Dopamine Junkies
An interactive online edutainment experience utilising data visualisation/infographics to convey a topic of social media addiction and its’ effects on mental health. This web design was created and animated in After Effects to showcase animated elements and interactions.
The Brief:
Design an interactive, online edutainment experience using infographics and / or data visualisation. Furthering this, principles of visual and UX design should be incorporated to create accessible, usable and engaging experiences and usage of meaningful data visualisations or infographics to make complex information more accessible. The theme that I chose for this project was “Is social media a social dilemma?”.
The Insight:
Inside the social media theme I wished to delve deeper into social media addiction, its causes and effects. The insight I gained was the following: We spend so much time on social media as it is designed to be addictive through hijacking the rewards systems in our brains and making us into dopamine junkies.
The Concept:
Dopamine Junkies – This concept follows the insight that social media is designed to be addictive, hijacks the dopamine reward system in our brains leading to us gaining a behavioural addiction and becoming “dopamine junkies”. I would like to tell a narrative about the use, abuse and effects of social media on mental health in order to spread awareness and educate teenagers and young adults about their social media use.
The Solution:
Design an edutainment data visualisation/infographic website that educates and informs teenagers and young adults on their social media use, abuse and how social media addiction can affect their lives alongside how they can move forwards in terms of mitigating their social media addiction.
Executions:
The Rationale:
This site effectively explains the concept of social media addiction to users through visual storytelling and aesthetics and takes on an informal lens as to not scare off or be condescending towards those that suffer from social media addiction.
Visual direction and overall style is a bold duo-tone colour palette of blacks and yellow, with medical related imagery and a programming font for a highly digitised look.
Interactivity such as the concept of surprise and delight, scroll-bound animations and animated imagery and elements create a playful, memorable and engaging experience for the user.
After Effects Walkthrough Video:
