Online Codesign Activities to Co-create a ‘Loneliness’ Exhibition: The Last Lonely Hour - a digital interactive experience

Abstract

Loneliness is a complicated emotion, experienced in different situations, irrespective of gender, age, occupation or nationality. It isn't necessarily about being alone, but a complex state of mind that people experience individually. This paper presents a study using online codesign activities to co-create the conceptual design for a digital interactive art exhibition around “Loneliness”. Conducted during the early stages of self-isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia, we trialed codesign activities, usually conducted in face-to-face mode, through online methods. We held a mixture of online activities and interviews with 47 participants to unpack people's experiences of loneliness, especially in these unusual times, and explore their strategies to overcome it. We identified the “last lonely hour before bedtime” as an interesting concept to inspire our exhibition. Online codesign gave us flexibility in time and place, access to more participants in the time available, and the benefit of asynchronous data collection.