Keywords

1 Introduction

With the development of economy and modern network, coupled with the change of some traditional concepts, such as the change of marriage and love concepts and the enhancement of self-concept, there is a special group that is expanding as a product of the Times: OPHY. They struggle alone in the big city for self-realization, enjoying the satisfaction of pursuing ideal, but also experiencing the emotional loneliness and the awkward predicament in life. This paper will focus on OPHY, use three design research methods and analyze the characteristics and requirements of this group, with the concept of “social experience”, in products, users and environment three directions. With the combination of product design, service design, architectural design and other related professional knowledge in the field of design, from the perspective of the designer, seek to help the foreign land striver increase social interaction and improve their social experience.

2 Literature Review

2.1 One-Person Household Who Is Young (OPHY)

According to the census bureau, only 7.6% of U.S. households chose to live alone in 1967, but today, more than 35 million Americans live alone, accounting for 14.5% of U.S. households, nearly double the number from 50 years ago [1]. Living alone has become the second largest household registration in the United States, far beyond nuclear family, trunk family, roommate cohabitation and other forms [2]. The number of one-person households has also almost doubled in the Seoul metropolitan region of Korea between 2000 and 2010 [3, 4]. Almost 30 years ago, the one-person household was identified as the fastest growing group throughout most of the developed world [5]. These changes were experienced by the developed countries previously through the so-called second demographic transition [6].

This growth is also evident in some developing countries which promote social culture. Podhisita and Xenos studied the phenomenon of living alone in south and southeast Asia. The research shows that the average level of living alone in Asia, while the lowest in the world, has been on the rise in recent years and young people are most likely to live alone [7]. According to the latest population sampling survey data from National Bureau of Statistics of China, the number of one-person households accounted for 13.15% of total households in 2015, compared with 9.14% a decade ago in 2006 [1].

The situation of living alone is closely related to social environment, wealth, age and other factors. This paper concentrates on the One-person Households who is Young (OPHY), aging between 20 and 35 years old.

In China and some other developing countries, which have a strong family concept and where the project group has only begun to grow substantially in recent years, scholars’ researches in the field of the youth who live alone mainly focuses on the following five aspects: Firstly, the cause of this particular group: 1. Frequent social mobility [8, 9, 19, 29] 2. The change of the concept of marriage and childbirth [20,21,22] 3. Non-traditional lifestyle [8, 20]; Secondly, the group’s definition: 1. Age: 20–35 [8, 10, 11] 2. Leave their parents and live alone in big cities [9, 10, 12] 3. Work hard for their dreams [12,13,14, 21]; Thirdly, the group’s characteristics: 1. High level of education [15, 16, 19] 2. Strong sense of independence [23, 24] 3. Strong sense of self-esteem and self-confidence [11, 15, 16]; Fourthly, macro solutions: from the aspect of psychology [14, 25, 26], policy [13, 27, 28] and so forth; Finally, disagreements in the academic community about this group: some argue that the group contains lots of problems and should be treated with caution [16, 28, 29]. However, other researchers believe that this is a social progress and we should be optimistic [9, 17, 18].

In the developed countries, such as the U.S. and Japan, single solitary living has become a relatively common social phenomenon. In the interview process of the recording of “Nothing to Society”, the recording team of the NHK special program in Japan put forward the concept that “it is now the time to take living alone for granted [30]”. Although the famous American sociologist Eric Klinenberg wrote the book “Going solo” presenting us with a “single society” with richer levels through a survey [2], most researchers only focused on the health [31,32,33] and diet [34,35,36] of solitary people and did not subdivide young solitary people for analysis.

However, there are few researches aimed at the OPHY phenomenon, and most of the existing literatures remain at the direct description level of media reports, and many reports lack empirical materials’ support. Only a few researches that have reached conclusions through actual research via interview. And there is a lack of in-depth knowledge and group segmentation.

2.2 Extension of User Experience: Social Experience

User experience: The user’s responses and perceptions that arise from the anticipated use or use of a product, service or system [37]. And the aim of User Experience Design (UXD) is enabling joy and fun, eliciting emotions and satisfying psychological needs, which means creating experiences [38]. And Simon also proposed that incorporation and shaping atmosphere are possible triggers for experience. Human beings are social creatures. Decades of research on human happiness shows that engaging in positive social interactions is critical for well-being [39,40,41]. Dourish identified the development of social computing through three distinctive “waves”: the first wave concentrated on virtual communities, such as online environment, chat rooms and MUDs; the second wave concentrated on large-scale collaborative actions, such as micro-blogging, virtual worlds, online games and social networking platforms; and the third wave concentrated on the integration of everyday life and social and collaborative digital [42]. The need for designing the interaction experience between individuals and the society is increasing and unstoppable.

Hence, it is natural that the concept of user experience needs to be expanded to encompass not only the individual side of experience, but also to take the social side into account. This paper will concentrate on the interaction of the special group OPHY with society, searching for the way to help them to engage into the society better and improve their sense of social belongings.

Here, this paper introduces another concept: the social experience (SX).

The term social is “multi-faceted and used with different viewpoints. It means inter-personal, ceremonial, informal, public, non-profit, or humanity on a massive-scale. It involves emotion, trust, ties, and norms” [43].

This paper assumes the social experience to be identical to the experience which generates from the interaction between people and the interaction between people and the society, such as the public utilities and the public open spaces, such as parks and public architectures.

Yamakami used the metaphor of user experience design in social contexts and proposed the concept of social experience design [44]. He assumed the social experience to be identical to multi-user experience. He concentrated on the interaction between people and ignored the influence of the social objective material environment. However, living in the society, the social environment and social equipment play a significant role in our interaction experience. This paper focuses SX on the following two aspects: firstly, the relationship of social experience design and user experience design [45,46,47]; secondly, the application of social experience design in virtual network world [48,49,50]. Combined with the definition of SX in this paper, literature in relevant fields has been screened, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Summary of related studies on social experience.
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The above-mentioned studies contribute to our understanding of social experience. However, they also have limitations. First, the definition of social experience is too narrow. The social experience should be extended to the experience of personal involvement in a society, the interaction with the society. The society can be considered as a system or an environment, which contains not only human beings but also the material facility and cultural conditions. The spatial arrangement of residential area has been found to enhance social interaction among residents and influence their activity patterns. To achieve the social interaction must provide physical space, such as parks. Second, as this is still a new emerging field of research, it focused on the introduction of concepts and models about SX, being lack of research data.

Therefore, based on the existing literature, this paper will use the relevant methods of design research to describe the social experience of this special group in depth. From the perspective of the group’s daily social habits, living habits and emotional changes to define the following questions:

What problems exist in social construction make the number of solitary people increase?

How can we help them to improve their social experience and their sense of social belongings?

3 Methods

In order to better understand the OPHY group’s interaction experience status quo, this paper, from the aspects of their product use, social interaction and interaction with public spaces, such as public buildings and city parks, chooses three specific design methods combining with the special group’s feature: “Personal Belongings”, “A Day In The Life” and “Map”. In-depth research is carried out from the perspectives of user with products, user with user and users with environment to explore the status and potential design points of OPHY in these three dimensions.

3.1 Personal Belongings

Purpose.

By recording the items that participants carry under different scenarios (weekday and weekend), the product usage habits and internal demands of OPHY group are analyzed. From the perspective of interaction between user and products, this paper explores the phenomena and potential design points existing in the use of products by this group.

Materials.

Sticky paper for personal belongings (2 sheets), camera.

Executive Routine.

Step 1-Record. Take out all the items in bag in the morning and evening and put them in order for a group photo. Record Twice. on the weekday (blue sticky paper) and weekend (red sticky paper). Step 2-Return Visit.

3.2 A Day in the Life

Purpose. By recording social situations in different scenarios (weekday and weekend), the social habits and psychological state of OPHY group are analyzed. From the perspective of interpersonal interaction, this paper explores the phenomena and potential design points in the social interaction of this group.

Materials. Booklets (2 copies, as shown in Fig. 1), Emoji stickers (1 copy), Pens.

Fig. 1.
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The digital demo given by the researcher about how to complete the booklet (left). The inside pages of the booklet which need to be filled in according to the listed items (middle). The booklet: blue for weekday, pink for weekend (right). (Color figure online)

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Executive Routine. Step 1-Record. Make detailed records of effective social contact during the day by combining with the demo given. Effective social contact is defined here as “effective social contact with others regardless of online or offline contact and communication. Items to be recorded: time, place, interlocuter, method, trigger point, content and feelings (transcript and emoji graphical expression). Record Twice. on the weekday (blue booklet) and weekend (red booklet). Step 2-Return Visit. Open questions.

3.3 Map

Purpose.

By recording the locations of different scenarios (weekday and weekend) to work and live, the living habits and living conditions of OPHY group are analyzed. From the perspective of interaction between users and environment, this paper explores the phenomena and potential design points existing in the interaction with public space, such as public architectures and urban parks.

Materials.

Map of different provinces, Markers (2, red/blue).

Executive Routine.

Step 1-Record. Mark the locations on the map and mark the names of the locations. Record Twice. on the weekday (blue marker) and weekend (red marker). Step 2-Return Visit.

3.4 Additional Materials

Commitment (2 sheets), Personal information form, Task Table (2 sheets), Demos.

4 Conduct

4.1 Participants

Basis for Selection.

Basic Requirements. Age: 20 to 35 years old; Residence: China’s first and second tiered cities; Living alone.

Additional Requirements. At the same time, in order to ensure the sociality and typicality of the survey, this paper selected a total of 5 survey subjects for analysis based on the two important factors affecting the living state of OPHY group: gender and characteristics (extravert/introvert).

Participants’ Information (as shown in Table 2).

Table 2. Participants’ information.
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4.2 Timetable

The following (as shown in Fig. 2) is the specific execution time of each task of the participants (24-h system):

Fig. 2.
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Timetable about when the participants completed the tasks (in 24-h system).

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5 Consequence

5.1 Personal Belongings

  1. (1)

    Carry-on items: keys, mobile phones (as shown in Figs. 3 and 4).

    Fig. 3.
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    On the weekday, items which the participants carry.

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    Fig. 4.
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    On the weekend, items which the participants carry.

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  2. (2)

    Items with gender differences: bags, lipsticks, tissues (as shown in Figs. 3 and 4).

  3. (3)

    Items with age differences: earphones (as shown in Figs. 3 and 4). (Participants under 30 years old tend to carry earphones)

  4. (4)

    Items with different personality differences: wallet, cash, bank card (as shown in Figs. 3 and 4).

  5. (5)

    Items on weekdays and weekends are different from: lipstick and earphones. It can be obtained from the later interview of F2 that don’t carry earphones on weekends is a kind of performance that is more relaxing and tends to communicate with friends (as shown in Figs. 3 and 4).

  6. (6)

    Many items with more individualized features are not listed in the chart because they are not universal. In general, the number of items that women need to carry is: 10+, while that of men is: 5−, the gap is large. According to the later interviews M1, F1, F3: women will carry what they might use when they leave home (even though they admitted that these things in the bag were never used), such as emergency medicine; on the contrary, men pursue a “simple” lifestyle.

5.2 A Day in the Life

  1. (1)

    Quantity: The number of social interactions happened on weekdays is much higher than on weekends. The number of social interactions is not necessarily related to their personality and gender, but has a great relationship with the nature of work (as shown in Fig. 5).

    Fig. 5.
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    The amount of social intercourse in a day.

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  2. (2)

    Location: Social places are concentrated in companies and consumer places, and some exist in home which are acquaintances and required passive social interaction. Extroverted personality has more active social interactions in public places. For the younger participants, weekend time would also be occupied by work (as shown in Fig. 6).

    Fig. 6.
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    The places where social intercourse took place.

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    Fig. 7.
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    The people who the participants talked with.

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    Fig. 8.
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    The medium used to have social intercourse.

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    Fig. 9.
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    Participants’ feelings when they were socializing.

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  3. (3)

    Interlocutor (as shown in Fig. 10): Weekday socializing focus on communications with colleagues (most of the contents are about work and some are entertainment), and weekend socializing is concentrated with friends. On weekends, the number of interactions with strangers is zero. There is less communication with parents, even less than the number of interactions with practitioners of service industry. Extroverted personality loves to communicate with parents. The number of friends the five participants keeping communicating with is maintained at 1 or 2. In addition, the older the age, the greater the correlation between the source of friends and work (as shown in Fig. 7).

    Fig. 10.
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    Social intimacy model.

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  4. (4)

    Media: On weekdays, men tend to socialize face to face, women tend to socialize online (related to the nature of work); on weekends, they all tend to socialize face to face. On weekends, both social medias would be reduced to a certain extent (as shown in Fig. 8).

  5. (5)

    Emotional changes: The mood changes on weekdays are more abundant. On workdays, men have more positive emotions and women have more negative emotions: on weekends, positive emotions dominate for both men and women. Among them, positive emotions mainly arise from interactions with colleagues and friends. Negative emotions mainly come from difficulties in work (female negative emotions also come from interactions with friends: such as they do not get positive feedback or they do not receive friends’ full attention). Introverted personality is more likely to produce negative emotions than extroverted personality, whether it is workday or weekend (as shown in Fig. 9).

  6. (6)

    Content: From the conversations of private socially interactions other than work interactions, it can be seen that people with introverted personality are more eager to be recognized and willing to give and women prefer sharing more than men.

5.3 Map

  1. (1)

    In addition to the company, OPHY stay at home most of time (as shown in Figs. 11 and 12).

    Fig. 11.
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    On the weekday, places that have been visited.

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    Fig. 12.
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    On the weekend, places that have been visited.

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  2. (2)

    Eating out is not their only choice. In most cases, they will choose to cook, order take out or take the dishes home. The specific situation is affected by the income level.

  3. (3)

    Men have the habit of exercise, but women do not (as shown in Figs. 11 and 12).

  4. (4)

    Women are more inclined to stay at home, whether it is after work or on weekends (as shown in Figs. 11 and 12).

  5. (5)

    On weekends, work would deprive men’s holiday time (as shown in Fig. 12).

  6. (6)

    The idle time mode that OPHY spends tends to stay at home, go hiking, and rarely appear in cultural venues such as cinemas, museum and libraries (as shown in Figs. 11 and 12).

  7. (7)

    Urban public spaces such as parks and plazas do not appear in their lives (as shown in Figs. 11 and 12).

6 Discussion

Through investigation and research, this paper finds that the phenomenon and the survival status of the OPHY group are closely related to their personality characteristics and income levels, and the individual differences are very large. It is not possible to view the survival status of this group only through the overall trend and changes of the society. The literature [8, 15,16,17, 27, 28] did not pay enough attention to independent individuals in the process of examining this group.

6.1 Product Use

Chang and Liang [51] pointed out in the study that users should be encouraged to express their emotions by designing some physical interaction products to enable users to create experiences in their daily lives. However, this paper did not find products with interactive feature from the user’s personal belongings. There may be two situations: First, the research case of Chang and Liang is in a larger private space, such as bedroom, and this paper focuses on the items that are carried around, with a smaller scope, more functional purposes, and less interactive scenarios. Second, the current interactive products (especially physical products) do not combine portability, functionality and emotional interactivity, and the emotional interactivity of portable products (such as headphones) is almost zero. In combination with the product user experience proposed in Hu and Huang [52], in addition to the usability, the product should be interesting, creative, personalized. We can draw a conclusion that the existing portable products have problems in this aspect of design. At the same time, because users will inject a lot of personal emotions and experience memories on such products, how to design the life cycle of such products more effectively, to make the products from the purchase, use to discard or collection become more elegant need to be carefully considered by the designers. For some daily necessities, the product life cycle is generally very short. While optimizing the user experience, it is necessary to pay attention to the sustainability and green environmental protection of the product.

This paper shows that the OPHY group has a willingness to talk and communicate, and most of the positive emotions in their lives come from the communication experience with others, such as share gets positive responds). Lee [57] and Battarbee [58] proposed a new concept: co-experience, which emphasizes that different individuals create experiences together when using a certain product to gain happiness. This paper shows that this concept is established, and the experience created by people in the process of using mobile phones (or social software) far exceeds the value brought by the product’s own functional value. However, OPHY is limited by its own environment (often alone), their co-experience is mainly generated by mobile phones (virtual social networks). How to help them create more and more diverse co-experience need more products to enhance user engagement and self-motivated, not just mobile phones.

6.2 Social Situation

Kim et al. [54] pointed out that user interaction on the social platform, such as product reviews, can indeed bring good social benefits, but the research in this paper shows that young female users (F1, F2) are willing to interact on the platforms. The male research users and the older female users (M1, M2, F3) rarely interact on the public network platform. How to mobilize their social interaction (social experience) online should be concerned in service design field and information design field.

Among the five respondents, only the young male M1 has the habit of playing games. Game is the way he spends his free time, and it is also a medium for him to maintain friendship. But he is only limited to playing games with old friends. At the same time, he will gain a sense of accomplishment in the game (M1 became much more excited about the topic of the game in the interview). Chen and Lei [60] emphasized the importance of teamwork for game viscosity, but how to improve the viscosity between users, increase their communication and personal relationship development to maintain the stability and continuity of teamwork, which game designers need continue thinking about. In addition, the OPHY group’s private time is actually quite long and boring, at the same time, they are eager to be recognized (playing games can quickly achieve a sense of accomplishment to meet their needs), so how to make female users and older male users involve in games and fulfill their social needs in the game (the lower threshold for communicating with strangers in games) is also the possible direction of game design.

6.3 Public Space Interaction

Oh et al. [65] indicated that the experience and participation of buildings that users can participate in is far greater than that of ornamental buildings with a sense of mystery. Although ornamental buildings create subtle social connections between designers and users, they rarely trigger social activities and people are less curious about them. In contrast, by creating surprises, happiness, and communication with people, a building that is interactive is a temporary re-adjustment of the social atmosphere. This paper finds that the buildings mentioned by OPHY are all related to functions (such as cinemas). There is no conflict between the functionality of the interior of the building and the entertainment on the exterior wall. Enhancing the interactive design of the architecture is a good way to increase social experience and promote social interaction between strangers. However, in this process, the construction of interactive facilities is an additional function and is easy to produce burnout, high cost, and fast update speed, so how to effectively use the easy-to-assemble, easy-to-move sustainable materials and modules for flow assembly between different buildings’ display is a problem that the designers should pay attention to.

This paper shows that public space (such as parks and squares) has a small chance of appearing in the daily life of the participants. On weekdays, most of them went home directly after work (only M2 went to the park for a walk in the evening), there is not much interaction with the outside world; on weekends, they were more inclined to stay at home or go to nature with two or three friends, such as mountains, but not the public spaces in the city. These reflect some of the problems that may exist in the design of public environment: First, public spaces in urban areas such as parks generally have special areas for children to have fun and sports venues for the elderly. Only some of the larger amusement facilities are set up for young people. However, when OPHY has time, specifically after work, these facilities have been closed, and the public spaces lack a relaxing entertainment program and atmosphere that meets the needs of the crowd; second, the public space are never showed up in female participants’ lives and at the same time they do not have the habit of exercising. In return visit, the reason for this phenomenon is not only the participants’ laziness but their concerns about safety issues. Therefore, how to strengthen the attractiveness and security of the public space in the evening, that is, to better combine the characteristics of the work-in-the-jobs to make the public space of the night rejuvenate is an issue that environmental designers could consider. Van and Hu [70] gave some good examples and methods for enhancing the social function and fun of public spaces through user collaboration.

7 Conclusion

This paper aims to explore the characteristics and needs of the OPHY group, and combines the characteristics of this group (basing on literature review) to select three design research methods: Personal Belongings, A Day In The Life and Map. Five typical users from four cities were selected for in-depth research based on gender and personality characteristics. Through research, this paper finds that the living status of this group has a great correlation with their income level, social status, personal mentality and gender. But no matter what kind of typical users, the status of living alone would indeed reduce their social interaction, even though they have a strong social tendency. Therefore, from the designer’s point of view, how to expand their communication range, help them maintain stable communication and improve their social communication experience is the direction should be worked hard. On the one hand, designers should combine the special group’s own characteristics, such as more time at home, from their living environment or from the game they love to play, find the direction of improvement to help them experience social and interactive pleasure at home. On the other hand, designers should continue to enhancing the attractiveness of the world outside the house to help them get out of the house by improving the services they receive, the buildings they pass by and the public spaces they have been neglecting to. Make integrating more actively and simply to help them make more new friends and create more interesting experience in society.

Based on the existing research, this paper has carried out a more detailed subdivision of the OPHY group, and a broader survey on the three dimensions of user with products, user with user, users and environment, and found out more specific needs and survival of this group in some specific scenarios. At the same time, this paper flexibly applies the user research methods in design, and applies them in solving sociological problems innovatively. The typical users replace the big data statistics to conduct more in-depth user research, which makes the user image more vivid, the research level more diverse, and to some extent, it expands a new idea of user research.

In addition to more specific research on enhancing the interaction of the external environment, future research can also explore the concept of “home” from the existing living habits of OPHY. How to better help OPHY integrate into the society through the design of interior design, product design or virtual product design. And how to integrate the relationship of “being at home” and “entity social” which are seemingly contradictory.

OPHY is a growing population and is a social phenomenon that cannot be ignored. Researchers can’t simply define the good or bad of their lives, but the designers can use the power of design to enhance their social experience to help the young people who are struggling between dream and reality gain a stronger sense of social integration and cultural belonging.