Desk Research: Designing to support the experiences of Teenagers

By: Shara Alsubaie Student ID: 13649189. Desk Research: Designing to support the experiences of Teenagers.

Aims: This Presentation is desk research about developing a thorough and detailed understanding of teenagers’ lives, situations, and experiences. Also, It focuses on research that is related to music effort to see what has already been done and what approaches were useful. In the end, this information has been used to learn what is meaningful to teenagers before starting doing a design for them, as well as guide the user research. Motivations: Experience Centred design is a technology design method for users who are excluded to make their feelings in their experiences better and richer. Based on this definition, teenagers belong to these kinds of users because most of them face loneliness and difficult situations from study or peer pressure, and this is normal because the teenager is accompanied by changes in emotions and moods, a desire for independence and making decisions. Also, ( McFerran & Wigram 2010). The best way to enhance teenager’s experiences in their daily lives is using ECD approach because this method is designed to focus on improving the daily experience more than focusing on any other aspects..

Methods of the Desk research. Search Engines: 1: Google Scholar. 2: UTS Library. 3.Google to seek out for commercial efforts. Key Words: Teenagers, Experience, Daily life, Feeling, Music, Friendship, School, Studying, Apps, Volunteering, Meaningful. I have used these words because the research highlights on the daily live experiences in teenagers. Specifically, it is focused more on three meaningful experiences which are volunteering and engaging with community services, studying and school, and making friendship. Also, the research focuses on the role of the music in their lives. How many papers are used: 13 Academic research and 5 google websites for commercial efforts..

Findings of the Desk research:. 1- Finding from Academic Research: Teenagers and friendship experience: Teenagers often seek to make friends to feel valuable to people other than their family (Flynn et al., 2017), and they also spend more time with their friends than family. They tend to make friends with people who are similar in personality and they choose their friends based on acceptance and sharing. In high school, the same-sex friendship is popular more the opposite-sex but it is existed (Franken et al., 2016). Teenagers are very influenced by their friend and they copy their impressions (Flynn et al., 2017). For example, they could change their attitudes and appearance to show others that they belong to a certain group. However, not all friendships are good, there is a toxic friendship that affects teenagers negatively. Teenagers give a high priority to making close friendships but if they could not achieve this, they prefer to escape and isolate themselves from others rather than solve the problem. The study was conducted on shopee consumer girls in Medan to present the relationship between loneliness in adolescent girls and discounts on impulse buying. The study shows there is a strong relationship (Arda & Andrian 2019). Friendship plays a crucial role during the teenage years by offering a mirror for friends to see how they appear in others' eyes, for example, they consider themselves funny when friends laugh at their jokes and they feel themselves valuable when they have a reasonable number of friends ( McFerran & Wigram 2010)..

(Albert et al., 2013) mentioned the concept of peer pressure and influence between teenagers, which means doing something just because they want to feel accepted, this could be positive or negative. For example, some teenagers choose to try something they are not interested in like smoking. Regarding the internet, social media helps teenagers to maintain their friendship (Landry et al., 2017). Teenagers and Volunteering experience: Often teenagers like to contribute to social initiatives because they are trying to feel valued and hopeful and also this is good to protect them from sadness (Flynn et al., 2017). The research was conducted to understand the basic level of emergency action in teenagers is a good example to show how they like to contribute and engage with the community to feel valuable. This study has four identified thematic areas which are knowledge of emergency handling, the experience in handling situations, the feelings when handling emergency, and the meaning of handling emergency situations. The result showed that the teenagers were happy while helping others in the community (Aditya et al., 2017)..

Teenagers with school and studying experience: Teenagers are looking for independence and responsibility, and they enjoy making decisions regarding learning and organization activities. The most important feelings that keep them involved in learning are being motivated and interested (Australian Government Department of Education and Training, 2009). Teenagers’ feelings regarding changing from familiar situations to unknown ones in learning are different. Some of them are excited about the new school, subjects and teachers, whereas some are nervous about the new routine (Bunn & Boesley , 2019). Teenagers’ school experience involves some issues such as lack of confidence, lack of engagement, and problems with classmates, and they hide these issues from parents, peers and teachers. In addition, some teenagers feel the learning materials are boring and hard, which can negatively affect their learning (Bai & Repetti2017)..

Music and teenagers: According to ( McFerran & Wigram, 2010), ‘The relationship between music and teenagers is extraordinary. At no other time in life does music hold such a central role as it does during adolescence’. Many studies state that teenagers spend two and half hours daily listening to music, even before the iPod came. Listening to music is the most popular activity in teenagers (Brooks 1989; McFerran et al . 2010; North, Hargreaves and O’Neill 2000). McFerran & Wigram emphasize that musical preference represents who we are, and how music influences teenagers’ self-perception (2010) . Music plays a reflective role on teenagers’ success in school. Based on the study of Swedish youth that represent teenagers who prefer easily accessible music they were more academically successful, whereas teenagers who like isolating music were less successful ( McFerran & Wigram, 2010) . Ruud (1997) states that music assists teenagers to express their emotions and feelings which is good for their self-knowledge. In addition, it helps parents to understand their inner state. Based on the Finnish study, teenagers use music to enhance their mood and feeling not by consciously selecting music that improves mood but by unconsciously choosing.

2- Finding from commercial efforts: ANIMOTO VIDEO MAKER: Is a tool for teenagers from 13 to 18 years old to create a short video within 30 second by using pictures and music. It is a good application that can document the family memories, and the music in the app can make that more emotional. This app can strengthen the relationship of teenagers with their families. Happy Not Perfect: Meditation: This App assists teenagers practice meditation with music during the day. It is a great tool for emotional development and handling stress..

Graphical user interface, text, application Description automatically generated.

Graphical user interface, text, application, chat or text message Description automatically generated.

Expected next steps:. Based on what I have learned on this desk research, I will do the following: 1- determine the meaningful experiences I will try to improve: Friendship experience , specifically I will focus on how to reduce the loneliness feeling and encourage them to make friends. Studying experience , I will try to help them by reducing feelings of boredom and anxiety to keep them in a high mood and calm to achieve learning goals. 2- Understand teenagers deeply by conducting dialogue and surveys to collect the required data (user research). 3- Ask them about the above experiences and what they are feeling when they listen to music.. How does music motivate them? Which genre of music do they prefer? Does music reduce boring, anxious and lonely feelings? Does music assist you to calm? 4- design music technology meets the requirements of improving the above experiences. (This is initial research to capture the meaningful experiences and the importance of music.).

References:. McFerran , & Wigram, T. (2010). Adolescents, Music and Music Therapy: Methods and Techniques for Clinicians, Educators and Students . Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Flynn, Felmlee , D. H., & Conger, R. D. (2017). The Social Context of Adolescent Friendships: Parents, Peers, and Romantic Partners. Youth & Society , 49 (5), 679–705. https://doi.org/10.1177/0044118X14559900 Franken, Prinstein , M., Dijkstra, J., Steglich , C., Harakeh , Z., & Vollebergh , W. (2016). Early adolescent friendship selection based on externalizing behavior : the moderating role of pubertal development.: The SNARE study. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology , 44 (8), 1647–1657. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-016-0134-z Arda, M., & Andriany , D. (2019). Effect of loneliness and Discount price on Impulse buying in Teenage girls. In The 1 International Conference on Innovation of Small Medium-sized Enterprise (ICIS) 2019 (Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 25-34). Albert, D., Chein , J., & Steinberg, L. (2013). Peer influences on adolescent decision making. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22( 2), 114-120. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721412471347 . Aditya, R. S., Solikhah , F. K., & Kurniawan, S. B. (2019). Teenager response to the conditions of basic level emergency: A phenomenology study. Indian Journal of Public Health , 10 (1), 170. Australian Government Department of Education and Training (2009). Belonging, being and becoming: The early years learning framework for Australia. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved 20 June 2019 from https://docs.education.gov.au/documents/belonging-being-becoming-early-years-learning-framework-australia . Bunn, H., & Boesley , L. (2019). My new school: Transition to high school for children with special educational needs in England – findings and ideas for practice. Support for Learning , 34 (2), 128-147. https:// doi.org /10.1111/1467-9604.12244. Landry, Turner, M., Vyas, A., & Wood, S. (2017). Social media and sexual behavior among adolescents: Is there a link? JMIR Public Health and Surveillance , 3 (2), e28–e28. https://doi.org/10.2196/publichealth.7149 Bai, S., & Repetti , R.L. (2017). Negative and positive emotion responses to daily school problems: Links to internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, June , 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-017-0311-8 . Brooks, D. M. (1989). Music therapy enhances treatment with adolescents. Music Therapy Perspectives , 6 (1), 37-39. North, A. C., Hargreaves, D. J., & O'Neill, S. A. (2000). The importance of music to adolescents. British journal of educational psychology , 70 (2), 255-272. Ruud, E. (1997). Music and identity. Nordic journal of music therapy , 6 (1), 3-13. Animoto: Slideshow Maker App Review. (2022). https://www.commonsensemedia.org/app-reviews/animoto-slideshow-maker Happy Not Perfect: Meditation App Review. (2022). https://www.commonsensemedia.org/app-reviews/happy-not-perfect-meditation Pandora - Free Music & Radio App Review. (2022). https://www.commonsensemedia.org/app-reviews/pandora-free-music-radio Reason Compact - Make Music App Review. (2022). https://www.commonsensemedia.org/app-reviews/reason-compact-make-music Spotify Website Review. (2022). https://www.commonsensemedia.org/website-reviews/spotify.