Avatar

Overview

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away wher I was still active on mainstream social media, I decided to embark on an educational crusade and start smuggling valuable content between selfies and cat photos.

Initially, I served knowledge in the form of classic posts and stories. Wanting to generate more engagement and win the hearts and minds of the audience, I brought to life an Avatar – a digital presenter.

Main objectives

Research and content curation

❋ Conducting extensive research on market trends and dynamics, sustainable innovations, social movements and emerging technologies

❋ Curating and synthesizing complex information into digestible social media content

Participatory design

❋ Involving the audience in the Avatar’s design process through voting

❋ Demonstrating commitment to user engagement and democratic design principles

Content evolution

❋ Collaborating with a CGI artist to refine and improve the Avatar’s appearance over time

❋ Adapting presentation style to maintain audience interest and communicate research findings

Main reflection

In 2018, when the Avatar was taking its first, clumsy steps, AI was merely a hazy vision of the future, appearing in futurists’ reports. Creating content then required monastic patience and artisanal precision.

One day, my profile was classified as a political movement and disappeared from the platform faster than I could react.

This was the moment when I began to question the sense of functioning on platforms where I had no control over my data and contacts, and at that time, alternatives were still vague to me.