The scope for this project is wide, so I needed to hone in on a target demographic in order to establish some sort of user led approach to my research. I felt that designing with younger generations in mind was a good starting point, however I feel that the trajectory of this project will be one that will reach more than just one demographic.
Beginning with Gen-Z in mind felt natural as there is a lot of research into this generation as they have truly grown up in unique circumstances, being technology natives. I felt that the various studies available surrounding this generation would point to technological needs or gaps in the market, which would be the perfect springboard for ideation around a problem to be solved.
Admittedly quite a broad question to pose, but one that without doubt would open up a path worth exploring. These issues are taken from a number of articles and commentary of various websites surrounding this generation. I picked out the most common themes emerging from them and began mapping these out to find connection between them.
<aside> ⭐ REFLECTION: All of these issues without doubt had scope within them. In choosing the most interesting theme from this mind map, I was intrigued by the issues surrounding communication. ‘Social disconnection’ sat quite poignantly in this mind map, pointing to a generational experience truly unique to this demographic. ‘Technology over-dependance’ and ‘addiction [to technology]’ is the quintessence of this generation in my opinion. The Gen-Z archetype is synonymous with technology in all it’s forms, both positive and negative.
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I wanted to explore the theme of technology addiction further, so I created a mind map to contextualise this issue, conceive what enables it and get a clearer image of it’s effects on this generation.
From my research, it is clear that short-form content is the catalyst that has fuelled this issue. When you consider short-form content, the reasons that it is so addictive are clear. It is possibly the easiest way to consume content. Considering content such as a book for example (taking it way back), there are many blockades if you will in discovering the crux of the content. This would be things such as the act of turning a page, the mental tax of reading, the strain of your eyes to focus on small words across hundreds of pages, decorative narrative, literary devices - the list is endless. A book is without doubt one of the longest form of content.
Moving this into the digital sphere, the growth of YouTube as a central hub of user generated content for video sharing, content begin to grow shorter. These videos where still substantial enough in length and harkened to content such as TV or movies. Then came the age of short form video content, with TikTok being the hallmark of this wave of content. As the popularity of TikTok or Instagram Reels began to increase, longer form content such as YouTube began to decline. By saying this, I am not disregarding long-form content’s place in our current society — streaming services such as Netflix have a strong hold in our screen time percentages. But the addictive nature of TikTok is undeniable, from both my own experience and the research available.
In my opinion, yes, they do. I sympathise with designers of apps such as TikTok and Instagram, as their goal is to make the UX of apps as seamless as possible and allow user’s to access as much content as they desire. This is achieved in great amounts when viewing the interfaces of these apps, however it begs the question, do these seamless user experiences coupled with the addictive nature of short form content and the wealth of this content available, create a gateway to technology addiction? There is little to no resistance when it comes to the interfaces of these apps. This is unsurprising, as the designer who sends a Figma file entitled ‘making our content less accessible’ to their design lead is one who would get a swift, confused response shortly after.