Loops
Press Play on Real Life
In our work on the 2024 Building H Index, we found that entertainment services had some of the worst overall impacts on their users’ health behaviors. The dominant forms of entertainment — video streaming, computer/video games and social media — are all largely sedentary, indoor activities that tend to foster poor eating and sleep habits. Given these impacts and the centrality of entertainment to daily life, we sought to imagine future scenarios in which entertainment could transcend screens, become more physical, more social and even more outdoors.
Working with designer Elliott Wortham, we challenged Angelique West, Chloe Reibold, Kelsey Sorrell, Sara Farhat and Sydney Drever, a team of graduate students from the Master of Science in Human-Centered Design and Engineering program at the University of Washington, to create a speculative service design that would imagine a new, healthier form of entertainment.
The team dug deep into the roles that entertainment plays in people’s lives, generated many ideas for new services, and ultimately created a design for Loops, a speculative audio-first platform that allows users to leave and discover voice notes pinned to real-world locations. You can see how Loops would work, delve into its design and features, learn about the team’s design process and read about their research insights in the work products below.
Work Products
LOOPS: Intro Video
Watch the team’s design, Loops, in action in this short introductory video.
Ideation and solution
In this overview deck, the team discusses their process, the insights that came from their research, the ideas they generated, concept testing and the solution they converged on — Loops.
Research OVERVIEW
In order to understand the topic deeply, the team undertook a research effort that involved a literature review, a survey, diary studies and user interviews. They gained insights on the roles that contemporary forms of entertainment were playing for users, what users found valuable, and what was lacking.
POSTER
See — and share — a summary of the Loops project in the team’s poster.