It appears that my research questions, as they stand, can’t be answered entirely with my chosen Research through Design methodology; so as much as I may have wanted to retain the simplicity and purity of design as a form of research, I believe it will be necessary to combine this methodology with auto-ethnographic research. This is heavily influenced by the fact that I will also be using my own personal Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Google data (it’s ironic that I’m typing this out as a Tumblr post, but in my defense I haven’t used Tumblr in YEARS); therefore, the research is inherently deeply personal, and I suppose using my own identity as a case study for the way that humans overall interact with social media is, I suppose, the most poetic way to go about it. 

For the purpose of context, my research questions are the following:

To what extent does the use of online platforms and social media support the idea that technology operates as an extension of self?

How do different internet contexts affect how people perform their online personae? 

In what ways can a visualization of an individual’s online data construct a representation of that person?

How can data visualization show disparity in what user data is collected across various platforms?

How might the type of user data collected across various platforms hint at the information prioritized by each online platform?

How does the user experience design of an online platform affect the way that a user submits data? 

At this moment, I am still struggling with understanding methodology and how to incorporate it in a meaningful way into my research. I am definitely set on Research through Design, am almost 95% sure that I will use auto-ethnography to answer questions 1–2, but am still a little confused BECAUSE I was also interested in conducting a series of workshops where participants’ personal online data is visualized and then discussed in focus groups or interviews... but I’m not sure how that method may fit into Research through Design or auto-ethnography. I guess that it can just remain as a “method” and I’ll just incorporate it as needed into my RtD/auto-ethnography hybrid.