Build-A-Fear
A critical design take on the Self-Improvement app ecosystem
Brief
A Digital Play Design project at The IT University of Copenhagen made to explore new user engagement
Built using Figma and centered around evoking the uncomfortable using generative text-to-image AI services
Responsible for ideation, research, Figma prototyping, testing, and presentation.
Task
For a Digital Play Design course at The IT University of Copenhagen in the 6th semester of 2023, we were given free rein to explore new ways of user interaction, engagement, and behavior through the project theme “Your Greatest Fears”. In our design group, we wanted to also explore a critical design approach: While we had initially aimed to build off elements of evoking vertigo through exposure to vivid imaginations, we ultimately ended up utilizing mimicry instead. We aimed to disrupt the way people deal with their phobias and provoke the user to talk about them by personalizing the app experience. The prototype is built in Figma over the course of a few weeks. The project was one part of a split design presentation for the exam, which also presented a physical design prototype under a different theme and was very well received.
Solution
The solution was inspired by the concept of Build-A-Bear and became a humorous attempt at criticizing some of the pseudo-science and predatory monetization schemes often involved in these types of user experiences. The richly AI-illustrated Figma prototype consists of a user flow that lets the user combine their worst fears from a list of ten common phobias. Then, as you would at a Build-A-Bear location, the user will have to pick out a heart and soul for their creation in order to personalize it. As tension builds throughout the loading screen the combined fear entity is finally presented in a dramatic way. The user will then have four options to try and deal with it developed around the psychological and instinctive responses to fear: fight-freeze-flee-and-faun. Unfortunately, there is no real escape and the app owner will have to deal with either intrusive notifications, a needy digital acquaintance, an impossible boxing match or simply getting eaten.
