CIRCUS.
What happens when money overwhelms our lives?
Money is a multi-faceted, dynamic entity - no longer just a tool we exchange for goods. As it has this power over us, it earned the right to be examined, explored and turned over in a new light.
A team of four research focused women, taking equal roles in research, analysis and design.
Project timeline: 4 months
Research Methodologies
We needed to look at the topic from multiple viewpoints to understand perspectives on money fully. We selected and curated several research methods to investigate and generate insights.
Love and Break Up Letters
Using the love breakup methodology, we asked participants to hand-write their feelings about money, addressing it as if it were a person.
It's a method which employs personification and anthropomorphism, bringing forward the most raw and deep of feelings, and allows us as researchers to understand the breadth of the feelings about a topic.
Excerpts can be found below:
"My precious money, you have crowded my thoughts.
I lust for more of you than I could ever justify."
"Dirty money, I do not see value in you at all, despite all that you can allow me to do."
"Dear money,
I love you not because of you, but because you let me do anything that my heart desires."
"But what about me? We started this journey together but at the end of the month, I am the one that's left alone, with nothing. I hate you, and I'm sorry."
Directed Storytelling
Directed storytelling is always a preferred research method to understand at a deeper and more personal level why someone has formed their opinions.
Speaking with twelve independent participants individually, we took time to work through our four sub-topics of interest:
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Money and power
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Money and privacy,
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Physical vs digital money,
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Money and its societal obligations and emotional impacts
Participant Workshop
Part One
We hosted a workshop which had two parts:
Money dating profile worksheet
To explore the main objective around money and its control over us, we used a solo activity worksheet to probe the emotions and impressions our participants had with money.
The worksheet was entitled 'Date your money'. Using a familiar dating application template, we asked participants to write this out as if money was a person hoping to date people. Using the template, we anticipated the questions would allow people to personify money as the participants would have a recognisable way to express their feelings about the topic.
Participant Workshop
Part Two
Barter exchange
By creating an exercise where money was removed, tasks were undertaken, and money was added back into the scenario, we could observe each participant’s behaviour as the circumstances were changed and its effect on the outcome of the activity.
We hosted four rounds of the exercise, each increasing in complexity:
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Specific single-item trade with no monetary value
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Category-based exchanges with no economic value
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Category-based transactions, with values now shown
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Hidden categories (new, not as previous) starting without money, added in part-way through.
The items used in the barter exchange were familiar, day-to-day items. However, the values assigned to them were intentionally distorted to ensure participants were not making assumptions about the objects or their values. Each sub-activity was explained to the participants immediately before starting, and each activity was recorded, photographed and observed by a note-taking researcher.