DESIGN RESEARCH EDITORIAL DESIGN

Goods on Display

YEAR2022

DEVELOPED FOR
Master thesis, Dept. of Design - Space and Communication, HEAD Geneva 

MENTOR
Sébastien Quéquet

EDITING
Nandini Tripathy, Neelmoy Biswas, Jaylin Bradbury

PRESENTED ATJunior Design Research Conference 2022, Basel

It is an examination of the digital personas of cisgender heterosexual men on the dating app Bumble and links them to the Darwinian theory of sexual selection in the realm of a monogamous relationship. It investigates the overarching question of how an image may awaken desire by analysing the design of three key points: Bumble’s ideology, self-representation using portrait photography and pyscho-morphological features of human and animal males. The analysis relies on the primary investigation of 126 profiles of cisgender heterosexual men on Bumble. Using the key elements of a portrait, it found that the profile photographs of men on Bumble meant to showcase themselves were attuned to academically proven preferences of females, as stated by the theory of sexual selection. 

Available to read at Swiss Open Access Repository (SONAR)
Keywords: Dating apps, Bumble, Portrait, Photography, Darwin, Sexual selection, Beauty, Evolution

PAPER PRESENTATIONJunior Design Research Conference, Basel, 2022

WORKSHOPPOV: You’re a Peacock
The workshop was an exploration of visual seduction techniques using photography. 12 students were divided into pairs. A pair of students, comprising of a model and a photographer, were given a character that they had to show and model through 3-5 photographs. The audience then had to guess the characteristics coming through these photographs.