What is Work in a Digital World is a conceptual project exploring how digital tools and platforms are transforming the way we work. The challenge was to take a complex academic theme and turn it into an accessible, interactive blog that invites people to reflect on the societal and ethical impacts of digital work.
As work becomes more digitised, people are facing new challenges around identity, productivity, and wellbeing. Digital platforms don’t just support work, they actively shape how we collaborate, communicate, and find meaning in our careers. Yet, these shifts are often abstract, overwhelming, or inaccessible to general audiences.
How might we create a digital experience that makes the future of work understandable, engaging, and reflective, while encouraging people to think critically about its broader impact?
A screenshot of the What is work in a digital world? Blog site.
My research highlighted two themes that shaped the direction of this project. First, access to digital tools is not equal, and the digital divide means that for some, technology expands opportunity, while for others, it creates new forms of exclusion. This made it important to design the site in a modular, flexible way so users could engage with the content at different levels of depth.
Second, I found that emotion plays a critical role in helping people reflect on abstract issues. Drawing on "Hopecore" aesthetics, I discovered that atmospheric visuals and soundscapes prompt users to pause and think more deeply than plain text alone. This led me to combine first-hand photography and a short film within the website, creating an immersive experience that balanced clarity with emotional resonance.
A screenshot of my workspace In FigJam for creating ideas & research.
This project explores the tension between digital and non-digital worlds through a Hopecore aesthetic, an Internet based trend focused on optimism & positivity. In addition, I delve into the hopelesscore aesthetic where users edit hopeless or demotivating moments into a mock-inspiratrional tone. I built a website so people can skim or dive deeper between this dichotomy, and a short Hopecore styled film to close the experience. The goal was to make complex academic ideas accessible while keeping an emotional, visual tone.
A screenshot of my editing in Premiere Pro for the hopecore video.
The What Is work in a digitial world Final video found at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG4twwsYULA
The final Hopecore video paired with the blog achieved what I set out to do. Make a complex theme accessible and emotionally engaging. By combining contrasting interviews, original photography and ambient sound, the project balanced hope with realism and encouraged viewers to pause and reflect on how digital tools shape their work lives.
What worked well was the clear Hopecore aesthetic, the mix of optimism and caution in the narrative, and the way the format felt familiar to a digital-first audience. If I continued the project, I’d experiment more with dynamic footage and refined backdrops to push the visual impact further.
Overall, this project showed me how design, storytelling, and aesthetics can work together to translate abstract ideas into experiences that resonate.
