Final Project Essay
Final Project Essay
A. Project Title: Do you want to hear gossip?
B. Project Statement of Purpose
As the name of my project suggests, I want to design a piece of equipment that is related to rumors and gossip in people’s daily life. In our life, it is very common that we like to talk about some “secret news” about someone. Not only do people discuss celebrities, but they also gossip about those who are next to them. But, when people are gossiping about others, they seldom think of the negative impact on those who are being discussed. When they believe in this “secret news”, which in other words, rumor, they are much likely to spread it to more people behind the back of the one that is being discussed as a way of pastime. According to my research, gossip and rumors can destroy a person’s self-confidence and affect their self-esteem. It also can lead to depression, suicidal thoughts, eating disorders, anxiety, and a host of other issues. Also according to my own experience when I was researching on the Internet, many people are suffering from “Cyber violence” in that they were getting involved in rumors that may not be relevant to them or are not true rumors. Some people are being dug out their true identity information, and they encountered insults on the Internet and in real life, which led to depression and even chose to end their lives. But very few people have realized that how destructive their actions of listening or spreading the rumors are. So, this is the reason why I want to make this project and I want to make it more visible how rumors will destroy a normal person, which is allowing users to see how rumors become the ultimate force that overwhelms life-saving straws.
Briefly, I want to arouse people’s awareness that how their unintended words and behavior that they gossip about someone behind his/her back will destroy their self-esteem and lead them into serious mental health problems. My project will be the one that is facing the whole audience who once or more gossip about somebody else and I hope that after interacting with my project, they will be able to realize the negative impact of their behavior and I hope that they can prevent themselves from “unrealistic” rumors and gossip less about others.
C. Project Plan
First of all, my project aims to create an atmosphere that brings the audience back to the period of time when they were studying in their primary, middle, or high school. Because at that time, it was very likely that they will pass small notes with their peer’s gossip. We want to create an immersive setup that allows the audience to remember that time. To create this atmosphere, we are going to prepare a small table with several pieces of small notes with gossip of a fictional character. Also, we will prepare a pair of headphones that can block outside sounds and create a whispering atmosphere because when people are talking about gossip, they say it quietly. So, we are going to create a system that if someone picks up a certain piece of note, there will be a voice talking to him/her through the headphone. This is the first and the most challenging part that we need to finish since we need to find out what is the most suitable sensor for this part. Also, we need to come up with the rumors and write them to well-designed small notes. So I decide to complete this part by next Sunday if possible.
The second step is to allow our audience to choose whether the gossip they hear is “true” or “fake”. After that, they will be given two choices that whether they decided to send the gossip to their best friend or not. Then, their response to the rumors will be able to be recorded and will be sent to the computer. For this part, I think the only thing that we need to do is to create a box with two buttons that allow our audience to make their choices. And the figures created by the use of buttons will be sent to Processing, which is connected with our third part. So, my goal is to finish this part by the end of the first week in December.
The third step will be operated on the computer. When the computer notices our audience’s response, it will react to it. By making the reaction more visible, we are going to create the image of the fictional character. Every time our user clicks the button, either “decide to send” or “decide not to send”, the computer can give a response accordingly. We will create an effect that when the user decided to spread this rumor, the fictional character will fall off the cliff a little bit. When a certain amount of messages have been sent out, the character will fall onto the ground and lose his/her life. In this part, we need to focus on the creation of images that will appear on the computer and how we can send the values from Arduino to Processing. I think this part is much simpler compared to the other two parts, so I will leave about three-four days to complete it.
D. Context and Significance
In my preparatory research and analysis, I realize the importance of creating an immersive environment when exhibiting our design to our audience. So, this time we want to create an environment that is separated from real life and is quiet. By approaching this goal we are going to use headphones. Meanwhile, after reading the article “Art, Interaction and Engagement“, I realized it was important to create communication between users and the project. So, in this final project, there are two parts that our audience can communicate and interact with our design. The first interaction is when they pick up the message that is written in small notes, they will get the voice feedback according to which notes that they choose. Another interaction is how they perceive the message that they receive. They can either choose to believe or leave it behind, and they can choose whether to tell their friends about this gossip or not. How they respond to these messages is a “static” interaction according to Edmonds. But they can also get responses from the computer, which is a kind of “dynamic” interaction. Based on the fact that our users will get different feedbacks according to their own choices, I think this project will align with my definition of interaction. I get inspiration from the newsstands that will have newspapers and magazines hanging on the shelf, and people can pick up the ones that they are interested in. But other parts of the project are mostly based on my own ideas. We hope that this project will help people who don’t care about their actions of spreading rumors to become aware of the seriousness of their behavior, thus preventing people who are(or will be) discussed from less harm. I think the project is valuable since it can help us to survive in a world where information is spreading is so quickly and where most people are not so good at judging whether a piece of news is correct or not. After the project is completed successfully, we hope that our project can go to a place that more people–not only our peers can see it, to allow more people to realize the danger of rumors and the importance of carefully considering before sending out information that might not be true. I hope that with the help of this project, we can live in a world with less gossip and fewer rumors.