My thesis topic is narcissism and digital interaction. My specific context for researching this is that I have been a museum worker for the past 10 years and am now in the early stages of helming / originating a digital department at a museum.

I tend to start organizing large ideas into categories or buckets of exploration. Right now I’ve divided the thesis into themes and forms. Each theme will be represented by each form. There are three themes and two forms.

Themes:

  1. Museums: how can we define museum and relate the idea of museums to digital interactions?
  2. Expectations: what kinds of interaction have the public been primed to expect from digital projects? Does it rely on their own device or does the interaction inhabit a provided device? What role does social media play in this?
  3. Beyond the self: what do anti-narcissistic interactions look like? Can we establish standards and best practices?

Forms:

  1. Paper: Each paper will serve as an introduction and digest of the research on the theme.
  2. Prototype: Each prototype will attempt to demonstrate an aspect of research.

My timeline right now is to do the research and writing first then use the remaining time to create prototypes.

April: Identify and reach out to subject matter experts. Talk to NYU librarian to help identify areas of research. Form a corpus.

May: Synthesize research into papers (3-5 pages each) and begin prototyping: wireframes, sketches, quick coding exercises. Identify technology needed and architect prototypes granularly.

June: Build and user test prototypes, create web page for research, write concluding materials, publish on github.