Visualizing Daily Tech-Rituals
“We shape our tools and, thereafter, our tools shape us.” – John Culkin
Rituals are how we add symbolic meaning to our exchanges with technology. They can be defined as a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, and objects, performed according to a set sequence. This project aims to catalog the effects of technology by observing, deconstructing, and reconstructing self generated content and create a visual statement defining technology through the lens of oneself.
Client: Student Work
Role: Ethnography, Visualization, Typography, Photography
Guide: Prof. Ryan Schoenherr
Tools: Adobe Illustrator
Duration: 5 weeks
The Process
Ethnographic Research: Collecting and Analyzing Data
I started out by auditing my tool use, keeping a record of the various forms of technology that I engage with throughout the week/day/ hour/minute, building a collection of data, and gathering as much context around each interaction as possible.
Associations: What kind of emotions do the tools invoke?
I categorized the chosen technology tools by associating different emotions based on my day-to-day use and experience with them.
Realization
I realized that technology for me is an addiction and ends up tying me to my gadgets for longer than I should. Post that, I started creating the visual language for the same. Shades of black and gray depict the feeling of being trapped.
Visualization
I started visualizing the concept of Technology as an Addiction in the medium of a poster.
Iterations
I later thought that a typographic approach will be more appropriate since it is a story-telling concept.
After a few iterations I decided to tell my story in the form of folding pages. However, this was feeling very traditional, and the idea of repetition was not coming through the piece enough.
Change in the Format
I used the format of the pages to make changes to the type over time and ended up with a book. Focusing on my usage of Google as a search engine, I used my Google search history as the content for the book. The idea was to depict dependency by the gradual chaos and distortion of words. However, that distortion was not enough.
Final Design
Improvising on the last design, the new typographic design was much more accurate to the idea of repetition, distortion, and addiction. The design uses a clear and web type font called Bebas Regular.
Execution
I got a printed version of the book which had 240 pages to support the idea of repetition and density.
Technology makes one stressed and dull with longer use. And this is exactly what is being portrayed through the book below - a bunch of words that have meaning, with excessive use culminate into being distorted and meaningless.
