After discussing my previous ideas with my tutor and classmates, I rethought my ideas again. I knew idea generation is one of the hardest parts when we are working on a project. Sometimes I felt confused about my idea, the only method I use to deal with this is to research and study the data. When I was studying the data and researches, I came up with an interesting idea to further develop.
Create an interesting way of spending and managing your digital money,
so you can feel and sense more when you use them.
Conceptual Framework ✨
After combining all the findings I got from the literature review, experiment, observation, and user interview. I defined my project into three elements - Culture, Psychology and Speculative Experience. Below is the conceptual framework.
1. Culture
This is an important area of money. As human life transforms from cash to cashless, most people love using digital devices. The culture of using money was different from the past. It affects financial literacy and also personality. I think building awareness of using digital money is essential for the next generation. Therefore, Culture will be a valuable aspect to develop.
2. Psychology
For the Psychology of money, I am not talking about how happy you are when you earn more money. But is an area that can make using digital money be more enjoyable. This is a concept that I found out during my research. I think psychology is important for designing a better user experience. Through understanding people, we can let them trust and control their digital money in a more enjoyable and interesting way. It makes using money be more sensible and be more interactive. There are no more boring statistics on your mobile app.
3. Speculative Design
To provide a design concept of digital money, I changed from making a mobile application to a speculative design. It is more like design fiction but the aim of this project is to make people aware of their experience of using digital money. "Probable", "Plausible" and "Possible" are the key elements of a speculative design approach. I will use them to develop my idea now.
Idea Demo Video 🎞️
In order to present my idea, I edit a demo video to present this idea. Below is the video showing the background of my topic and the idea - "Gesture Money".
Gesture Money 🤟🏻
After doing the concept development, I change the design approach to a speculative design. It gives me more room to think something not actually have to be in the world now, it can be a future system, product and experience. Then, I think of what about just use our hand as a medium for using digital money. We don't need a mobile phone anymore. All you need is just hands, your hands could let you control and manage your digital money in a more sensible way. This is how my idea come up. Below are some images that recapped from the above video. It shows how I test and develop the gesture money system.
Hand Tracking ✋
For the hand tracking technology. I researched online and found out Google has done a lot of research about this area. I made a reference from them to develop how it could be worked for my idea. I also inspired by the conducting of music, I think gesture tracking of using digital money can make people sense more if it could also link to music. I will test this idea in the next stage.
What's Next 🔥
Finally, I come up with some possible ideas that can be further developed. Although there are still a lot of unknowns and uncertainty in my ideas, I think I should start designing something first and make it real. Then, I can do some user testing to gather feedback on my ideas. It will help me to solve the problems and answers the questions I have at this stage.
Please have a look at the next blog for further progress.
References 📖
mediapipe. 2021. Hands. [online] Available at: <https://google.github.io/mediapipe/solutions/hands.html> [Accessed 29 October 2020].
Haroon, M. and Sikandar Hayat Khiyal, M., 2015. A Gesture Recognition Design Toolkit Everyday Gesture Library. International Journal of Computer Applications, 121(14), pp.25-29.