whereas the other highlights the dangerousness of a problem without even knowing that most of the users are out of control.
• Scenario 1 shows how much social networks are “an integral part” of each of us while Scenario 2 shows  how we are just one pawn among many others for multinationals like Facebook (they own instagram , right?) I don’t know if this is the kind of answer you want but this is the first thing that catches my eye.

• Scenario 1: social media has consequences on the money you can potentially have if you didn’t spend this time on social media and it can also have health problems because you will be gaining a lot of candies from the amount of time you spend on social media. As a consumer, I don’t care about what social media companies make. If my 20 minutes give them a small amount of money and I get one candy I don’t expect something they would give me back from my time on social media. And if I get candy I wouldn’t feel sad about it, on the contrary. It’s like a positive reinforcement.
• scenario 1: you can get more candy easily. scenario 2: harder to get candy but keeping your sanity
• When looking at the images of scenario 1 I am shocked to see that only 2hours on instagram represent that many candies. It also makes me think that I am in fact ruining my health. The trivial act of passing 2hours of my day on instagram, a thing that I do without really thinking about it, can really have detrimental consequences. I am conscious that candies and a lot of sugar are harmful and I was educated to not eat a lot of candies, so seeing the correlation between them and my hours passed on insta made me aware of the harm I am doing to myself by my own will. After seeing these images I realized on one hand that we make a lot of efforts to eat “healthy” but that on the other hand all these efforts can be ruined in only few hours passed on social medias. It also pointed out that our social media activity is as important as our nutrition to have a good lifestyle. While looking at the images of scenario 2, I was shocked by the number of hours instagram is used daily. I also thought that if my 2hours which are relatively an important part of my day, earned me only 1 candy, 750 millions of candies which is the amount earned by instagram, represents a number of hour that is soooo big that I can’t even think of it.
• At first glance, we have the difference in the amount of candy that is obvious, so out of reflex and out of envy I think I will look directly at the first scenario to understand what it is. It is therefore the desire to consume that once again drives us in our visual choices. However, by making my choice (1st scenario at first sight) this one shows me that the time “lost” on insta and therefore this time which allows me to win candy is in reality only a trap which makes me earn less money in real life. These images therefore show the illusion in which social networks makes us live. “Consume and you will consume”. The man then forgets his role of “producer”.

Question 2:

• Personally, I believe that the second scenario is a more accurate representation of today’s exposure to social media: people tend to spend hours swiping across their feeds but don’t gain any additional value.

• I think scenario 1 is ideal for raising awareness. It shows us how social media is literally eating up all our time. Subconsciously, it is more “dramatic” for the one who sees it than scenario 2. When you receive a bag filled with candy, it makes you aware about the USELESS time you spend on instagram. If someone had asked me to convert my screen time to « candies », I would’ve only converted 120 minutes into a couple of candies, not a whole bag. My main idea is that : receiving a bag filled with candy makes you aware about the whole time you invest in social media.
• I think scenario 1 makes the most sense (in my opinion at least). Choosing candies is interesting: they’re something I associate with short term pleasure and small boosts of energy. They don’t contribute to your overall health (they can even worsen it in some aspects) and eating too much makes you unnecessarily full. Social media also occupies your time in the same manner and this can potentially harm your schedule if you’re not careful. But then again, candies are popular because they look and taste good. And gulping down a couple of them doesn’t hurt. Social media is similar in that way; it’s entertaining and essentially harmless as long as you don’t abuse it. So yeah, the analogy holds. Thanks for making me think about it
• I find the first scenario rewarding for the time I spend on social media. The second scenario is not rewarding so I won’t be encouraged to use social media.
• For me the scenario 1 shows more the extent of the use of social networks (we realize how much time we spend on it by associating the time with the quantity of candies) It shows how it impacts us personally and not how it impacts others (in the second the gains of others) In the 2 it is really the image 7 which shocks the rest is a little more blurry at first sight.
• I choose scenario 2 because I spend so much time and I don’t get candy.
• I think that for our generation, or at least for the one that is emerging now, consuming more in social networks while consuming more “candy” could be the ideal utopia. Because I’m having as much candy as I have money if I was working. But however, if we look at the effects to come on these sweets, it forces us to think and sometimes even to the time when we speak of suicide. So their utopia will turn into a depressive nightmare or even death. So that’s why I think the most logical to choose will be scenario 2 because even if I devote the same part of my time to social networks it will not impact me as much psychically and physically. (I didn’t understand the person’s answer well or the person didn’t understand the concepts well)
• I would say the strategies used in scenario 1 (seeing my investment of time in social media as a lot of candies) works best maybe for awareness in order to put an end to this. Personally, through the years I have noticed that my time spent on different social media platforms has increased and unfortunately not in the right direction. I would chose to watch silly things instead of reading interesting information (maybe because of boredom but that wouldn’t justify I said).

• I personally preferred the 1st feedback mechanism which is seeing my investment of time on social media as a lot of candies. In fact, since I am conscious of the harmful effect that such a big quantity of candies can have on my health, I will now think twice before opening instagram. I am really concerned about my health and I would never allow myself to eat that many candies per day, so why would I use instagram 2hours per day if it has the same consequences? Also when looking at the price, I think that maybe it would be a better idea to be productive and don’t waste that much of my time on instagram since as we say time is money.
• I would choose the second scenario because i think it would have more impact on people when they realize/understand what each one candy represents. Knowing that one candy represents 2h on social media, I would feel bad receiving one or more (I try to stay away from social media as much as I can)
• Scenario 1: because the more you fill the bags the more the waste of time is apparent.

Results: 6 (scenario 1) vs 4 (scenario 2). I’m still waiting for other answers. I have therefore decided to prototype in the exhibition space both scenarios just in case. I probably need another audience and more people to interview.

Inner thought: Maybe the ultimate solution to all of this would be a sculptural work made of an XL size candy bag filled with candies representing one week of social media consumption with a nutrition facts label showing the unhealthy calories, and stop worrying about the psychology of the viewer and feedback mechanisms… This is just a back up plan if all of this doesn’t work…