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Designing an online portfolio you can play with

Mariano Pascual website

Barcelona – Illustrator Mariano Pascual has turned his website into a gamified portfolio.

The website, which was created by design agency Achos!, mimics the format of the desktop computer, allowing users to navigate applications, a toolbar and settings, gradually making the screen busier with Pascual’s playful illustrations. The gamified experience lets users personalise the website themselves, moving blocks around and adjusting the background colour.

When redesigning his website, Pascual decided that traditional online portfolios such as Behance, or the grid format of many stock website designs, didn’t suit his creative style. But he saw an opportunity to use his illustrative abilities to create a unique online portal. ‘Actually you don’t need to see any of my projects to have an idea of my skills… the website turned out to be a piece of art itself,’ he told It’s Nice That.

As explored in our microtrend Digital Store Fronts, gamified websites designed to increase dwell time are maturing from the personal portfolios of creatives to the world of e-commerce.

BioSay is a new way of tracking our emotional state

Biosay by Rachael Donalds. Visuals by Territory Projects

US – The biometric platform digitally measures data using a smartphone to let users track and share their daily emotions with those around them.

Created by Rachael Donalds as a way to monitor her high stress levels, BioSay records an individual’s pulse and heart rate, and analyses facial expressions using smartphone sensors to measure their physical and emotional state. This data is also combined with environmental cues, which helps to identify situations that increase or decrease stress.

With this data, the app creates a Bioji, a visual representation that represents emotion with colour and movement. Users can then share their Biojis with others, and recommend places that positively or negatively affect their wellbeing in order to help other app users. Users can explore recommendations using map view or augmented reality (AR), which reveals the Biojis in close proximity.

BioSay imagines a future in which we wear our emotions on our sleeves, sharing tips on how to maximise our health. Read our Certified Wellness report to find out more about how biometrics will transform how we interpret our own health data.

AI is being used to eliminate Wikipedia’s gender bias

Global – Primer AI has built Quicksilver, a machine learning system that highlights the world’s female scientists left behind by Wikipedia’s primarily male authorship.

To do this, the team trained Quicksilver to read 30,000 Wikipedia articles about scientists, alongside news articles about their work. Then they fed in the names of 200,000 authors of scientific papers to gauge any discrepancies. They found that 40,000 of these authors didn’t have Wikipedia entries, even though they had the same amount of news coverage as the other scientists.

Quicksilver then drafted pages for 100 missing scientists in the hope that humans would take over and contribute to the entries. Although the platform has identified both male and female scientists who are under-represented, Primer has lent Quicksilver to three Wikipedia edit-a-thons that specifically aim to improve coverage of women scientists. Recent studies estimate that 85% of page editors are male, revealing a huge disparity between genders.

Gender and racial bias has typically been attributed to AI, rather than wiped out by it. As explored in Morality Recoded, brands need to consider how AI could fix its own prejudices.

Farm.One, New York

Supreme’s latest collector’s item is the New York Post

Supreme in New York Post, US

New York – The newspaper’s Monday edition, emblazoned with Supreme’s logo, became an instant must-have accessory for streetwear fans.

The partnership was a first-of-its-kind for the daily newspaper, which sold out around the city by as early as 7:30am. Supreme teased the collaboration on its Instagram account early on Monday morning, which led to streetwear fans seeking out the newspaper with the same dedication they would a typical Supreme clothing drop.

Since selling out of copies, the edition has become a collector’s item among fans, with some people reselling the $1 newspaper for up to $100. While the New York Post does not usually allow brands to take out a full front page ad, Supreme is known for its unorthodox collaborations. In 2017, it released a branded Metrocard, which led to chaos at New York’s subway stations as fans queued for ticket machines in the hope of receiving the rare cards.

All too aware of the frenzy its logo can create, Supreme is a purveyor of the Hype Market and continues to find new ways to induce excitement and brand loyalty among its fans.

Stat: More Americans believe three or more kids is ideal

A new study by Gallup has revealed that three-child families are becoming more popular, contrary to recent reports that suggest middle children are becoming extinct. The share of people who believe three or more children is ideal is the highest since 1997, when the percentage was 42%.

The number of people who place value on four or more children has also risen. While only 9% of US adults believed this in 2007, today 15% regard four or more children as the perfect number. Among reports that fewer women are choosing to give birth, Gallup’s research shows the fluidity of what the future family will look like.

Thought-starter: Has Instagram revolutionised dating?

Junior foresight writer Holly Friend asks whether Instagram’s users, equipped with likes, direct messages and plenty of opportunities for strategic game play, have been moulding the platform into an app for dating.

‘With the girl I’m seeing now, I just DM’d [direct messaged] her on Instagram after I had seen her around uni a few times,’ revealed an 18-year-old called Jordan in a recent article by Vice. Jordan's contemporary tale of courtship is just one example to suggest that, as well as birthing the concept of the influencer and overhauling industries from beauty to music, Instagram has been quietly disrupting the dating market.

In July, Instagram’s success as a dating platform was quantified when photo editor Kelly Rakowski ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to turn her Instagram account, @_personals_, into an app. Mimicking the traditional newspaper dating ad, singletons are required to pitch themselves to Personals using only text and a strict character count.

Unlike Facebook, Instagram users don’t have to pick a relationship status; they are already revealing who they are through the visuals and language they use. Could an aggregated page for Instagram's singletons help to spark interactions based instead on this holistic view of their life, devoid of the labour and shallow nature of wooing a Tinder match?

Read the full Opinion piece here.