4.1.2022 - 21.1.2022 (Week 1 - Week 3)
Chung Yi Ki / 0345014 / BDCM
Intercultural Design
Project 1: Proposal
Lecture
Week 1 / Netnography
Ethnography
Ethnography means a study of culture by having first-hand experience in interacting with the culture, by participating in the lifestyle of the culture, by observing the surrounding of the cultural environment and by engaging face-to-face with the people of the culture.
The term netnography means ethnography studies done by using the Internet. It is a technology mediated studies and research where online platforms such as forums and social media will be frequently used.
About the project that we’re doing for this module, we would have to find sources about our chosen culture from the Internet, come up with a theory or hypothesis and create a visual design to communicate the proven theory/hypotheses or a new knowledge. This is where netnography would be useful to know as we would mainly retrieve our research findings from online platforms.
There are 3 types of data that can we can collect when doing our research:
Archive
Data without the researcher's involvement. In other words, the data are written down by other people who has no relation with the research.
Elicited
Data co-created by the researcher with the involvement of people who the researcher has worked with during the research.
Fieldnotes
Observational and reflective notes gathered from physical experience while researching.
Data collection is not just about writing down text, it can be in many forms such as pictures, videos, physical objects etc.
Ethical netnography
It is important to be ethical when collecting data from people online, through the means of forum, online chats etc. The ethics include:
- Introduce yourself and explain your purpose before asking data from other people
- Ask for permission from the commentor or interviewee to include their response in your research
- Consult with experts or look up credible references to verify the data gathered
- Receive consent from the commentors or participants to include them in your research, they can provide their nicknames or pseudo-names if they aren’t comfortable in sharing out personal information.
- Cite and credit any data you have included in your research
Advantages of netnography
- A lot of potential and valuable data
- Does not have geographical limitation
- Data is naturally-occurring and in real-time
- Possibility on encountering unexpected findings
- Data may be found online but not accessible in face-to-face
- Data are current
Disadvantages of netnography
- Largely empirical and not contextual (can't find out the actual experience itself)
- Researches may encounter difficulty using online platforms or choose an irrelevant platform
- Data collection and analysis may be time-consuming or may have invalid data
Week 2 / Culture & Us
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| Fig 1.1 Culture iceberg model depicting the layers of culture Source: https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/27598037/the-cultural-iceberg-the-united-church-of-canada |
How we normally define culture is the different ethnicity, tradition, food and festivals. But there are more to that. culture refers to the subconscious agreement of belief, way of life, etc. of a group of people, and its passed from one generation to the other.
Practices that reflects values in a culture:
Symbols
Words, gestures, pictures, objects etc. Something with a particular meaning that only that specific culture recognizes.
Heroes
People from past/present/future/real/fiction that are highly praised and worshiped in a culture. These people also serve as models of behaviour.
Ritual
Collective activities people in a culture participate to reach a certain objective, but are also considered as socially essential.
The layers of culture can be divided into culture that is associated with the national level, regional level, gender level, generation level, social class level and corporate level.
When framing a culture, focus on understanding a certain aspect of a culture and find out why that group of people associate meaning into that culture.
Instructions
Idea development
Brainstorming ideas
We started with brainstorming the topic we want to research on based on
different cultures. We used Miro board for our brainstorming session and
came up with various possible topics. After discussing and looking over
them, we then ended up with the topic of “Omen: symbolism and purpose of
omen (Japanese mask) existence” where we specifically research on the oni
mask. We also thought of our research aim which is to communicate the
meaning and purpose of oni mask to the general public though a design.
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| Fig 1.1 Design ideas brainstorming (3/1/2022) |
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| Fig 1.2 Design ideas brainstorming with visual references (7/1/2022) |
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| Fig 1.3 Design ideas brainstorming with visual references (7/1/2022) |
Other than that, we also brainstormed about the possible design ideas that
we could do for this topic. The ideas are mostly centered around products
such as jewellery, masks, tote bags, headphones, keycaps etc.
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Fig 1.4 Rethought design ideas after changing topic to "Protection"
and brainstorming on the current situations that we can relate our topic to (7/1/2022) |
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| Fig 1.5 Rationale draft (7/1/2022) |
After receiving feedbacks from Ms. Anis, we decided to change our topic to
“Protection” and our research aim as bring awareness to the concept of using
evil to combat evil in different culture though a design. We decided to
focus on researching about Oni which is from Japanese culture, Medusa which
is from Greek culture and evil eye which if from Middle Eastern culture.
Three of these cultural objects/creatures are mythical, have an evil origin
but are used to combat evil. We’ve also brainstormed on the possible design
ideas we can do for this topic as well as think of current situations that
can represent “evil” which we can relate to our topic. Other than that,
we’ve also written the first draft of the rationale for our proposal.
Sketches and further research development
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| Fig 2.1 Short comic visual reference (7/1/2022) Source: https://www.pinterest.jp/pin/635570566172425014/ |
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| Fig 2.2 Short comic visual reference (7/1/2022) Source: https://www.pinterest.jp/pin/635570566172424980/ |
After that, we decided on the design ideas that we want to sketch out for our proposal, which are: poster series of 3 different posters each depicting the 3 mythical figures we've chosen, product design, magazine, tarot cards, brand design and short comic. We then divided works between ourselves to complete the sketches and I’ve chosen to sketch out short comic. Before I start sketching the comics out, we went to find some picture references for the comic style that we want and found these two comic pages (Fig 1.1, 1.2). We plan to use a monotone colouring style and keep the comic short by letting the visuals tell the story.
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| Fig 2.3 Oni short comic sketch (14/2/2022) |
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| Fig 2.4 Medusa short comic sketch (14/2/2022) |
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| Fig 2.5 Evil eye short comic sketch (14/2/2022) |
I then started to sketch out the comics. The purpose
of the short comic is to visualize how each of those 3 mythical figures act
as symbols of protection. Since evil eye is an object, I characterized it as a hooded person who has an evil eye for an eye to fit the theme of the comic. I keep the panels in my sketches less than 10
panels to keep it short.
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| Fig 2.6 Research topic, problem, objectives and questions draft (14/2/2022) |
We've also written drafts on our research topic, problem, objective and
questions as well as included some information on oni and evil eye in our
presentation slides.
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| Fig 2.7 Coloured oni short comic sketch (18/1/2022) |
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| Fig 2.8 Coloured Medusa short comic sketch (18/1/2022) |
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| Fig 2.9 Coloured evil eye short comic sketch (18/1/2022) |
After receiving feedback from Miss Anis, I decided to colour my short comic
sketches. I used a monotone colour scheme for each mythical
figures, where oni is red, medusa is green and evil eye is blue.
While we are completing our sketches, we also updated our slides with
research questions by taking out 3 questions, edited our rationale by adding
in more details, added more information on the 3 mythical figures we’ve
chosen and organized the visual references for our sketches. And after
receiving feedback from Miss Anis in week 3 , we made changes on the
research problem and added artefacts information for the 3 mythical figures.
We also changed our topic title to "The beliefs of evil for
protection".
After we finalized everything in our slides, we organized them and recorded
a presentation.
Final Project 1 presentation slides and video
Fig 3.1 Final Project 1 proposal presentation deck (20/1/2022)
Fig 3.2 Final Project 1 proposal presentation video (20/1/2022)
Feedbacks
Week 1
The design outcome doesn't necessarily have to be an item, it could be poster / poster series, short film etc. The topic can branch out more, since oni masks are said to "use evil to ward of evil", look at other culture that has a similarity in this approach. For example, the evil eye in Persian culture. The topic can change to "Protection" and try to reflect this on current situation. For example, making a face mask that symbolises an evil creature for use during the COVID-19 pandemic, or reference the hairy leggings which is related to the Me 2 movement. Representation of evil can be from real life situation.
Week 2
The research questions can be cut down to 3, don't ask questions that people already know. For the rationale, bold the main points since it's a wall of words and summarize the sentence mentioning that oni, Medusa and evil eye are used to ward of evil. Also, add the objective of our project in the rationale too. For the product design idea, think about the target output of the produce, whether it's a divination company or an insurance company etc. and it can be packed together with tarot cards. Magazine isn't a good choice of design idea since it's restating the information that's widely available on the Internet, but we can keep this idea and repackage it with our brand design idea. For tarot cards, try to redesign the cards from the traditional deck, we can focus on redesigning the cards that provides protection. For brand design, the idea can be better so keep on sketching and look at different art styles.
Week 3
Edit the research problem to be more clear by stating that in some culture, certain elements of evil are used to combat other evil and give protection. Find some existing artefacts that shows the protection uses of the 3 mythical figures we've chosen. Change the topic title to something that relates to evil, maybe something like "Protection beliefs with evil".
Reflection
Experience
I always find the starting of project like this to be hard to get right, since the proposal will be the major blueprint of the whole project and project 2 and 3 are just developments of it. So, if the proposal isn’t through enough, there will be problems in the upcoming projects. But I’m glad it worked out at the end and it was interesting to find and learn about all the information included in our proposal, albeit it went through a lot of back and forth.
Observation
I observed that when coming up with a design idea, it shouldn’t be limited to what the nature of a certain topic is. For example, if the topic is about masks, we don’t necessarily need to only create masks to communicate our message. A message can be delivered in a lot of visual forms and by letting ourselves to consider all those possibilities, then a better solution can be produced.
Findings
I found that learning about a certain culture is more than learning about its traditions and customs, but it’s finding out more about the reason and origin of how that culture came to be. Cultures have a lot of layers in them and to truly understand it, we must uncover the core meaning of it rather than just touching the surface of the iceberg.
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