On June 30th, Sunday, I headed out to the London Gaming Market at Royal National Hotel for a public intervention. Through my activities, I hope to spark a change in the participants’ self-perception by making them aware of the differences in their social comfort levels in both Online and Offline settings. I also wanted to explore first-hand how gamers perceive their comfort levels across online versus face-to-face social interactions.
The Setup
My setup was simple and straightforward. I invited participants to express their comfort levels for both online and offline interactions by placing stickers on a scale from 1 to 10. Below this scale, I arranged a section for post-it notes. Orange notes for personal insights on self and green notes for observations about friends and family. I was right outside the London Gaming Market venue for two hours and had nineteen participants in total.
The Scale
The trend was clear: online interactions generally scored higher in comfort, with many participants opting for the 8-10 range. Offline interactions, however, displayed a broader spread, showing a bigger range of comfort in real-life social settings
Post-It Reflections
My initial attempts to get participants to write down their thoughts was harder than I originally anticipated. Only one person took the time to write on a post-it. Recognizing the need to change my approach, I switched tactics: instead of asking them to write, I engaged directly in conversation and noted their insights myself. This approach made the interaction more dynamic and less daunting for participants.
Even with this change, it was still pretty challenging to get people to open up about their personal online vs offline behaviors (marked on the orange notes). Out of all nineteen participants, only four were willing to share their personal experiences. Many seemed hesitant to dive into their personal reflections in such a public setting, so when I sensed even a little bit of a reluctance or they seemed hesitant, I choose to not push further even if they didn’t tell me no.
Conversely, when discussing their friends’ online and offline personas (marked on the green notes), it seemed to be a lighter and more engaging topic. This part of the exercise brought out stories from an additional eight participants. Some of the participants even burst out laughing when I asked them the question. One remark that particularly stood out was from a participant who shared, “I have a friend who says the most heinous things very outwardly online, but offline he’s actually quite reserved and shy.” There was also another comment from another participant saying that her gamer friend feels more able to express herself creatively online than in offline social settings. This highlighted the contrast some people experience between their virtual and real-world interactions.
Some Unique Insights
Some encounters during that day provided deeper, more complex insights that made me reflect, and one additional surprising encounter!
1. Gamer Girl: One of my encounters involved a young woman who rated her comfort level with online gaming interactions very low (3) and offline interactions very high (10), this greatly contrasts the other participants. She explained that as a gamer girl, she frequently experiences harassment online, a stark contrast to her face-to-face interactions where such negativity is far less prevalent. I think this goes to show how important a safe environment is when it comes to feeling socially comfortable in a certain space.
2. The Teacher: Another notable conversation was with a teacher who says he is very relaxed and comfortable interacting socially online, particularly within gaming contexts. However, he shared that his offline social comfort levels are highly dependent on context. In professional settings like teaching, he feels competent and confident. Outside of work, he’s more reserved, where he says he worries about judgement and perception from others. This was a really memorable comment as it made me reflect, and I can relate to this. I don’t really like engaging with people face-to-face outside of professional/school situations. I can instill myself with confidence when I absolutely need to, for example if I need to do a presentation or do a tutorial, but outside of that I try to stay away from unneeded social interactions. Never thought about it before, but it’s cool that he brought this phenomenon to my attention.
3. MA Culture and Curation Peer: Interestingly, I also ran into a peer from the MA Culture and Curation course, who was also attending the London Gaming Market. It was a pleasant surprise that provided a brief moment of personal connection in an otherwise professionally focused day!
Challenges Along the Way
Initiating conversations with people was one of the toughest aspects of this intervention. Approaching strangers cold was particularly hard, I was really nervous myself and many of whom I approach were hesitant to stop, and quite a few dismissed my attempts with a quick wave. I tried for about half an hour with no one stopping to make conversation. I realized that my approach might be too abrupt, so I adjusted by introducing myself first as a student from UAL, and I also wore my UAL badge. This small tweak seemed to make a big difference, there were still people who prefer not to engage but I was starting to get people to actually stop and participate. The badge and my introduction definitely gave me some credibility to my presence, helping me get more people to participate.
Another hurdle was encouraging participants to openly discuss their personal experiences with social interactions both online and offline. The public setting of the intervention might have contributed to their reluctance, and also the fact that I am a stranger to them probably did not help. I understand that it is not always comfortable to discuss personal matters with strangers in such environments. I noticed that direct requests for participants to write their insights on post-it notes led to them not participating further, it seems like the task of writing was a barrier in itself, many expressed interest in this study but didn’t seem to want to physically write down their thoughts so I shifted to verbally collecting their thoughts which seemed to help with engagement to an extent. This observation will inform how I might streamline participation in the future and make it as effortless as possible for participants if I were to run something in public again.
Intervention’s Goal
The aim of this intervention was not only to test my assumption first-hand on whether some gamers have different social comfort levels in online and offline environments, the main goal was to spark self-awareness among participants about the differences between their online and offline social behaviors. Through visualizing these differences, I wish to encourage participants to see that their well-developed online social skills can indeed be adapted for face-to-face interactions. This activity aimed to shift perspectives, suggesting that improving real-world social confidence isn’t about starting starting from scratch but rather bridging already existing social competencies. It’s about realizing that they already possess the necessary skills, they just need to apply them differently.
Outcome
Six people mentioned that they’d never really thought about how different they act online and offline until they saw the visualization of the boards which got them to really think about it. The rest of the thirteen participants either don’t have too big of a gap or were already aware. Even though there’s only six, I hope that every interaction I had that day planted a seed of deeper awareness.