curated by others

Curated by Others explores the speculative futures of self and social media. It's a provocation composed of mundane science fiction and visual investigations of loneliness and togetherness, human presence, and the digital experience.

With our lives being changed rapidly by new discoveries and technologies, questions begin to emerge: How does this shape our future? What's the point? Are we in control? Critical and speculative design create a space in which we explore how our current actions affect potential future experiences.

The Approach

I set out to create a social network in which our online profiles were actually, well, curated by others, rather than by ourselves. If we removed this aspect of control, how does our identity change with a better understanding of how others perceive us?

The curated social networks, named Mindset and Ume respectively, compare and contrast the two extremes to reveal behavior, attitudes, and technologies

Mindset reveals how we can rely too heavily on our technologies to solve a problem. Ume explores how we can enrich our technologies to enhance the role we play in one another’s lives.