Internet Attention

My series of studies were centered around the internet, the web, social media and our relationships & experiences with these media. Given that this experiment deals with using our bodies as controllers, my focus was on visualizing the existing relationships we have with these media platforms and looking at how we could create friction in these technologies where necessary, making us more active participants in our relations with these platforms, taking back some control from the algorithms designed to keep us mindlessly scrolling, clicking and consuming.

Scroll 1 – doomScroll

For my first scroll, I thought about our relationships with endless feeds and how we’ve been accustomed to just scrolling these feeds for hours on end even when we might not want to.
Using Posenet, I prototyped a scenario where the user has to carefully hover their left hand over directional arrows to scroll, using this interaction as way to add friction to the process, limiting the time spent scrolling and making us think more intentionally about interacting with these feeds

Present Link: https://editor.p5js.org/demilade/full/Ul9HVzur1

Edit Link: https://editor.p5js.org/demilade/sketches/Ul9HVzur1

Interaction Video: https://youtu.be/N67gJCCAJpY

Click 1 – peskyPopups

You’ve probably been to a website where you were assaulted by 1 popup after the other, seemingly unending all preventing us from accessing the content we came for. My first click study is a mini game where the user has to hover their left hand over the popup buttons and ‘clap to click’ the buttons and close them before the screen is overrun with popups and the healthbar gets red. The whole process is reminiscent of clapping at pesky insects invading our personal spaces reflecting similar emotions pesky popups evoke.
I use Posenet to track the users wrists and the distance between the wrists to simulate a clap click.

Present Link: https://editor.p5js.org/demilade/full/SusMA6Svh

Edit Link: https://editor.p5js.org/demilade/sketches/SusMA6Svh

Interaction Video: https://youtu.be/rZBlnjZtTqM

Click 2 – clickSwarm

This is a visualization of how everything online is in a constant battle for our attention. Every corner of the internet is peppered with call-to-actions, begging us to click in order to get some more of our engagement.
For this study I use PoseNet to track the users face via nose tracking. The cursor follows the nose and the cursors  within a certain threshold ‘activate’ following you, no matter where you go. The user has to blast an imaginary fireball by bringing their wrists together like a kamehameha to briefly get the cursors to point away but then everything reverts showing how we only seem to get away from this attention battle for only a short period of time.

Present Link: https://editor.p5js.org/demilade/full/J1UxhwUL6

Edit Link: https://editor.p5js.org/demilade/sketches/J1UxhwUL6

Interaction Video: https://youtu.be/s_OZ0YM1F5E

Scroll 2 – speedScroll

Following up to and building on doomScroll, this scrolling experience uses 2 hands instead of 1. The users left hand needs to be over the direction they would like to scroll and the right hand controls the scroll speed based on the intensity of the vertical hand wipe.

Present Link: https://editor.p5js.org/demilade/full/zP7C_Cbh8

Edit Link: https://editor.p5js.org/demilade/sketches/zP7C_Cbh8

Interaction Video: https://youtu.be/9qX_5uFL2vM