Retail therapy is the act of buying special things for yourself to feel better when you're unhappy. The process of purchasing is recognized by the brain as a reward, releasing dopamine and reducing feelings of depression.
This website, 'BLUE', was inspired by a recently viral Korean meme: 🔗 "I was depressed so I bought a loaf of bread." This meme highlights two types of people: those who seek emotional support and those who focus on what they purchased. This led me to become interested in how people perceive retail therapy or 'emotional purchasing' and the various types of reactions people expect when sharing such situations.
Additionally, I conducted interviews on this topic and asked my friends what kind of services they need when they shop. Many replied that it would be fun to get product recommendations based on different mood tags.
For the P2: Public Utility assignment, I created a basic website where people can share both their personal motivations behind purchases and the purchases themselves. The website features three main functionalities:
Users can upload photos of their recent 'retail therapy' purchases and share the stories behind them with others.
The main page loads random entries written by users, recommending what to buy when feeling down.
Users can toggle between emotion tags to see other lists of emotion related purchases
This website is mainly for inexpensive purchase for small emotional refreshment. I expect it to work as an online-emotional outlet for people to visit.
The design concept of this website was inspired by the 'blue screen' that appears when a computer encounters an error. Additionally, 'blue' is another word for depression. I aimed to connect my design to the dual meaning and representation of the word 'blue'.
The image uploaded on the web is automatically converted to an ascii-art. In the detail page, users can view original photo by clicking on the ascii.