Dissertation Proposal PDP

At the start of the dissertation process, I was unsure of what I wanted to write about. Last year I chose to look at the philosophy of art and design and explore whether an object was a tool or technology. I really enjoyed this topic and went on to further research a technology driven essay. The next subject I chose for constellation was investigating contemporary art. I felt really out of place with this subject as it was more art-based. Nevertheless I stuck with it which gave me a deeper understanding to the art movements in history and how they developed with technology. After exploring these contrasting subjects I felt comfortable with what area I finally wanted to focus. I have previously been curious into the advances of technology and its ripple effect on society. However I was nervous at the idea of a 10,000 word essay. It has been said this is the most important piece of writing that you will probably ever do, and with such an essay I would like to make it count and be relevant to my passion. To begin I started mapping out possible directions with covered the shift of mobile devices which have excessively advanced over the last few years. This brought me to Singularity of technology. This is a conceptual point in time where computer AI will surpass human intelligence and gain consciousness. This hypothetical issue has been predicted to happen anytime over the next century and with it comes uncertainty. Many can only speculate what will happen, instant results, exponential knowledge at which humans would take years to research in a moment. All these benefits scare us as with conscious individualism comes rebellion and even worse, emotion. We instantly connect computers to humanistic actions as they were created to mimic our metal processes. I could sit and talk about the ideology of singularity for hours but to the point, researching such an unpredictable stage of technological advancements makes it difficult to refer to.

During my first dissertation tutorial, I was told to be more specific and to explore what area of technology I would like to focus on. This would limit my perspective and scope of the technological advancements as a whole and so I moved away from technology to primarily focus on consumeristic design. Linking back to my passion for technology I wanted to look at how the advances in technology are developing consumeristic design since it was coined in the 19th century. From this my directions grew enormously. I started by researching relevant books before the end of term so I could focus on these over the period break. From this I learnt a great deal about homo consumericus put forward by evolutionary psychologist Gad Saad and how designers play on the manifestation of the four Darwinian meta-persuits to target the biological instinct of consumers. I also learnt a great deal from Ashok Ranchhod’s book on the twenty-first century approach to marketing strategies. I explored the basics factors of sustainability, ethics, globalisation and impact of technology on marketing. I learnt how marketings moved from fragmentation to mass marketing and after the introduction of digital analysis, segmentation. Marketing was originally fragmented due to the disconnected society we lived in, it was hard to connect to trends and what the consumer was interested in. When television was introduced it enabled corporations to advertise to the mass market, but again this didn’t suit everyones appeal. Today we are analysed through our devices on our search preferences and buying habits which introduces segmentation, a division in the market which caters to a wide range of needs and desires.

When it came to writing my essay I was distanced from my topic as I didn’t know how to embrace my question. After rewriting my introduction several times I began to get into a pattern and made referrals to the market and consumeristic design. I found my literature reviews to the the most time as I felt I needed to reflect on the the most relevant parts of each book. After taking many notes on each book I set out to explain what the author has questioned or what concept they are investigating and how it was similar to my own question. Over the holidays my focus was driven to completing my proposal as best I could to explain mu area of interest properly. Completing my proposal was a great feeling and it made me excited to continue my research through the summer. I feel my chosen question will be a captivating area to investigate and highlight the impact technology is having on consumeristic design and how the user is manipulated into buying intangible products. Between now and my next meeting I hope to further read into the early life of consumerism and find visual material to support my investigation.