Don’t just feel it. Sell it
Emotional Market
A speculative project that reimagines emotions as tradeable stocks. In a world driven by social media "likes," our feelings have already become currency. This platform makes that system visible, allowing users to buy, sell, and package their emotions for maximum market value.
The Observation
On social media, we don't just share feelings; we curate them for attention. Authenticity is being replaced by performance.
The Design Challenge
How can we use design to reveal the hidden systems that turn our personal emotions into commercial assets?
TOOL 01: The Trading Floor
Trading Feelings as Stocks
Emotions function like a stock market. If everyone is posting "Happy" content, the value of Happiness drops due to oversupply. If a crisis happens, "Fear" or "Anger" prices surge.
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Real-time Charts: Visualize the rise and fall of human sentiment.
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Speculative Trading: Build portfolios based on which emotions will "trend" next.
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The Lesson: Force users to see their feelings as data points, not just experiences.
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Standardization: Turning a complex feeling into a clean, sellable product.
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The Critique: It mirrors how we use filters and captions to make our real lives "digestible" for our followers.
TOOL 02: Mood Wrappers
Packaging for the Algorithm
Raw emotions are messy, so we "wrap" them. I designed a system of Mood Wrappers, colorful, geometric containers that make emotions look attractive and professional for the marketplace.
Design Process
Research & Insights
Before building the speculative system, I analyzed how digital environments transform personal feelings into marketable assets.
Cultural & Contextual Research
I examined the "Attention Economy" on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, where emotional content is optimized for visibility and engagement.
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Observation: Users package their feelings to fit algorithmic trends.
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Insight: Emotions that "perform" well become signals of social value, rather than genuine expressions.
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Academic Pivot: Inspired by Sherry Turkle’s “Performance of Self,” I treated emotions as performative assets rather than internal states.
User Behavior & Market Analogies
Through informal interviews and media observation, I identified three core patterns in digital emotional behavior:
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Curated Vulnerability: Users selectively share "raw" emotions to build a relatable personal brand.
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Reinforcement Loops: Likes and reactions act as market rewards, encouraging users to repeat high-performing emotional displays.
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Emotional Branding: There is a growing pressure to maintain "emotional consistency" to satisfy an online audience.
From Insight to Interface
The Core Design Question
If emotional expression already behaves like currency, what happens when we make that system visible and tangible?
This guided my design strategy: transforming abstract feelings into tradeable data. The goal was to create a "Mirror UI" that critiques how digital culture buys, sells, and performs human sentiment.
Information Architecture
Design Process & System
The Challenge: Making the Invisible, Visible.
I combined the analytical, cold UI of finance with the vibrant aesthetics of wellness brands. My goal was to create a visual friction, reminding users that beneath the beautiful colors, the underlying system is a ruthless market.
Typography
Clean, data-heavy fonts to mimic stock tickers.
Color Palette
Vibrant yet categorized, treating human moods like different categories of consumer goods.
Visualizing the Narrative: Speculative Media
To bring the Emotional Market to life, I designed a series of newspapers and posters that imagine a world where emotional trading is the norm.
Emotions Make Headlines
I created "The Emotional Times" to simulate how mass media would report on a sentiment-driven economy. By using traditional newspaper layouts to report on "Mood Crashes" and "Empathy Bubbles," I highlight the absurdity of treating human feelings as financial data.
Scenario Advertisements
Posters act as propaganda for the platform, using the vibrant and friendly visual language of modern tech companies to mask the ruthless reality of emotional speculation.
The Goal
To trigger a sense of "Uncanny Valley"—where the design looks professional and inviting, but the message feels deeply intrusive.
ArtCenter GradShow
What I Learned
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Translating Abstract Concepts: Learned to transform complex cultural critiques into intuitive visual systems and interactive UI.
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Speculative Problem-Solving: Used speculative design as a tool to uncover and visualize the hidden psychological systems behind digital products.
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Self-Reflective Design: Gained a deep understanding of how digital habits shape human behavior and the thin line between genuine expression and online performance.
The Takeaway
While this project is speculative, it sharpened my ability to solve complex, systemic challenges through clear UI/UX mechanics—a strategic mindset I now bring to every product I design.