MFA Thesis presentation
On May 6th, 2022 at the SVA Theater in Chelsea, I was able to present my thesis to the public with a short Q&A at the end.
Initial research
Content
After coming to the US, I received a lots scam calls. My calling card is new and has not been used much. How do they know my personal information? I have no idea, and I notice that many recent immigrants have the same problem. Sometimes the caller speaks in English, sometimes in Mandarin; sometimes they know our names, sometimes they do not. I never thought I might be a victim of scam calls, but it is scary when getting those scam calls in a foreign country.
Development of technology has brought us great convenience. At the same time, modern technology has given scams new life, making it cheaper and more accessible for criminals to target large numbers of victims via smartphones, a necessity we cannot live without.
Design Brief
As humans, we are all startlingly bad at detecting scams. Studies show that even when we look for signs of deception, our accuracy is hardly better than chance. Countless scams reach out to people through phone calls, text messages, and emails every day. A little inattentiveness could make us fall into the trap of scammers.
For my thesis, I started to focus on how might we prevent people from being scammed by phone scams.
Narrow down the scope
Field of Study
I did secondary research first to find out where the core problem was. I have listed the important statistics that I found about phone scams below:
- Phone calls are the most common scam mechanism when compared to other contact methods, including text, email, website, app, etc.
- Phone scam has increased dramatically in the past few years, 44.6% of all calls in the US are scam calls. The data was updated in 2019 by First Orion and the percentage is growing every year.
- 59.5 million Americans have lost money from a phone scam in 2021.
- Phone scams have increased dramatically over the past few years and accounted for an estimated $29.8 billion in losses in 2021.
Based on my initial research of phone scams, I decided to narrow the focus to scam calls specifically. As a next step, I started looking for my target group to understand who is most vulnerable.
Target Group
The data show that, contrary to popular belief, younger adults lose money to scammers much more often than older people do. Deeper examination of this age group revealed that the average age of new immigrants in the US is 31 years old, which is right in the middle of the young adult group that is most susceptible to being scammed.
Problem areas
After interviewing 10 subject matter experts, including polices officers, immigrant victims, and anti-fraud advocates, I made a system map to trace what's behind the scams. I started to comprehend the massive preparations scammers make before calling, the high technology victims face during the call, and the helplessness victims feel after hanging up.