Critical Design, UX UI Design

"Fungal Forest Digital Garden"

Concept

A personal project that stemmed from research within my “speculative ux practice” project , I explored how fungal teachings could be used to re-wild and restructure online social interactions . Resolving issues such as overextended attention and a lack of community within web2 social media platforms.

Project Ideation + Secondary Research

To refine my ideas for my project, I read some literature on digital ethnography , Fungal teachings and Human Computer Interaction , and brainstormed ideas in relation to quotations on it. I thought about how public imaginations of the web could be re-imagined, rejecting standardised interfaces which limit user expression , as well as how I could practically implement mycelial teachings through an interface itself.

Primary Research

For my survey I categorised questions into three sections : Thoughts on Social media , Thoughts on Alternatives, Online Behaviours and Interaction and Public Re-Imaginations of the Web . Within these sections I tried to gauge what users currently found useful about platform capitalist social media , what they disliked, as well as what was missing from alternatives. I also asked broader questions relating to digital ethnography ( online behaviours in more detail ) in order to identify additional user pain points.

Synthesis of Research

I synthesised my survey results into an affinity diagram. From this I identified 8 key findings :

I additionally put these findings into two user personas - one of the personas encapsulates the online behaviours and desires of someone who is not necessarily knowledgeable or actively engaging with alternatives to platform capitalist social media, but still limits their engagement with it and is critical of it. The seconds persona is focused on an individual who is passionate on topics such as digital archiving and more intentional engagement with content online, creating digital gardens and personal websites.

My findings within both primary and secondary sources both concluded standardisation and convenience in relation to social online interaction were concepts that needed to be rejected in order to facilitate meaningful or intentional online interactions. I created a problem statement to summarise these findings:

Visual Infrastructure Research

To inform the workings of a prototype I looked at a graphic designer’s work - Yehwan Song . Song created a project called “ANTI FRIENDLY” , in which she subverts user experience behaviours for purposes such as encouraging diversity of users , and diversity of experiences. I decided to look at her work satirising the template-like structure of many standardised web2 interfaces as inspiration for problem solving issues within platform capitalist social media.

Prototype Ideation

To ideate my prototype I conducted crazy eights informed by secondary concept research ( fungal teachings, web infrastructure theory , criticism ) as well as user needs identified in my primary survey research . I synthesised my user needs into four different categories and ideated solutions based on each of them.

I noticed the majority of my ideas centred around the concept of an interface being modelled on a forest or natural environment of some sort. This reminded me of the concept fungal forests and how the entanglements of fungi connect and send information and resources to different parts of an ecosystem. Based on this concept I decided to create a “Fungal Forest, reflective digital social space and research tool”.

Branding, Visual Identity

For my Visual Identity I decided to look at various interfaces that mimicked or visualised a forest. I decided to look at a lot of older Web1 interfaces or interfaces with similar visual design to Web1 HTML personalised websites, as well as retro game interfaces. I also looked at some TouchDesigner animations and playful interfaces that I could integrate into the concept of an interface as a “mirror”.

Visual Identity Moodboard

Brand Board

Initial User Flow , Prototyping

To begin my prototype I started developing two ideas :

- Option Social . Users are asked to select people whom they wish to “collectively scroll” with. They traverse a forest pane collectively with a toggle interaction. They can only go a certain direction if all users choose to traverse that way. This increases receptivity and curiosity towards the interests of their existing social connections. Additionally users can “plant” content they find within social or private “gardens” (archiving content).

- Option Reflection . Users are asked to reflect on patterns or behaviours they notice online , within themselves or the collective. They are then posed with the choice if they want to nurture and grow those ideas, or if they want to “compost” them, let them degenerate. They can additionally “regenerate” thoughts through “emptying” their compost.

User Journey

Medium Fidelity Development

User Testing

I tested my prototype at a “Softer Digital Futures” conference in order to get target demographic relevant feedback to my project , the people I discussed and tested my prototype with either had an interest in digital gardens or had created digital gardens themselves.

The main feedback I got was:

- Users enjoy platforms to find information as long as they utilise and develop web1 technologies, such as are.na re-inventing the hyperlink.

- Despite having knowledge of many digital garden related interfaces such as soot world, yoo.world , are.na and obsidian; target demographic still struggled to understand the purpose of some unexplained features (mainly composted ideas being reconstructed)

- Users were unsure of long term use cases for the website, would they be able to create multiple gardens, to what extent was archiving linear vs topographic.

- Some users were unsure what elements of archiving feature were public vs private.

Final Prototype

Based on my user testing feedback I added some descriptive text that appears when the user hovers over the sections at the start of the user journey, as well as adding higher fidelity elements such as colour , more consistent design system in order to indicate certain areas being a public vs personal. I also added an additional section within the “your thought garden” section in order to consider longer term use cases, your garden is refreshed every month but you still have access to an archive of all your previous thought gardens.

Speculative Piece

To engage a broader audience with my work , I decided to create a digital art piece , engaging people with speculative ideas around online digital spaces. The piece aims to inspire the user to participate in a reflective process around their own online interaction, a "reflective interface”, users stand in front of a screen in which a black and white pixelated dithering representation of them is depicted. The image becomes distorted and constantly evolves, representing the “digital self” being detached from the users “true self”, representing a sense of alienation people experience in social online spaces. Various memes and quotes are placed around the dithering “reflection” in order to engage the user more explicitly with these concepts.