Burning questions: experimenting with public anonymous dialogue.
installation - psychology - data analysis
Role & Team
Key Skills
Facilitating interactions in others via social psychology.
Maximizing impact with minimal resources.
Spreading curiosity & community-building!
My Impact
I instigated 200+ mini conversations (of course, with a loose definition of "conversation") via a series of 30 participatory mini-installations across campus (with a $0 budget ✌️).
265+ responses
19 posters
3 weeks
TLDR
I'm fascinated by participatory art, social psychology, and random curious questions, so I combined these interests in a way that allowed me to see other perspectives & allow others an outlet for expression.
I put up 30 posters, each with a different question, sticky notes, and miscellaneous lost pens.
For those interested in social psychology experiments…
explanatory variables: location, anonymity, prompt
outcome variables: level of seriousness, # of responses, optimism/pessimism
Inspiration
Wonders & random questions.
i'm someone who's always pondering a random question. I love to hear what other people have to think about them, but the people around me sometimes don't think about these questions or tend to have similar answers to me.
The Idea
Put up posters, sticky notes, and pens around campus to see what random people write!
What do you think the world will look like in 50 years?
If you could tell every single person in the world a message, what?
What makes you feel powerless?
Scaling up
Getting fun & diverse responses… time to do more!
I ended up with a TON of fun & diverse responses, doodles, and conversations on that first poster - so I decided to do more! Expanding the range of questions, I continually put up posters throughout the next few weeks, and kept getting a whole host of fun, insightful, and diverse responses.
Countless mini-conversations occurred, with people debating each others' answers or relating to another.
I'd originally just wanted to see what other people thought, but not only did I get a multitude of that, people were very engaged with one another, having mini conversations within a sticky note with an anonymous strangers.
A space for expression - many responses had to do with how people were feeling or struggling that day.
None of the questions directly related to how people were doing, yet from the responses there were clear trends of stress, struggling, and just wanted to talk about one's day.
Data Analysis
Analyzing the data: a social science experiment.
Connecting this to a class project, I analyzed response rates and response types (serious vs joking) to test some hypotheses.
Impact
Spreading a bit of joy & expression.
As I checked on my posters, I'd often see people standing around them, laughing or writing! It was incredible to see that something I'd created had made people's day just a little bit better.
Effects
Being exposed to surprising opinions! Reading people's responses helped me see a lot of new perspectives.
Effects
