One of our lecturers in Barcelona turned me on to the what's in your bag? photo pool on Flickr. The concept is simple enough - participants contribute snapshots of the contents of their bag. The group currently boasts 19,234 members and 10,546 uploaded photos. Take a look-see - it's fun to look through the pictures, in that wonderfully voyeuristic way.
Public sites like this, where people are free to post (other examples: Craigslist and comment boxes of major news sources) inadvertently create an organic gold mine of information. While researchers/strategists would kill for this kind of data, how many of us would be willing to open up our bags for the world to see? And yet, here are people willingly, nay, enthusiastically posting just that. Even better, they take the time to tag each object, creating a handy set of group tags. Want to see what else people who tote a Moleskine carry in their bag? Easy peasy.
The trick is how to trace this quasi-anonymous info back to an actual person. Most Flickr users don't create a detailed profile for themselves, making it difficult to draw conclusions on what type of people are toting around these items. While the pool gives us a general sampling of items (at these numbers, valuable in itself), further demographic details would be needed to make the things we carry meaningful. The irony is that it is anonymity that allows people to willing post personal and honest comments and what's in your bag? photos on public forums.
Note on photo: Ghetto-tastic Photo Booth shot of what's in my bag. Pretty basic. From left to right: Two rings I was wearing earlier, Maybelline mascara, Fossil wallet, Android phone, pencil and pen (I lose my mind when I don't have a pen handy), and weekly At-a-Glance planner. If you're feeling motivated, snap a pic of what's in your bag and send it to natalieyoungkim(at)gmail.com. Photos will not be posted without permission (if posted at all), and are more for my entertainment than anything.
0 comments:
Post a Comment