Colgan_Assignment 1

I explored Stardoll in our first day of class, but I was left with so many questions that I just had to go a bit deeper into this fascinating product. I’m not alone. According to the site’s homepage, 399,363,255 users make up “the largest online community for girls who love fashion.” Stardoll started in Sweden in 2002 as “Paperdoll Heaven” and is still based in Stockholm. Today, Stardoll is a global juggernaut, with gameplay available in 28 languages.

The first prompt on the website is to build your own Stardoll. Unfortunately, the issues start early. The start page shows dolls with a variety of different ethnic looks, giving a semblance of diversity. All of the doll options are thin and beautiful, with default “Barbie feet” ready for high heels. The doll is highly customizable, so it is possible to adjust the doll’s shape and weight, skin color, and gender, but these options are not made clear on the homepage.

Each Stardoll also comes with a room, a personal page, and “a welcome gift of 500 Starcoins.” Stardoll started as a virtual paper doll, so fashion is a major component of the game. Today, real world fashion brands like DKNY and Nelly.com feature their clothing on the site, available for virtual purchase using Starcoins.

Those Starcoins can be earned through gameplay, but they can also be purchased with actual money and then used in Starplaza, the in-game mall. The issue of using real money should be of interest to parents. Children need their parents’ credit card in order to buy individual items or a membership in this world. The account is free and it is possible to use the platform without spending money, but memberships—which turn the user into a “Superstar”—will cost an automatically reoccurring $6.95 a month.

Another area of parental concern is the “Chat and Friends” category which allows users the opportunity to chat with other Stardoll users and join clubs ranging from “ZacEfron” to “StopSealKilling”. As with all online games, users agree that they are at least 13 years of age or older to access the site. Of course, it’s very likely that there are users younger than 13 on the site.

Seemingly created for young children on the platform, a “KidSafe membership” allows access to all doll related activities and games, but blocks the message center, Guest Book, and other forums. It’s likely that this feature was developed based on parental feedback and issues related to cyberbullying. According to the website’s FAQ section, “We are always working hard to improve the safety and security at Stardoll.com. We continuously moderate the site and have several filters in place to avoid name-calling and bad language.” A violation of the code of behavior called the One Stop Rules will result in account termination.

Applying the “Criteria to Consider When Creating New Media Content for Children” to Stardoll is a difficult task. At almost every point, this tool reveals deeper issues within the game. The chat categories offer a community aspect to the game, where users can share the hard work they’ve done to create their dolls but can also speak more generally. Support might be found in clubs like “FamilyProblems,” but these open forums can be potentially dangerous places for unwanted sexual content or users pretending to be someone they’re not. Stardoll says it moderates these groups but with many millions of users, it seems very possible that troubling situations may slip through the cracks.

Unfortunately, I believe Stardoll helps children (though the site’s language frames the audience as girls) develop issues around body image and gender stereotypes that can cause difficulty throughout their lives. Rather than focusing on strong female characters, impossible beauty standards, makeup, and fashion are presented as the tools of the game.

Stardoll is a very fun and engaging site but in terms of value, it’s a capitalistic game. Stardoll is a money-making platform and its unlikely that the company is going to abandon its lucrative partnerships with real clothing brands. However there are possibilities for improvement.

In terms of artistry, Stardoll is actually an extremely well designed platform with beautiful graphics. The final dolls can be works of art and are exhibited as such in the Spotlight tab. As a former Barbie Fashion Design maven, I think fashion games can help children develop creative design skills. As it is now, the design category is limited to hair, fashion, interior and jewelry. This would be a great place for expanding the game.

The interior design interface offers a fairly robust option to design patterns, a process with mathematical applications. The design category could be much improved by including the option to create and build furniture. This could use 3D modeling to teach users geometry and spatial reasoning skills. Allowing users to move beyond fashion could open up additional graphic design, behavior design and engineering games within the platform.

In an ideal world, Stardoll would sever ties with fashion brands, build stronger characters for the much more diverse set of dolls, and explore the rich potential of arts-based learning games. While the new and improved educational Stardoll seems very unlikely, small changes could build on the existing artistic tools of the game to improve its learning potential. Stardoll has recently released its own line of mobile games. These games may offer more possibilities for creating more educational material that will depart from the issues of the main site. Stardoll isn’t going anywhere soon, so hopefully she can diversify her portfolio beyond fashion and makeup.

Description: Stardoll functions like an online version of paper dolls, where users can customize outfits, go shopping, and make friends within the message board community.

URL: http://www.stardoll.com/

Objective: It seems as if Stardoll’s sole objective is to entice users to buy its virtual clothing, hair products, accessories, etc.

Target age: 7+

Evaluation:

Diversity

Diversity is a big challenge of Star Dolls, and its flaws are consistent with the findings of Black et al in Barbie Girls. It begins with the default avatar, who is thin and white with long, ombré hair, and dramatic makeup. She’s wearing a colorful, flowy strapless dress, and strappy high-heeled sandals. The “identity kit” is part of the beauty parlor menu, and it opens to a menu of different hairstyles; the menu options are then makeup, jewelry, hands, feet, and finally, face & body. Under face and body, there are icons denoting face shape, eyes, lips, eyebrows, nose, and then the silhouette of a body. It’s under the body silhouette that the user can add weight and change the skin color from very pale to very dark.

Describing the mechanics of the avatar design process is important because it illustrates how many steps the user has to go through in order to make edits to the default avatar, and how certain choices are deprioritized. It is much more straightforward to change hairstyle than skin color. Within each of the design options, there is very little variability of form—or away from stereotype. For example, the default avatar is set to the thinnest body shape. The user can go up to two sizes bigger, but the added weight is in the chest and hips, rendering the avatar more voluptuous, but still thin. Regardless of individual design choices, the resulting avatar is able-bodied, tall and lean, and glamorous. Makeup can be removed, but it’s not easy or intuitive to do.

Accessibility

This technology is accessible to users who can use a mouse or trackpad. There is no typing required, nor are there any wireless capabilities that require movement. Though Stardolls may function differently on an iPad, the computer application is fairly straightforward.

Interactivity & Safety

A unique feature of Stardoll is its community. There are thousands of message boards with hundreds of thousands of users on a wide variety of topics—most of which have nothing to do with Stardoll, like favorite celebrities. There are limitless opportunities for users to share looks with each other, or even set up contests to vote between to designs.

Though these communication platforms within Stardoll seem to facilitate connection between its users, there isn’t much new or challenging content. Featured message boards are about celebrities, animals, and hot-or-not.

In the Stardoll message boards, it is “strictly forbidden to”:

– Use bad words, sexually graphic terms or to make racist remarks.

– Bully other stardolls or in other ways make them feel uncomfortable.

– Share or ask for personal information such as password, phone number, email, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Polyvore, ask.fm, Instagram or similar.

– Post external links or usernames.

Though there are potentially problematic ways in which the users are using these message boards outside of the constraints above, these seem like appropriately rigorous rules, particularly because they ban sharing of any kind of personal information that could lead to contact outside of Stardoll. There doesn’t seem to be a moderator that approves each comment so, theoretically, a user could violate the rules and reveal their identity. Though they’d be kicked out of the community, it wouldn’t prevent the user from making themselves able to be reached.

Education

Save for the addition and subtraction it takes to keep track of coins and buy different fashion and accessory items, there isn’t much to speak to in way of education in this program. The design processes in Stardoll allow for choices—will that shirt be red, and if so, what shade?—but no creation. Users are not inventing outfits or identities as much as they are curating a small range of looks, which entirely undercuts the educational value of the creative process.

Value

The process of designing an avatar is fun, as is the process of playing dress-up with that avatar. Different characters can be created and dressed in an infinite number of combinations. Users can return to the content time and time again, but there doesn’t seem to be much in terms of further exploration—though there are many opportunities to buy more clothes, makeup, and jewelry.

Artistry

The Stardoll interface feels very out-of-date. The side menus are all in unattractive table forms. The pages are crowded and do not navigate intuitively. Even the pixel graphics seem dated.

Redesign:

My redesign would involve four major steps:

• I would design the site for the user to create his or her avatar when they first login, beginning with a wide variety of body shapes and skin tones. Stardoll could easily be a fantastic platform for reflecting diversity, and instead it reinforces the value of a very narrow identity type. It would be very simple to remove and reorder the elements of the avatar design process to be hugely inclusive.

• I would center the clothing design process on the sewing and crafting process, focusing on the applied math and science in the process of creating patterns. Users could walk away with both deeper understanding of the concepts as well as their application. Users would also reap the benefits of the creative process by creating the silhouettes and textiles of their own designs.

• I would facilitate and highlight conversations in the message board communities about crafting and design processes. Though I think it’s beneficial to have young users feel a sense of ownership about how they want to engage in the message board space (within reason), the site would be much stronger if it highlighted learning-centered conversations.

• I would update the interface to be more consistent with best practices in ux design.