WeCU - Case Study
Role - Web Designer and creator
Goal
The internet is filled with issues, and I aimed to tackle one with this project. I decided to use satire to highlight the online buying and selling of personal data by companies and data brokers.
Pitch
Pitch it!
After choosing a topic, I had to pitch the idea as best as possible before I got the okay to continue. Considering the nature of the project, I chose to make the pitch sound as satirical as possible to highlight how companies are selling your data and claiming your work to use for their purposes (like training AI).
Mood board
To stay in the same tone and bright colors that were used for the presentation, I took inspiration from the bright colors used for snack boxes and other pictures I found online that gave off the feeling of a company putting on a happy front despite doing something awful.
Site Map
I also created a site map to ensure I knew what I wanted to include in my website.
Research
What information am I selling?
I decided to look into what companies and data brokers were selling to get an idea of what else, aside from the stuff, I included in my site map I could add. I decided to add relationships, addresses, phone numbers, and fun facts.
What do shopping websites look like?
I also realized I needed a reference on what a shopping website looked like. I wanted to make sure I didn't exclude any of the key features that would sell the idea that my website was a "real" shopping website. I used Colourpop as a reference.
What will my website resemble?
Finally, I needed one final reference on what I needed the website to look like. While the mood board was great for getting a sense of what I was going to do, I needed more references. After looking into the SuperMarket image from my mood board, I found it was from a cannabis shop and used some pictures to find more inspiration for elements I wanted to include in the website. This needed to look like a shop.
Process
Find the people to sell
I decided to get started on finding who I was going to sell. I needed pictures, but using real people for this defeated the purpose of the satire I was using to make fun of companies and data brokers selling people's data. That's where I used a website that generated fake images of people who didn't exist and used that going forward, building a fake profile for them in my code.
Creating the product
Looking at my references, mood board, and coded descriptions, I decided I wanted to make the fake people whose data I was selling into cereal boxes. I used bright colors and fun patterns, along with an unedited picture of the fake people I found.
You are the product
To drive my point even further home, I decided to quickly research how I could turn someone's camera on and have a consistent shopping cart number. The shopping cart number being the same even when you left the website was hinting at the camera function I was going to hide somewhere in my website, and at the fact that they were getting some type of data from you.
Final Product
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Final Thoughts
Finally, I presented my website. It featured a home screen, a products page, a page to buy the people, an about us page, a persistent cart number, and a hidden camera.
Some of my first user feedback was about how great the branding of the website was since it genuinely felt like a shopping website. I also got feedback from a classmate who talked about how disturbing it was that each page had data from these people down to relationships and weird "fun" facts. The hidden camera was loved for being so simple in comparison to the rest of the website. Overall people loved it but wanted to see more, someone mentioned being able to click on the reviews and read them.
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One thing I regret and learned from was to lean in and give a chance to the ideas that I have. When I implemented the prices, I also added a sales section. The people in the sales sections were implied to have something or multiple things about them that made them end up there. I was alluding to the fact that these were people who despite being human, were treated by society and companies as less valuable. However, I changed my mind and didn't lean into it as much as I wanted to. My professor caught on to that detail and loved the commentary it was making, which made me regret not going with the original lineup I had in the sales section. Overall, I learned to give a chance to my ideas.