Dealing with FOMO through emotional design

Thumbnail Image

Files

master_Lee_Jangbae_2021.pdf (29.31 MB)

URL

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis
Location:
Unless otherwise stated, all rights belong to the author. You may download, display and print this publication for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.

Authors

Date

2021

Department

muo

Major/Subject

Mcode

Degree programme

Master's Programme in Collaborative and Industrial Design

Language

en

Pages

105

Series

Abstract

In recent years, increasing attention has been directed towards a negative experience conceptualised as Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). It is a phenomenon that is often related to the use of social media and influences the users’ daily well-being. Numerous studies in the fields of psychology have investigated the construct of FOMO and its effects. Most researchers took under-fulfilled social needs as the causes or antecedents of FOMO (type one). Recently, researchers also identified social comparison may cause another type of FOMO (type two). It explicitly happens to a more image-centric social media platform such as Instagram. They are interrelated but conceptualized in having different components. This thesis starts with understanding FOMO in general, but is intended to focus on the type two FOMO, and improve users wellbeing through an emotional design approach which is characterised by designing to evoke or prevent a particular emotion (Desmet et al., 2009). FOMO is a negative affective experience that may involve several negative emotions (Burnell et al., 2019). Instead of simply aiming to avoid these negative emotions, this thesis adopts the view that negative emotions that form FOMO, when evoked under the right conditions, could be beneficial. Therefore, it first aims to understand the situations in which FOMO typically occurs, and how individuals experience FOMO. Secondly, through identifying different stages of FOMO, and the corresponding negative emotions of each stage, this thesis offers a foundation for exploring design possibilities to positively exploit type two FOMO for the benefits it may potentially bring, as well as better informed emotional design strategies to avoid type two FOMO. Lastly, it aims to create experience-driven solutions to help social media users to deal with each stage of type two FOMO. The results of the thesis consist of research outcomes and experience-driven design solutions. First, the research's main findings and insights identified the process view on five stages of type two FOMO and featuring five negative emotions of each stage, such as envy, insecurity, doubt, annoyance, and guilt. Desirable user actions and social media constraints were identified according to those emotions. Second, this thesis creates five experience-driven design proposals to break the connection to negative consequences. Envy is a negative emotion that can leverage the potential benefit of it. Other negative emotions, such as insecurity, doubt, annoyance, guilt, need removing. The design proposals were prototyped and tested, feedback were gathered, and results were produced. The thesis ends with a conclusion, discussion on practical implementation, limitations, and further research to make sure meaningful social media changes.

Description

Supervisor

Mattelmäki, Tuuli

Thesis advisor

Xue, Haian

Keywords

fear of missing out, social media, social comparison, emotional design, negative emotion, experience design

Other note

Citation

Permanent link to this item

https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-202104256333

Collections

[master] Taiteiden ja suunnittelun korkeakoulu / ARTS