Response to Participate
(pg 46-106)
Modularity, if done properly, is very interesting because it can take various forms in that participants can finish a single task that is part of a larger picture but also can exist as a single thing or creating a component that is, essentially, unfinished as a singular element but comes together to form a completed project when collected.
Thinking about modularity and brand design and what it means to create work that is designed to be engaging, it presents a different type of challenge that, in a way, facilitates the designer as the one creating the tools—work created by the designer is a template or guidelines for the creation of future content and the customer or users are the creators and contributors of the content. The success of this tool creation is then measured by the ability of the brand created to still be recognizable and relatable as one brand because of the structure, or guidelines developed by the designer.
As I mentioned in the previous post where there are already a wide-range of smaller aspects of consumer participation—companies enabling users to customize their shoes, book covers and pet foods. Then comes another form of user participation where the end result is not a product that is customized, rather, it is an experience that they get to be a part of. An example of this is the one frame of fame where website users follow instructions to generate images for the video and that in turn encourages other users to do the same and the process goes on. This reminds me of a music video created two years ago (or so), titled happy, by Pharrell Williams, where users can go to a website and watch videos of dance moves, created and performed by other users, dancing to that song (and perhaps even create a music video) created by people all across the world. This encourages participation by inspiring the consumers of content to become creators of the content.