Social Network

In the era that we live in, where we spend most of our time awake online, learning to investigate the new digital environment in which we exist is fundamental and urgent. Half of Italians live online for about 6 hours a day, 2 of which they spend on social networks (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc). Listening to the data coming from these digital environments allow us to understand better the relationships/reactions dynamics between users and products. The online data are traces that the user leaves in his virtual environment, where they lives actually as in the real one. Observing this environment, together with the real one, of course, allows now designers to have a more complete picture of what the user's problem is. Ignoring this means observing only an half world, with the risk of generating projects without any impact. The chapter aims to describe how this type of social “listening", transformed into a small survey for students, can instruct through the "hashtag" – most important tool of all the activities on social media – how to navigate, find and interpret the needs and habits of users who are hidden online in the social environment.