1.
This brief familiarised me with the concept of crip time and its intersection with killing rhythms, allowing me to understand how time is experienced in varying manners by different individuals. I became conscious of how mainstream design practices don’t accommodate diverse temporal experiences. As a consequence, this further increases systemic inequalities rather than opposing them. So, basically, capitalist structures actively exploit those who experience time differently instead of accommodating them. Through this project, I came to the realization that inaccessibility, unrealistic productivity expectations, and the monetisation of attention are some of the routes through which capitalism doesn’t take the idea of crip time into account. Because these exploitative institutions are so ingrained in our daily lives, their effects on disabled people are often ignored, which encourages further marginalisation.
Through this project, I have been encouraged to cultivate a greater sense of empathy and adaptability when collaborating with individuals whose temporal experiences differ from my own. More importantly, it has made me re-evaluate the ethical responsibility that I carry on my shoulders as a practitioner; acknowledging that every creative footprint that I generate contributes to the larger socio-cultural landscape. In the future, I want to incorporate accessibility and crip time into my practice in a manner that ensures that the systems that I develop question the mechanisms that support exclusion rather than reinforce it.
2.
Paolo Gerbaudo (2012) – ‘Introduction’ Tweets and the Streets
Gerbaudo was especially enlightening with his concept of digital “choreography.” It helped us see that autoplay is a component of a bigger system that arranges how people interact with material as a group, not just influencing individual behaviour. This made us consider autoplay as more than simply a feature that creates habits; it’s also a tool for platforms to control the flow of attention and determine what becomes engaging and what fades into oblivion.
Our strategy for the intervention changed as a result. We started to consider pop-ups as interruptions to the more extensive, well-planned system of autoplay rather than only as slight nudges. Is it possible that the delay, reluctance, or manual decision-making of a single user might gently counteract autoplay’s effect over mass engagement? Because of this, we were more interested in the unpredictable nature of our intervention—creating instances where users can re-establish their own agency rather than merely “blocking” autoplay.
His critique of online activism also raised an important question for us: could our intervention, instead of resisting autoplay, actually become part of the system we’re trying to critique? This led us to reconsider our approach, making sure that our intervention felt like an external disruption rather than something easily absorbed into the platform’s engagement loop.
Marshall McLuhan & Quentin Fiore (1967) – The Medium is the Massage
McLuhan’s work didn’t just influence what we designed but how we thought about design itself. His idea that “the medium is the message” made us realise that the impact of our intervention was not only in its substance but also in its form—it looks, how it disrupts, and how it feels to encounter.
McLuhan’s light-hearted, somewhat disorganised approach to media analysis was one of the most important lessons learnt. This inspired us to approach our intervention with a more experimental and subversive mindset. We began to view the pop-ups as self-aware disruptions rather than cautions, ones that not only alert the user to a problem but also make them realise how ridiculous autoplay is.
This also led us to rethink aesthetics. Could the visual language of the pop-ups mimic autoplay’s own seductive design, only to break it apart at the last second? Could the intervention feel like a glitch in the system—something that refuses to be ignored? McLuhan’s irreverence gave us permission to push these ideas further, making the intervention not just critical but disruptively playful.
Tristan Harris (2016) – ‘How technology hijacks people’s minds’
Harris’s analysis of persuasive technology helped us see autoplay not just as a neutral feature but as a deliberately designed tool for control. His breakdown of how digital platforms manipulate user behavior made us rethink our approach—moving away from the idea that users passively consume content and toward understanding how autoplay exploits cognitive vulnerabilities.
This perspective was taken into account when shaping our intervention. It inspired us to consider the idea of actively disrupting the influence of autoplay and algorithmic recommendations instead of simply raising awareness. Familiarisation with the theories on persuasive design made us more wary of our own decisions, allowing us to ensure that our intervention didn’t unintentionally duplicate the dishonest strategies we were criticizing.
One of the most significant takeaways from his work was the realization that awareness alone isn’t enough since much of this manipulation happens on a subconscious level. This pushed us to consider how our pop-ups could create friction in ways that weren’t just informative but experiential, forcing users to engage with autoplay differently rather than just acknowledging its presence.
Cal Newport (2019) – Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World
Newport’s argument for intentional technology use challenged us to rethink the purpose of our intervention. At first, we only concentrated on stopping autoplay, but his research got us thinking: what happens after the interruption?
This led us to refine our approach. Rather than merely stopping interaction, we began considering whether our pop-ups may inspire a moment of introspection—something that not only breaks the loop temporarily but also promotes a change in behaviour over time. Newport’s emphasis on focus and clarity also caused us to reevaluate our design language, making sure that our intervention was a significant point of friction rather than merely another layer of digital noise.
His work also raised an important contradiction in our own thinking. If autoplay keeps users hooked by making interaction effortless, then does our intervention actually give them back control, or are we just another external force acting on them? This tension pushed us to be more deliberate about how we framed user agency in our design.
Mei Zhou (2016) – Fragmented Time
Zhou’s Fragmented Time was instrumental in shaping the stylistic and conceptual approach of our intervention. The project explores fractured and non-linear experiences of time through the use of vivid colours, layered materials, and chaotic compositions. By allowing us to challenge the passive consumption of autoplay and algorithmic recommendations, this framework had a direct impact on the creative and visual approaches we used while designing our pop-ups. The fragmented, haphazard nature of Zhou’s visual language inspired us to experiment with chaotic pacing, irregular timing, and varied visual interruptions in our intervention. By mirroring this sense of unpredictability, our pop-ups are designed to break the user’s immersion in endless content loops, forcing them to reconsider their engagement with digital platforms.
Fragmented Time also strengthened our comprehension of how time is commodified in online environments by offering a critical viewpoint on attention manipulation and digital overstimulation. This enabled us to better define the function of our intervention, which was to interfere with the smooth, frictionless experience that platforms provide to increase user retention. By leveraging Zhou’s aesthetic principles, we were able to craft a more effective disruption; one that feels deliberately jarring yet conceptually tied to our critique of autoplay capitalism.
Yehwan Song (2024) – ‘(Whose) World (How) Wide Web’
Yehwan Song’s (Whose) World (How) Wide Web critically looks at how businesses that alter user experience for financial gain have come to govern the internet, which was once seen to be an open and democratic platform. The reason we were drawn to this reference was that it was in line with our criticism of algorithmic suggestions and autoplay, which also take advantage of user interaction by generating never-ending loops of content consumption.
Song’s work inspired us to explore the glitchy, almost dystopian aesthetic of visual disruptions within our pop-ups as well. To counter the idea of seamlessness that tech platforms foster, we purposefully adopted a disjointed, disorganised, and occasionally overwhelming design language. Our choice of jarring visuals that disrupt the users’ immersion temporarily and make them doubt their participation were directly informed by Song’s practice as well.
Additionally, Song’s approach reinforced the idea that technology can be used to critique technology itself. This insight pushed us to use our intervention’s subversive potential as an active form of resistance against the attention-grabbing design techniques ingrained in digital platforms, rather than only as a warning system. This interaction also led to the humorous and combative tone of our pop-up messages, which demonstrated a deliberate attempt to dispel users’ complacency and encourage critical thought.
References List:
Gerbaudo, P. (2012) ‘Introduction’ Tweets and the Streets. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-2907-6_1
McLuhan, M. and Fiore, Q. (1967) The Medium is the Massage. New York: Bantam Books.
Harris, T. (2016) ‘How technology hijacks people’s minds’. Available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/tristan_harris_how_technology_hijacks_people_s_minds
Newport, C. (2019) Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. New York: Penguin Random House.
Mei, Z. (2016) Fragmented Time. Available at: https://www.behance.net/gallery/45820185/Fragmented-Time
Song, Y. (2024) ‘(Whose) World (How) Wide Web’, Instagram. Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/C2X0OJlrwNH/?igsh=QkFmeF92WWNBaw%3D%3D&img_index=1
Leave a Reply