Looking back at yesterday’s incubator, it’s clear that our project quite a few dents that will need to be addressed. The incubator helped us validate our ideas, but also pointed out gaps that will require deeper exploration and refinement.
Incubator Feedback
The feedback that we had gotten yesterday highlighted an important oversight: we hadn’t fully explored the socio-economic effects of automation. We were too focused, to a point of having a tunnel vision, on building out the “HAPPY ORGANIZATION” as this sinister capitalistic plot and missed having a deeper look at the ramifications this kind of dystopian future will have on the society and individuals. There was also feedback around the lack of detail in the “Happy” company’s operation, things like how it’s run, what do people do, and what the company is trying to achieve. Originally, in my mind, I thought keeping it vague would help make the company look more mysterious and sinister, but I now also realized that this lack of context could break the immersion within our content.
The feedback around the potential for despair and revolutionary responses to oppressive system were particularly striking, I was reminded by a tutor from MACCC, Elliot, of the Luddite rebellion, where humans rose against industrialization because it has displaced their way of life. I don’t think the background scenario for the Luddite rebellion is too different from ours, and we should definitely use this as a reference to refine our project. We need to do more investigation and include the social consequences of our speculative future into our narrative.
Moreover, the interaction with our audience, through both direct feedback and engagement with our project’s website was incredibly informative. Despite receiving fewer survey responses than anticipated (only 36, I hoped for at least 40), the insights we gained was invaluable.
Website Engagement
One of the most interesting outcomes for me was our website(click here to visit) heatmap, which offers a tangible measure of interest and interaction with the website. The most engaged with content throughout our page was the “About Happy Company” section, which is positioned directly after our introductory video, suggesting a genuine interest in understanding the scenario we proposed, leading them to seek more in-depth information about the concept of our speculative world. The second most engaged with section was the Research section. Initially I was concerned that people wouldn’t be interested in reading about the research behind our speculative scenario, but I guess I worried too much. Analytics has dispelled this worry for me, revealing that the audience were not only interested in the narrative but also keen on understanding the research and foundations that underpinned our scenario. This made me really happy, as it indicates a deeper level of interest among our audience, suggesting that they were not just passively consuming our content but also actively and mentally engaging with the ideas and questions it presented.
Next Steps & Personal Reflection
Moving forward, our task is to evaluate the received feedback, and integrate these insights to present a more comprehensive vision of the future we speculate!
I wrote in my previous entry that I didn’t fully grasp what caused our team to just “click” together into this cohesive “hive mind.” However, a moment of clarity struck while having a drink with another member of our cohort today, it was the willingness to compromise. Initially, we were all deeply attached to our own ideas, but as soon as one of us made a compromise, it was as if we started tossing out our egos. This started a chain reaction within the group, with each member gradually taking steps back, and this shaped the team dynamic that we have today.
EDIT – 8/3/2024 9:49PM
While riding on the tube today, I came across an article on reddit titled “What’s going to happen when lower tier jobs no longer pay enough to live on?” It’s not research material, but it was a good read because of all the perspectives in the comment.