What is a Zeitgeist?

Zeitgeist is a german word meaning “spirit of the time”. It refers to the spirit or mood of a particular period of history as reflected by the ideas and beliefs of the time. It influences how people think, feel and behave. Some zeitgeist topics of today are climate change, the cost of living crisis or global pandemics

Why is it relevant to us?

A good designer has a healthy curiosity about the world around them. They should pay attention to current events, culture and issues that affect different generations. This helps designers understand people and the problems they face with the hope of helping to improve the world around them.

Designers can respond to zeitgeist topics by using our general knowledge of it as inspiration for new ideas and to connect issues from the past and their solutions with current problems. By staying informed in pressing issues and topics, designers can create better work that meets people's needs.

As graphic designer Michael Bierut says:

“The more you’re interested in, the better your work will be.”

The Brief

In groups of 4-6, choose one of the Zeitgeist topics provided to explore a product, service or system that may address the issue or part of the issue.

Topics To Choose From

• Climate Change

• Surveillance Capitalism

• Disinformation / Misinformation

• Artificial Intelligence

• Inflation / Financial Crisis

• Racial Inequality

• War

• Global Pandemics

• Income Inequality

• Homelessness

• Immigration & Refugees & Borders

• Me Too / Gender Equality

• Energy Crisis

• Cost of Living Crisis

Our Topic

Within my group, we began to discuss the different zeitgeist topics and decided to focus on creating a product which might contribute to reducing people being caught up in misinformation or disinformation. We chose this as it is something that we have all been exposed to before but highlighted that the older and younger generations get caught out by it a lot.

We started off by defining the two:

What is MisInformation?

The act of giving false infromation. However can refer to false information that is accidentally given.

What is DisInformation?

False information that is given deliberately to mislead or decieve

Our Problem

After this we highlighted the problem we were wanting to solve. This is that false information is being spread online making it harder for people to kow whats true. This causes confusion, mistrust and harmful decisions and we strive for a way to make it easier to detect this false information.

Demographic

Disinformation/Misinformation can affect everyone but we broke it down to the people that were most affected by it: