PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT CONCENTRATION (CEM)
PROFESSORS: JOSÉ DE LA O / CARLOS QUIROGA / FRANCISCO HUNKEN / IAN ORTEGA / LETICIA GAYTÁN / RICARDO GARCÍA
DESIGN VS SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM
Surveillance Capitalism" is referred to the commercialization of personal data to obtain economic benefits. Under the promise of providing personalized service, technology companies persuade their users to transfer their data when using their products related to the Internet of Things to be sold to third parties.
In this Critical Design project, four student teams explore different aspects of Surveillance Capitalism that may be ethically questionable. Through artistic research and advanced product design, each section presents an artefact that brings to the table a conversation about how surveillance capitalism is affecting our daily lives and consumer trends.
DISCURSO POLÍTICO
BEST OF THE SHOW
Diana Orta, Diego Camacho, Rosendo Llanderal and Susana González
An electronic artefact that analyzes the influence of surveillance capitalism on the discourse of Mexican politicians on Twitter. For this project, we obtained information and data on ten candidates for federal deputies in the elections of June 6, 2021, from different political parties. This, in turn, was processed through a code that determined the emotional polarity of the political message, the level of interaction of people with it and finally, the percentage of bots involved in this activity. Our goal is to give physicality to the systematically calmed information by various factors that prevent us from being critical of the content we consume and the way it reaches us.
THEEM
Sara Luz Pérez del Ángel, Karina Pérez Chávez and Estefania Aimé Rivera
The Everyday Message: An artefact that criticizes the spiritual manipulation in social networks fostered by surveillance capitalism. Surveillance Capitalism has begun to control the world economy and our reality from the shadows, managing our emotions and encouraging consumerism during our most vulnerable states of mind.
THEEM (The Everyday Message) is an artefact that directly criticizes this manipulation practice that has gone unnoticed on social networks. The experience begins with an emotionally affected user who approaches THEEM and immediately obtains a phrase made up of three words that, although they seem ambiguous, will turn out to be loaded with meaning for them. Through this understanding process, THEEM takes on the role of social media posts, becoming an almost spiritual guide for the user and subtly manipulating it to encourage the consumption of items that would not be purchased under normal circumstances.
CLEO
HONORARY MENTION
Sara Emilia Castro, Ximena Sofía Nieto and Jessica Montserrat Gómez
Cleo helps to visualize the relation between the data that we share in menstrual tracking apps and our consumerism habits. The variation in the lights shows the comparison between the spending habits and the ads that are shown on social media during every moment of the menstrual cycle. This opens the conversation about how our personal data is used to manipulate us when we are more prone to buy a certain kind of products.
MERENGUE
Margarita Gilbon, Jocelyn Sollano and Darío Cristóbal López
In the year 2030, the children of the generations born in the boom of the current technological age (1990-2010), stop feeling oppression by Surveillance Capitalism, instilled by a culture that their parents adopted when choosing to give their information staff in exchange for tools that "make your life easier" at no apparent cost, however, what are they offering in return?Personal information is the new currency with which the companies that own these products or services profit and generate income by selling it to third parties.
By ceasing to exist a latent awareness about the extraction of data, the use of tools whose true intention is to extract and sell users' data, both children and parents, in exchange for products and services that satisfy their needs is normalized. This is where we designed MERENGUE, a toy for children under ten years of age, whose objective is to help them follow a routine through a pre-programmed calendar that is repeated weekly.
