User Report
Summary
Connection is not always verbal — between lines of dialogues, a whole world exists, binding us together. Facial cues and body language, ambient noise, a feeling of ‘presence’; we relate to one another with more than simply words.
We wanted to explore the qualities that define ‘presence’ in the physical world and attempt to mimic some of these qualities in the digital world. The goal is not to supplant physical connection, but to enliven digital spaces with the complexity of how we relate to one another. To study this potential user group, we sent a survey to better understand the nature of offline/online interactions.
Key Results
Methodological limitations prevent strong assertions; however, we have overarching hypotheses about our potential user base:
- Our respondents are young and have varied social habits: Our respondents are primarily 18-30-year-olds, with a mix of in-person vs digital interactions and a mix of frequency of meeting with friends.
- Many value alone time: more than two-thirds of respondents are comfortable with their current interaction styles. Our project will need to take this into account.
- Online interactions may be less fulfilling and/or reflect a need for user control: Respondents who typically meet in person are more willing to build digital linkages than respondents who typically meet online. This is consistent with Sherry Turkle’s idea that online interactions allow users to exact greater control in their social interactions.
Methodology
We sent this survey with the following questions to multiple subreddits and peers:
- What is your age group?
- How often do you hang out with your friends (either in real life or virtually)?
- Where do you typically hang out with friends? (pre-pandemic)
- Do you tend to message friends first or do they initiate conversation?
- How long can you interact with friends without being socially fatigued?
- When you are done interacting with friends, would you want to continue to remain in their presence (non-verbally and not physically), or do you prefer to isolate yourself?
- Would you be interested in feeling connected with others in some way without necessarily talking to them? If so, what are some avenues in which you use/would be interested in using to stay connected passively? If not, why (feel free to explain under “Other”)?
Some limitations include the communities surveyed (Reddit, other students in the course vs representative sample), small sample size (n=40), and lack of qualitative studies. More user research may be necessary when shifting to an actual prototype.
Discussion and Analysis within AEIOU Framework
- Users: our survey allowed us to focus primarily on young adults (18-30-year-olds) and understand the behaviors they exhibit to fulfill social needs and their beliefs about the nature of social interaction
- Activities: the social activities that users engage in (‘hangouts’) occurred at varied frequencies for different participants (daily/weekly/monthly) and across different spaces (digital vs. physical).
- Interactions: we did not focus on actual interactions that occurred during hangouts, though we hypothesize that they likely include talking, eating, and gaming. Interestingly, many users also prefer to have time-limited interactions with clear delineations between being with others and being alone.
- Environments: the environments we studied were a) physical and b) digital. There are likely relationships between the preferred medium of interaction and users’ viewpoints on social interaction.
- Objects: implicitly omitted from our dialogue is the role of technology as a medium for facilitating both physical and digital interactions – namely, messaging is likely used to schedule hangouts and facilitate digital hangouts.
One challenge to our original hypothesis is the proportion of respondents who are satisfied with maintaining their current social interactions as-is – namely, many value alone time and actively work to protect it. This result is exciting because it reframes the pitch of our project and encourages the following questions:
- Creating richer spaces: Can we create hybrid physical-digital spaces or add more dimensionality to digital spaces to better allow self-expression?
- The effects of solitude: What is the relationship between alone time and how we interact with one another? Do most people have enough alone time in the day?
- Counteracting control: Can uncertainty be added into digital spaces to challenge the desire for control, as Sherry Turkle describes?