Archive for the ‘Assignment 1’ Category

• Are You What You Wear? – The Johari Window

  Date: 2012.01.31 | Category: Assignment 1, DJ22006 - The 21st Century Designer (11/12) | Response: 2

  

  The Johari Window is a technique that shows you more clearly what you know about yourself and what others know about you. It is commonly used in self help groups to help people understand their mental instability. I did my own Johari Window filling out each quadrant to reflect on what the group know about me and what I knew about myself. It was an interesting task to undertake. It really helps to portray your character in a nice visual way.

  Here is my Johari Window:

  

  This helped me understand what personality traits I have. I learned that I am organised, which I did not actually believe. After some snooping of myself I looked closely at my room particularly my MacBook. All my files where all in folders in a neat hierarchical structure and nothing was out of place. I am now aware of this trait but I do not necessarily agree with my energetic one. I may like football but I don’t actually play it. I am actually quite a lazy person but my bedroom did not show this.

  During the process of snooping peoples’ personal images I found it enjoyable and insightful. I liked this because it surprised me how effective it was in showing what people are like by just looking at images. I don’t think I am nosy but I did find it fun to snoop and I can see me doing this in other aspects of my life. However actually being snooped on was quite scary. I thought people were going to judge me on my room without actually getting to know me. I did feel really uncomfortable when they first thought I was a male but thank goodness for my grooming products. I did feel more and more relaxed when they started getting things correct so the actual snooping process worked. Some ethical problems to design research is some people don’t like to have their picture taken or be filmed. I have encountered this in my other module where we needed to interview an art student but she requested not to be filmed. The reason for this was she felt uncomfortable and did not feel she would be totally focused on the questions being asked but more about the camera lens. The closest I came to these issues in this project was one of my group members stated she took photos of her kitchen rather than her bedroom because she did not want people to snoop around her personal space. The other group actually picked up on this when giving her feedback and described her as being a very private person, in which she agreed.

  I really enjoyed this assignment and it was a great way to start the module. I learned a lot about snooping and some new stuff about myself. It has got me thinking deeper about myself and I feel more confident. Now I am thoroughly looking forward to the next project.

  Blog 1: – Are You What You Wear? – Analysis and Deduction

  Blog 2: – Are You What You Wear? – Note-Making and Discussion

• Are You What You Wear? – Note-Making and Discussion

  Date: 2012.01.30 | Category: Assignment 1, DJ22006 - The 21st Century Designer (11/12) | Response: 2

  

  During the process of analysing photographs me and my group wrote down all our ideas and guesses in note form. It surprised me how much notes we managed to gather by just looking at images, that at first viewing don’t show much about that person. I thought images of bedrooms were more insightful and showed more personality than old childhood images because what you have in your bedroom is more personal and you will only have things you like in it. Here is a summary of each person:

  Person 1: – Girl in her late teens/early 20s, textiles student, extrovert, quite neurotic, music fan, sociable, organised, likes to try new things, animal lover, caring and kind.

  Person 2: – Girl in her late teens/early 20s, textiles student, extrovert with introvert tendencies, likes animals, sociable, good upbringing, has a sister, does not crave attention and quite shy.

  Now it was time to meet up with the other group. We went first in telling person 1 all we knew about them. We were really surprised about how well we predicted everything but not as surprised as Errin (person 1), yes she is a girl. Errin is a young textiles student who liked music and animals. She grew up on a farm which explains the lamb she had wandering about her house. Being organised and tidy is very important to Errin as she likes to have more room. She agreed she was extroverted and sociable but looked a bit defensive of herself when we said we thought she was a bit neurotic. We explained about her having motivating messages around the room but she did not think that made her neurotic. She seemed excited when we were giving our views of her room which made the whole process a lot easier.

  Next one up was Morgan (person 2). Again we got the gender, age, and course correct. Our observation of her having a sister turned out to be true. We thought we were on another roll of predicting correctly but our winning streak was cut short. Morgan did not agree with being shy or introverted in any way. She did think about this and came to the conclusion that she may well appear quiet to people who don’t know her. In general Morgan seemed pleased with our observations and understood that if she had selected images of her current living space we would be able to detect more accurately.

  

  I was quite nervous to seeing what they thought about me. I provided images of my bedroom and the first thing they told me was they thought I was male. I suddenly felt uncomfortable and that definitely showed. They thought because my room was full of Chelsea FC posters etc. I was a man, which was a bit stereotypical but I respect that opinion because I probably would have made that same judgement. They did change that opinion when they seen all the perfumes and hair products so I did feel a little relieved about that. They seen a crucifix beside my bed and made the correct choice in saying I was Catholic rather than it being a fashion statement. They said this because of the position I had it placed in my room which I thought was good point. By looking at my room they took a guess that I was into computer games which was half true and half wrong. I used to play them a lot but recently not as much. They seen my MacBook in the room and no sketchpads and therefore predicted correctly that I study Digital Interaction Design. I began to feel more relaxed when they started getting everything right but they did get one more thing wrong. They thought I had a connection to England which was untrue. Overall I was really pleased and shocked that they found all this out by simply looking at images of my room. I was definitely impressed but unlike my group’s observations they failed to mention anything about my personality and what I am like for example, I would say I am on the introverted side but I never received any such feedback.

  Blog 1: – Are You What You Wear? – Analysis and Deduction

  Blog 3: – Are You What You Wear? – The Johari Window

• Are You What You Wear? – Analysis and Deduction

  Date: 2012.01.30 | Category: Assignment 1, DJ22006 - The 21st Century Designer (11/12) | Response: 2

  Are You What You Wear? was the first assignment in 21st Century Design Module. This consisted of going into teams and examining other peoples photographs, trying to figure out what each persons’ tastes, influences, possessions and environment is like. This was a tricky task to undertake as the photographs my team were giving consisted of images of a bedroom and childhood images. How can we fully understand what each person is like by looking at these pictures?

  

  At the beginning of this task I read a book called Snoop by Sam Gosling. It was about the author’s experience in the world of snooping. He can decipher what people are like by looking around their personal space, at peoples body language or even something uncomplicated like shaking someones hand can define what that person is like. I found this book really interesting and I learned a lot from it. It not only showed me how to understand what other people are like but it made me open my eyes about myself. I will talk more in detail about these discoveries in the next few blog entries.

  

  Using my newly found skills of detection from Snoop I joined my group and analysed the photos of another team. Person 1 had images of their bedroom which seemed very “Mainstream” meaning it looked like a generic room for a late teenager. The walls were draped in posters/cut out images. There seemed to be an American theme running around the room with images of Coca Cola, Miller and American Apparel. This person clearly enjoyed music as there was an ipod, a picture of Amy Winehouse and images of a music festival they have attended. Our group came to the conclusion she liked socialising and did not not mind being in huge crowds. Therefore this person seemed very extroverted. Other images on the wall suggested this too like the image of a person jumping of a cliff or travel photos, which showed this person was willing to do other things. There was also self motivating messages in the room, the question is are they for the owner or are they meant for visitors of the room? This came across to our group of being neurotic. The book Snoop backed this up as it made a case of saying that neurotic people like to have positive messages around their living space. Our group decided this person was a girl and did Textiles after we looked at her bed area. The duvet, cushion, and ribbon beside her bed were all colour coordinated. Her desk area was full of reminders on post it notes, taxi numbers and had an alarm clock beside her bed showing she liked to be organised and on time. She also liked animals as on her cushion was a dog and she had a lamb/dog (we were not sure) in one of her photos. Her love for animals and images of family/friends on her wall showed she was a caring person who liked to have what made her happy to be beside her in her personal space.

  

  Person 2 was a lot more trickier to decipher as the photos were from childhood. A couple of the images were from parties, me and my group thought they were from two separate occasions. Both parties looked like they were from the early 90s which made this person about 20 years old. There were a lot of children at these parties so we had to guess what person was actually the subject of research. Other images helped us figure that out as a female was constant on all images. Therefore this person was a girl. By looking at these photos you can tell she had a good upbringing as she had family and friends over to celebrate, they were all well dressed and they looked happy. Again this person looked to be extroverted but there is a case to argue against this. On all photos she never looked at the camera. If it was her party you would think she would be wanting the camera to focus on her but that was not the case. Did this mean she was shy and did not crave attention?. On one of the images two girls wore the same socks and shoes which showed to us that she has a sister. There was also an image of her feeding the ducks which showed she respected nature and animals. Me and my group think she studies Textiles but there was not much reason to back this up, it was just a guess.

  Overall this process was interesting as I have never did anything like this before and I believe that our findings were not far off from the truth. Now time to go find out.

  Blog 2: – Are You What You Wear? – Note-Making and Discussion

  Blog 3: – Are You What You Wear? – The Johari Window