Jacket

In a personal mock project meant to test my UX process, I sought to identify and meet the wants and needs of younger generations. I began by identifying audiences from Gen Z through older Millennials, with a focus on social media and media consumption — specifically the ways young people use entertainment preferences to navigate their identity online. My hypothesis: by applying human-centered UX practices to one of the most outspoken and socially vulnerable populations, we can take on broader conflicts in technology and habituation.

After thorough research and a number of UX exercises, I identified a breakdown of user wants and needs, expressed via empathy maps and personas. I wanted to address social media saturation and the unhealthy practices tech companies use to exploit their users. Despite our reverence for technology, there is still an untapped market of platforms built specifically around media consumption and the communication of personal identity — often ascribed through stories, characters, memes, quizzes, blogs, or listicles.

My audience’s motivation to interact with art is highly reliant on an expression of their personality traits. For more and more young people, what they consume is very much a form of identity management. I wanted to give them a platform to explore these concepts in a way that doesn’t exploit their time, privacy, and fear of missing out.

My audience applies their identities to inform individual expression and to communicate within media discourse. Analyzing how they interpret media consumption offers key insight into critical media literacy, the persuasive power of social media, and the construction of consumer identity.

Instead of creating a social identity to be targeted for products and services, I want to give that power of data and interpretation to consumers themselves. In other words, this concept needs to do two things: create a space where users can easily communicate their interests, and be a tool to help young people better understand themselves.

With these goals in mind, I began an exhaustive wireframing and prototyping phase.

“Tag Yourself” memes, quizzes, listicles, and other similar forms of creative self-expression through media consumption served as a rallying point for meeting my audience’s needs.

A major draw of social platforms is the ability to express your likes and interests, usually across hundreds of posts, images, and shares. The goal of Jacket is to be more deliberate than platforms like Tumblr — a place where users curate a perfected brand and express themselves in the plainest terms. This is Linktree, mixed with Carrd, mixed with WikiData.

Through data, we can surface recommendations and insights about concepts that would normally never be pitched to a user, giving young people a way to expand their worldview and find new things that align with their values. Jacket isn’t a forum, nor a fully integrated social network. Young people are busy and already over-saturated; Jacket is simply a customizable page users link to, maintain, and return to for insight.