Likes to feel liked.
Following on from my previous assignment 'Unsure - Why?' for Design 240, assignment 3 presented us the task to create a simple interaction using processing within pairs.
Choosing to work with close friend Terall Timoti, we discussed which statistic use out of our two. Terall's statistic looking into food insecurity within Aotearoa (“1 in 4 Maori Kids living in food Insecure Homes”), and mine looking at the mental health within New Zealand ('1 in 7 (New Zealander's) will experience depression at some time in their life.').
Statement of intent:
Throughout this assignment, we have focussed on the issue of Depression in Aotearoa. We want to expand on this issue and in particular, the interaction between social media and the youth of New Zealand. Social media has become a global and social norm that has a powerful effect on the lives of those invested in it. Most notably the youth who were born into this technology. Through this interactive display, we want to show the negative effect social media can have on the mindsets of our young, and how the fluctuating flow of positivity and negativity can be linked to depression. This issue is often overlooked and we want to bring it to light.
Week one:
The first week consisted of us picking roles, outlining tasks / milestones and creating a mood board covering aesthetic, flow, interaction and make-up. Following this we then created initial sketches and mock-up storyboards to generate some ideas.
I became the creative director, whilst Terall became the lead programmer. The division of these roles was based on where each of us believed had the most experience and wished to continue improving. I do feel I excel with my creative ability, however, was not shy on helping Terall and the idea of coding when needed.
Week two:
This week would be dedicated to our individual tasks, in which I would begin creating more defined storyboards. These storyboards covered the main ideas we aimed at creating, with the ability to improve and adapt further.
The storyboards all followed similar properties and negative connotations of social media. The ideas displayed the darkness that surrounds people as a result of negative social media input. Input like negative comments and downvotes are examples. We then incorporated the "helping hand". The metaphorical hand would behave like the users interactable. This hand would crush the negative thoughts bleeding from social media and turn them into positive comments to represent help from others. This would incorporate touch and drag mechanics. The idea was to have the hand help when interacted with but to start rewinding the process back into darkness after the user stopped. This was created to portray the understanding that there is no quick fix to depression, but needs a constant support. Following this our idea was presented to a tutor for feedback. We were given feedback on how we could change the interactability o our scene to make it simpler. This prompted us to make slight story and narrative changes to help us further our idea.
During week two, I began to create more refined assets yet explore different art styles such as line art and silhouettes. The creation of social media icons and emojis was also started, deciding on a 2d or 3d look.
Week three:
In this week we first created a new final concept that would be centered around the feedback we received previously. This later concept displays a character in darkness surrounded by negative emojis falling from a cloud encompassing the main social media platforms of today. This is to show the source of negativity in social media and how this negativity can cloud someone's thoughts and judgement. Users interact with a 'like button' that will switch these emojis from negative to positive ones. As each emoji changed, the world would get brighter and the person would lift their head and have their arm slowly go down. This is to represent how social media is a supposed way to bring happiness. The idea is to show that social media is a controlling factor in a depressed mindset, and its instability creates a poor mental mindset. While it is full of negativity, people still long for the hope of positivity. To further emphasize this, we had the falling icons turn back into negative ones once they reached the bottom and respawned at the top to fall again. This is to represent the fluctuating climate of social media, and how once the stream of positivity stops, it is easy to fall back to darkness. Our changes were made to show the true impact of social media on depression. The lack of consistency is damaging. We want to emphasize how dependant we have become on social media for happiness, and how it can affect our mindsets.
This week I continued to develop my assets, with a art style being selected after consultation with a lecturer. The art style for the character was a silhouette with coloured 3d styled emojis. I was in constant coms with Terall, to help understand how the code would work with the assests and adjust them where need be.
We also discussed the implementation of sound within our outcome, but felt it would not work at the moment. We understand that sound is a powerful tool when used correctly, yet we felt that the ideas we had for 'sounds' we could have used did not match the nature of our interaction.
You can see the changes and pivots we made as a group were to hone in and be able to provide the audience an understanding on social media and its impact on mental health within Aotearoa.
Week Four:
The final week was spent in combining Terall's code with the assets in place. Our work came together well as Terall's code was able to implement the assets very easily. We then spent time working on finer details like the number of icons and sizes to ensure we had the right fit.
With the end outcome provided below, I just want to thank the Design 240 teaching staff and good friend Terall. As a pair I believe our skills and knowledge compliment each other well, while we both also have the ability to adjust and adapt to new situations. As a result of this great team work and chemistry, I am quite happy with the overall outcome we produced, with the statistic we were focusing on.
Code Snippet:
Bubble[] b = new Bubble[23]; Particle p1; Particle p2; PImage[] social = new PImage[25]; // Social Media Assets PImage[] interact = new PImage[3]; // Interact Assets PImage[] character = new PImage[8]; // character Assets int [] click = new int[23]; //Controlles clickability int time = 0; int light = 0;
void setup() { size(600, 600);
p1 = new Particle(1,500, 470, 40);//initialise Particles which are the interactebles p2 = new Particle(2,100, 100, 30);
for (int i = 0; i < b.length; i++) { //initialise Bubbles b[i] = new Bubble(); click[i] = 0 +i; } for (int i = 0; i < social.length; i++) { //initialise Social Media Assets social[i] = loadImage(“s”+i+”.png”); } for (int i = 0; i < interact.length; i++) { //initialise Interact Assets interact[i] = loadImage(“a”+i+”.png”); } for (int i = 0; i < character.length; i++) { //initialise Interact Assets character[i] = loadImage(“c”+i+”.png”); } }
void draw() { background(light); for (int i = 0; i < b.length; i++) { //load in bubbles which are my main assets b[i].descend(); b[i].display(); b[i].stop(); p2.x = mouseX; p2.y = mouseY;
void mousePressed() { //Controles the interaction
time += 1;
if (p2.overlaps(p1)) {
time += 1;
for (int i = 0; i < click.length; i++) {
} else {
time +=1;
time -= 1;
}
}