The Key to Happiness
A few months ago I conducted a social communication experiment. After posting a simple question as my facebook status update, “What is the key to happiness?”, I got various responses from my friends. The idea behind this exercise was to find out how active participation by one member can set up a chain reaction in the network. I received 340 different answers to my question, which was quite surprising. I was constantly updating an album with these little speech-heads (the heads were stolen from their profiles) and this further motivated people in my network to contribute. This little experiment signifies an important shift—not so long ago, only the opinion of renowned people, authors and artists mattered. People quoted people who were either famous or had a certain impact on society. Although most of my friends in this exercise are both famous & credible, what’s interesting is to see that social networks has given us each a certain popularity we enjoy. We are reading less and spending more time on facebook, twitter, google+ or other equally addictive social-networks. Today, the opinion, a tweet or a status update of one of our friends has more significance and impact in our daily life than what Mark Twain had uttered in Huckleberry Finn.
Utpal Pande’s jury round at Designquest
Utpal Pande’s presentation at Designquest 2
