Iris Hagel
Keywords: Spatial design, Overexposed, Design
I'm currently graduating from the masters of industrial design. I believe design should have an impact that makes a difference. As a spatial designer, I try to tell a story that needs to be told, and by doing this I try to trigger certain emotions. For me, exploring concepts and research are as important as the end work itself.
I’m always very interested in human behavior and I like observing people, talking to people, and working with people. It's my source of inspiration. I see great value and I'm driven in designing for new perspectives on our everyday behavior. In the coming years, I would like to continue operating my own company that design’s interactive experiences in the form of spatial installations.
#OVEREXPOSED
Graduation Project
‘Technological sadness’ describes the negative effects of social technologies and the need we feel to share online and the emotion we experience. What are the negative effects of this? In my research project, I investigated the Instagram platform and the ways in which digital natives experience technological sadness. Many of them use their smart phone as their personal diary to memorize their daily activities. ‘The photo impairment effect’ describes how people ‘offload’ their memories onto the camera’s memory. Our smartphone is becoming our external memory, making us remember less. Through Instagram and other platforms, we are triggered to capture more and more, trying to hold on to moments that are gone. To address these urgent issues, I created an interactive installation. In this booth the visitor will be confronted with moments that are lost through our extreme use of smartphone photography. You will leave this experience with a memory not to be forgotten.
TECHNOLOGICAL SADNESS
Thesis
As a designer, I am intrigued by emotions. When I choose a topic to discuss, it is usually something that I have also experienced. As a keen observer of people, human behaviour is very much of interest. I have noticed that in the past years’ something in my behaviour has changed. My emotions were being affected by something. Something that was not human. Something that integrated slowly into my life. Something I brought everywhere with me. Something that at one point became a part of me without me realizing it. In my surroundings, I saw people close to me experience the same. I’m talking about the mobile phone and how we use it to share our lives, online status, and social communication.
So For my thesis, I researched the effects of ‘Technological sadness’ in my surroundings. This term was coined by Geert Lovink, founder of the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam. Technological Sadness is an emotion that appeared when we started using social technologies to communicate. I focused mainly on the platform Instagram. I catagorized all the functions of the app that caused this emotion in certain ways. My research uncovered how dependent we have become on this platform. Through experiments and interviews I showed how our behaviour is changing and is being affected.