Team 1 – Munchies Mood

Gen Z lives in a highly connected world to technology, but they keep their curiosity alive and aim to impact the world. The optimism toward the future is dwindling, but the readiness for change is also present. These people born between 1996-2012 prioritize their passions, relationships, and themselves. In parallel, they are growing up with a sense of urgency & anxiety about the changes in the world and future. Our team captured the problem here and used ‘how to change fear into hope?’ to guide our research.

We organized 1 survey session, 12 interviews, and 1 focus group discussion for our primary research. To support our findings, we did secondary research around mental-health trends, youths’ behavior, food relationship, and the community influences that help to strengthen our findings.

We continued to the ideation and prototyping part after having the data bank from the research stage. Our team initiated Munchies Mood, an embedded section under Munchies’s website for Gen Z to explore themselves through a personalized and curated experience. We aspire to design a “Good food, good mood” ambiance by making Munchies Mood. Functionally, we want to engage the users more customizable to make them feel relevant with Munchies, and VICE.

Team 2 – GenZ & Activism

Activism is important to the lives and identities of Gen Z. Their activism gives them a sense of agency, belonging, and hope in the face of the world’s problems. For VICE Media Group to connect with Gen Z on an intimate level, it is key to understand what drives their activism and in what ways VICE content and platforms can be most relevant.

For too long, definitions of activism have been limiting and unattainable. With Gen Z already expected to do and know more, these excessive, one-size-fits-all standards of activism add an unnecessary burden. As a platform for unheard voices, we propose that VICE pioneers a new empowering narrative for the future of youth activism.

Our design proposal is the ‘Give A Duck’ campaign – a 5-part campaign leveraging Vice’s existing digital infrastructure to provide value and agency to GenZ. The essential culture codes upon which the campaign is built are:

• Validating and celebrating diverse ways (a spectrum) of social engagement
• Showing activism is a journey of self-discovery, not a destination
• Making GenZ the ones that shape the narrative, in their own language and youth cultures

In order to bring these values to life, our campaign targets three dimensions we identified are critical for GenZ in the process of activism: resources to build their identities; conversations that help build their political language and identities; and a community of like-minded people who affirm their identity. The 5 strategic interventions targeting each facet are:

• A gamified tool to discover activist identities and relevant VICE content
• A widget linked to the VICE app to build new day-to-day routines of introspection and inspection linked to VICE content
• A library of crowd-sourced stories and memoirs of activism
• The use of pop culture and art to start new conversations around activism
• The relaunch of VICE Voices as a community and co-creation platform where youth conversations shape the future of brands

Team 3 – From Content Creators to Community Builders – Redefining the Learning Landscape for the Youth

How might VICE collaborate with local underrepresented content creators
to form a sustainable approach to new age learning?

Our solution to combating the content fatigue and lack of authenticity that is emerging on social media is RECESS. RECESS is a combination of the three main values that have been part of this project since the beginning. It tackles the Underrepresentation that Gen-Z feels that exists in media and that this audience wants to see mirrored in unique/authentic content. As a core value, RECESS pretends to push for better representation in the media. Secondly, by creating the opportunity for Local stories to be developed and celebrated, RECESS is offering Gen-Z a solution to the increasing search for niche narratives and content that tie to sub-communities. Finally, by redefining Learning, building trust in media and tackling content fatigue, RECESS will transform the myth that content creators are not a trustworthy source of information and redefine their approach to social media content.

Team 4 – The Future of Non-entertainment Media

Our challenge: HOW might VICE redefine the future of social impact media by becoming a disruptor in non-entertainment media consumption for youth audiences?

We are living in a techno-human world where the rise of interactive and dynamic audio-base consumption of information is the norm. We live with the option of multiple alternate realities where everything is supported by lines of code, the ability to experience touch, odor, and flavor virtually. Something that sounded strange and beyond imagination in the past.
In this setting where our person is constantly experiencing stimulation, how is information communicated?
How has VICE championed the non-entertainment media landscape for youth?
And most importantly how have they empowered them to make their own choices?

Something as rudimentary as NFTs – static art being sold for millions was designed into an immutable artifact. The power of a popular trend was reimagined and given meaning, making them dynamic carriers of information. The dynamic nature of the NFT allows it to change visually, populating the orbit with the addition of new content transforming it into a growing digital ‘landscape’. Based on blockchain technology the development of the orbit is co-created by VICE entities in the form of DAOs and recorded in the form of a timeline making it a unique archival artifact. They are a direct reflection of the cross-platform content where the past, present, and future coexist, offering a new take on value, tech, and content consumption.
Vice Orbit has the potential to create a model that functions around, quick, dynamic and transparent information. It enables connection for GenZ based on content interests. While the Vice ORBITS ARE objects of intrigue in and of themselves, they become even more visually spectacular when they have dynamically evolved increasing the potential for engagement.

 

Studio Instructor

Michele Kahane and Nina Terrey PhD

Team 1 Designers

Eve Suen
Thita Tunlayadechanont
Cut Lakeisha Pradhanitya

Team 2 Designers

Alexandra Bekker
Rhea Mehta
Sahiba Pannu
Sushmita Narayana

Team 3 Designers

Sara Rebelo
Savvy Rajan
Nimrah Khanyari
Joana Simoes
Dhairya Sathvara

Team 4 Designers

Anwesha Sengupta
Andrés Galicia
Irika Mehta