As part of Social Media Week in NYC, design firm IDEO hosted the event Humanizing Social Media. Check-in to the event required attendees to leave their mobile devices behind with their coats, setting the stage for an experiment in human interaction. Participants were given a large blank white t-shirt to cover whatever they were wearing, and their choice of a range of buttons with which to express interests and identity. Below are two brief perspectives and insights on human social behavior that team PSFK walked away with:
Kyle Studstill:
The event was framed as an experiment in bringing social interaction back to its basics, in the face of complex digital platforms like Facebook, foursquare, Twitter and the like – the idea being that impersonal nature of these networks take something away from the simplicity of face-to-face interaction.
What I observed reflected the idea that all social interaction – digital or not – is an exercise in individuals using whatever they have at their disposal to say something about themselves. The buttons were an obvious example of this, but it was also clear in the vastly varied ways participants placed their buttons or even wore the blank t-shirt itself. The entire event begged the question “what parallels can we draw between what happens here in this experiment, and what happens in social networks?”; one clear one that emerged is that the expression of identity through carefully (and often subconscious) curated details of one’s personality applies both online and off.
As far as the digital disconnect (no one knew they would be without their phones for two hours until they walked in the door), I don’t think I had that feeling of ”everyone is paying more attention now” that one might expect. Perhaps the rest of the crowd did. But it has been my experience that we are getting better at dipping in and out of both digital and offline conversations, pulling ourselves away from a casual group to share an idea on Twitter and diving back in seamlessly; I haven’t experienced the feeling that people being connected to their mobile devices has made them any less “social,” even in the physical space.
Francisco Hui:
Kyle makes a good point that the lack of phones didn’t particularly change how we socialized for those two hours. The blank t-shirts, like current social media platforms, placed everyone on the same footing, regardless of their age and what they came in wearing.
Learnings from the discussion alluded to an interesting group dynamic that occurs in real life that hasn’t been replicated in social media. While you can broadcast messages to your followers, it’s still an individual act that is occurring in on your phone or at your desk.
From another conversation, we learned that current status updates are very much about the past tense; what you did yesterday or earlier during the day, but we’re slowly moving towards the present and future tense, what you’re doing right now, and what you plan to do.
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