SPILL

For my senior capstone project at the University of Georgia, I was given free rein to create a piece of work about anything. Tough, right? How could I take a minds worth of curiosity and transform that into something significant? Although the thoughts swam around my head, numerous and primarily aimless, the idea of secrets pulled me in. I couldn’t help but ask myself why we keep them, who we tell, why we crave to know the secrets of others, what happens to us when we withhold or release them. This singular, though extremely nuanced, part of every individuals life begged me to dive deep into the human condition and dared me to invite others into my findings.

The research that followed reached from the physiological responses of the body in regards to secrets, to the emotional power it has within relationships (positive in the sharing, negative in the withholding). Both of these facets of research, and everything in-between, brought me to this idea: information as currency. The exchange of information between two individuals is a powerful means of creating or destroying intimacy. So what happens if one half of that exchange becomes completely anonymous?

And so, SPILL was born. An app that invites you to share your secrets with the internet (safe, right?) and in return, be told someone else’s secret. With a level system, the user is pushed to tell deeper secrets in order to receive a secret of the same or similar depth. My hope, is that in the tension of wrongness, the individual will question their own potential desire for information and perhaps remember that nothing can truly replace the intimacy forged in vulnerability.

From a design standpoint, I wanted to continue with the theme of tension. Although creating a user interface, I took inspiration from printed material from the 60s, old bored games, and muted colors to contrast the vibrant capabilities of modern technology. It is my hope that the design is slightly disarming, expressing to the user that something isn’t quite right and setting them up for the discomfort and desire to come.