Gooqle
A tactical media intervention of Google.
*This is the condensed edition. For more information, please visit this Medium story.*
Project summary
Background: An individual project from the course: 5D Fundamentals: Experience and Drawing.
Objective: Design a website that is a "spoof" of an existing website.
Timespan: Fall 2019; 5 weeks.
Audience: Search-engine users, especially students.
Goal: Engage the audience to reflect on their dependency on technology, specifically search engines.
prompt
In Professor Beauregard's (course instructor) words: "The goal of [this project] is to develop an experience that is specifically screen-based. This assignment will allow us to explore questions of interactivity, feedback, narrative, and incorporate ideas from previous projects such as context, audience, participation, etc."
I envisioned this project as an opportunity to flip the power dynamic between "user" and "producer", and hope to "[continue the process] of questioning the premises of the channels they work with" (Garcia & Lovink, 1997).
The Problem
Are we overly dependent on technology?
Technologies are made to make our lives easier as assistive tools, but I must confess that as a digital native, I've been Googling for the smallest possible things that I certainly could've answered myself. Efficient synonym. 翻譯 in English. How to spell "neccesary." What's 88 Fahrenheit in Celsius. Why is the sky blue. Yes, Googling is fast and convenient, but doing so has minimal contribution to personal growth. Alternatively, figuring out the answers and learning at the same time is a better investment in living a better life in the long term.
We Google because we want to learn about something, and there are certainly other ways we can acquire knowledge. Psychologically speaking, learning can be viewed as a process of encoding information into long term memory. Reading a dictionary, flipping through an encyclopedia, or even asking someone else exposes us to more diversified external factors that help us work the newly acquired information into our memory through semantic encoding, encoding specificity, just to name a few. On the contrary, the same repeating typing and skimming Googling process is a lot less likely to help us to store that information properly for later retrieval.
The Solution
Introducing: Gooqle!
My parody of Google targets our expectations on search engines providing an efficient and accessible searching experience. I threw in some fun mechanisms and puzzles that delays our direct access to the actual searching result to have us take a step back and reflect on our use of Google. I see this as a rest area on a highway, where we take a break from the high traffic and ask our selves: are we overly dependent on Google?
My parody of Google targets our expectations on search engines providing an efficient and accessible searching experience. I threw in some fun mechanisms and puzzles that delays our direct access to the actual searching result to have us take a step back and reflect on our use of Google. I see this as a rest area on a highway, where we take a break from the high traffic and ask our selves: are we overly dependent on Google?
The project's progression included some sketches of wireframes and re-designs of logo and web pages.
Low fidelity wireframe and redesigned web pages.
Process flowchart, shared style, and design assets.
The spoofed logo resembles a glitching Google logo.
The Outcome
Gooqle redefines our searching experience on Google. Instead of displaying search results after queries are submitted, it leads to the Error 404 page. As we attempt to reach for the expected page through the unwritten protocols: "reload" to refresh the page, "learn more" to identify the problem, and click on the logo to return to home, we encounter unexpected hardships -- none of those work. The only way to exit is to solve the Goodle (the robot) puzzle, and it's very likely that we could've figured out the answers by ourselves using the suggested alternatives by the time we arrive at the search result page. This reflects the times we stubbornly stuck to search engines despite technical issues, the moments we took search engines for granted for getting answers at fingertips, and the laziness in the ways of gaining new information we all hide away from. Another possibility is that the small break we take on Gooqle actually helps us. There's a chance that the spacing effect, a learning phenomenon discovered by Hermann Ebbinghaus, might give us a hand in enhancing our long-term memory if we use Gooqle while studying.
Prototype
To continue the spoof theme, I created my prototype on PowerPoint. I simulated screen transitions using a combination of embedded videos, GIFs, slide transitions, and object animations. I also utilized links to preserve the cursor's behavior over clickable hot spots.
Video demonstrating Gooqle prototype.
Edit: I revisited the project in Summer 2020 and created an interactive prototype in Adobe Xd.
Prototype created in Adobe Xd.
Wait, there's more to the birth of Gooqle!
Want to learn about this project in depth? Interested in boarding my train of thoughts? Or simply didn't get enough of my creative juice? You're invited to take a closer look at my journey on this Medium story.
Questions, comments, or suggestions? Leave a comment or message me! I would love to hear your what you think and discuss them with you. I promise I don't bite.
