What’re in the box

The second-hand experience phenomena

This is a desigin criticism project which aims to arise people’s awareness of the second-hand experience phenomena. Second-hand experience phenomena in general is a behavior in modern society that people just learn new knowledge through surfering the Internet, reading about other people’s blog and recommendation pr just their blogs. Those experience are not necessarily true as the first-hand experience and some potential problems may be arise. Click this link to learn more about what is second-hand experience phenomena.(in Chinese only)

Design criticism

A psychological experienment is then designed to make the reflection of this second-hand experience phenomena. In this experienment, people are asked to do four steps in the specific order.

The whole system includes a whiteboard, a red box, pens plus some notes and finally some candies.

First people are asekd to read other’s experience of what’re in the box, which simulates of the idea second-hand experience. After this process people can have a general idea of what’re in the box.

Then people are asked to touch things inside the box by themselves and they are going to have their own first-hand experience.

Finally people are suppossed to write down their own thoughts of what’re in the box on the note and stick it on the whiteboard. Poeple can get some candies as the gift of attending this experienment.

The trick point of this experienment is that things in the box are really hard to tell just through touch. As a result, the difference between the second-hand experience and the first-hand experience may be obvious.

You can find the detailed report discussing this experienment here (in Chinese only).

This experienment of haptics may be futher discussed in future HCI research.