Seeking Queer Cyber Connection

In the wake of the global COVID-19 pandemic, online spaces became a vital channel for individuals and communities to stay connected. My designs explore how we create, curate, and facilitate meaningful interactions between LGBTQ+ individuals within and around new media technologies. I created design interventions (called event scores) and tested them with a group of LGBTQ+ play testers. Each score attempts to create meaningful experiences in different ways, but I analyzed the outcomes of each score through the same framework, using five emergent themes from my early designs. They are as follows: (1) Participation; (2) Enjoyability (Value); (3) Ability to Foster Connection; (4) Flexibility + Limitation; and (5) Longevity. Based on the analysis of all four scores, I created design guidelines or principles for creating and facilitating meaningful experiences for this group in cyber spaces.

Designer	Lex Zarow
Keywords	Experience Design, LGBTQ+, Interpersonal Connection, New Media
Advisor	Jen Gradecki

Design Process

My event scores take their name from the Fluxus art movement, and act as a sort of script of actions to be performed. The outcome is both the act of performing the score, and whatever visual result that may come of it. In the case of three of my scores, Gift Horse, Coffee Across Time-Space, and Dreamscaper, there are very tangible, visual outcomes, whereas with (Close)d Ecosystem, the outcomes are transient and difficult to exhibit by traditional means. You can learn a bit more about each score below:

1. Gift Horse (bubblegum pink card) — a joyful event score inspired by lifestreaming which tasks one person to build a collage gift of digital artifacts and ephemera for a beloved friend or partner.
2. (Close)d Ecosystem (taupe card decorated with a jar) — inspired by jar ecosystems, this score aims to create a pruned-down, closer, more social media experience using Instagram’s vlogging features as a base.
3. Coffee Across Time-Space (brown card with coffee stains) — an exercise in mindfulness and person object permanence which reimagines a long-distance coffee date. Paired participants connect by keeping their partner in their thoughts.
4. Dreamscaper (brightly colored card featuring a character) — a playful avatar/paper doll game hosted on the Japanese website Picrew.me that aims to celebrate queer joy and the creation of imagined selves.

Gift Horse Outcomes

All six outcomes from this score can be viewed above; the cards with matching stickers come from gifter-receiver pairs. These life-streamed collages range in content, but are made up predominantly of images, be they screenshots, artifacts found through cyberspace, or custom-made memes for this score, as is the case with the bottom right card. Uniquely, the card on the top left consists exclusively of song recommendations, including annotations explaining their choices. The paired cards refer to each other at times, creating a web of intricate references. These outcomes are deeply personalized — esoteric at times — and are truly made for the receiver of the gift.

(Close)d Ecosystem Outcomes

(Close)d Ecosystem took place in a transient space — six private Instagram accounts, only following one another — making up the “jar ecosystem”. Altogether, the “content” from the jar includes (1) temporary video posts that expire after 24 hours; (2) permanent posts to a feed that contain captions and comment threads; (3) permanent direct messages that trace both video replies and also general messaging. Under the confines of this thesis work, the experience spanned from November 2020 until April 2021. Safety, intimacy, and closeness were vital to the experience, and thus to maintain this private ecosystem, my journaling and collection of this content will not be displayed in this exhibition. Instead, I have chosen to display a distilled experience of one interaction, visualized in comic format.

Coffee Across Time-Space Outcomes

For this score, my participants were a long-distance married couple. They were asked to prepare their coffee or tea mindfully — to put down their phones (which normally could connect the two in an instant) and simply focus on the knowledge that across the country, their partner was doing the same. To further prompt this connection, they were asked to record their answer to the question “What do you miss most about your partner at this moment?” The images and responses were shared with one another as the completion of the score. As a final note, one half of the pair reported a special choice of mug — one given to them by their partner’s mother, as a wedding gift.

Dreamscaper Outcomes

There is power and appeal in creating dream versions of yourself, of visualizing aesthetic transformation, and celebrating your personal version of gender expression and presentation as aN LGBTQ+ person —I wanted to create a playful tool for this final score, as I hoped to create something that would have a solid visual output in addition to seeking out a pure and simple objective of sparking queer joy. I created over 200 unique hand-drawn assets, many of which reference specific queer aesthetics and requests from my cyber circles. Please play around yourself!