this intervention is based on the intervention 5 ( seating arrangement on communication). in this intervention, I will first throw a question or point of view to the other person, let him think or study carefully, don’t worry about asking the answer, let him digest it in his mind first, and challenge his original concept. ( inspired by the book: The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe) . I used critical design as a method to designe a dining table that can reflect the status of the family, and invite people to write down five key word to describe how they feel after seeing the dining table.
1. Please use 3 keywords to describe how you feel after seeing this dining table.
A: family, friend, communication
B: party, interact, space
C: warm, sweet, family time
2. Please use 3 keywords to describe how you feel after seeing this dining table.
A: distance, contradiction, estrangement
B: misunderstanding, inconvenience, serious
C: lonely, distant, bad relationship
I also placed it downstairs in my house and invite people to write down the keyword， but only received very few responses.
reference:
What is Critical Design? Critical Design uses speculative design proposals to challenge narrow assumptions, preconceptions about the role products play in everyday life. Its opposite is affirmative design: design that reinforces the status quo.
What is it for? To make us think. But also raising awareness, exposing assumptions, provoking action, sparking debate.
Affirmative design is problem solving, with design framed as a process that provides answers in the service of industry for how the world is.
Critical design, on the other side of the page, is characterized as problem finding, with design framed as a medium that asks questions in the service of society for how the world could be.
according to the last tutorial feedback, I am a little aware the older you are the wiser you are, the more respected to be given and there is always this barrier attached to it when it comes to communication.
so what can help me to tackle this issue? could be a game? in the game, give them the role, the game is to play that role of being someone else, and see how they act and how they interact and how they feel.
so I invited one of the stakeholder to play the game with her family, and then interview her feelings, Does the game really help communication? Can it overcome the barriers of power?
interview:
stakeholder feeling: Playing games can indeed strengthen the relationship between family member and make you temporarily forget about power and status. However, one thing is not good. When playing games, most of your energy is on the game, and you forget to communicate.
From the previous research, it was found that Protective type and Laissez-faire type lacked communication, and during the discussion, I found that in these two type family, there is usually a seating arrangement at the dining table. Their seats are arranged according to the family seat, but this is unconscious
In the other two types：Consensual and Pluralistic, they rarely have fixed seats, and they do not arrange seats according to family status. They communicate more with their family members, less conflicts, and have a good relationship with family members.
So I think the seat arrangement and family status and rights hinder the communication between children and parents to some extent, and Communication will be affected by power. If I want to promote communication between different generations, I must first make them aware of this problem. So how can we make people aware of this problem? This will be my next intervention
Next step and ideas:
My previous interventions focused on how to reduce the conflict between different generations, but I found that communication is a long-term process，this problem cannot be changed in the short term. And I also found that if two people disagree, you can hardly expect a decent response from the other person. Normally, he will defend himself and try to lead your thinking and judgments astray. A few months later, when the old words are brought up again, you will find that no one has changed their minds, as if the previous argument has never happened.
So in the next intervention, I will first throw a question or point of view to the other person, let him think or study carefully, don’t worry about asking the answer, let him digest it in his mind first, and challenge his original concept. ( inspired by the book: The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe)
I will design a dining table. This is not an ordinary dining table, but a dining table that can reflect the status of the family. I will place it downstairs in my house or in the park, so that people passing by can think about the meaning of the dining table, and interview their feelings. I will make the next intervention based on the feedback I get.
For my intervention, I invited one of my friends, she forced to blind date by her family, so far she attended fifth blind date, and I invited her to draw her life map related to her blind date, and choose a dating story into visual story(video), and then this video will be shared her parents, and her parents will create an ending for this story and share their feeling after watching this video. I also will share this video to other young and old generations to get more feedback.
PROCESS
FEEDBACK ONE:
FEEDBACK TWO:
FEEDBACK THREE:
FEEDBACK FOUR
REFLECTION
During the intervention, I found that it is difficult to engage parents to my project, specially some parents who force their child into marriage, they don’t want to share more opinion, so I think I should change my stakeholder and think about my backup plan, but I have no idea so far. I feel like this intervention is not very successful, because I hadn’t see any change from the parents, after the girl’s parents seeing the visual story, they still keep the old thought. From feedback I got, we can see that there are big different concept between young generation and old generation, and traditional concept is still spread among the boys.
This is my small intervention 1, I used mask as a technique, drawing their mood on the mask and wear their mask to communicate with other people, but can’t speak, only rely on body language, this lasted for 4 days. Finally, observe whether they rely on the mask to have better communication.
FEEDBACK
after the intervention, I got some feedback and their feelings from participants:
at the beginning, they were unfamiliar, and a little embarrassed;
if don’t draw something on the mask, it’s difficult to express(without the help of the drawing, they don’t know how to express)
they can basically understand each other’s meaning, but there is also a slight deviation in the details
can’t feel the other person’s mood
without training, it is difficult to express with body language
REFLECTION
In the beginning, for my small intervention 1 and 2. Before the experiment, I think that communication and attractiveness are important, but I started to forget this in the following steps. I used mask as a technique, though it resolves a little embarrassment, it also increase the difficulty of communication. There are few information acquisition channels for online communication, a lot of interactive information is hidden, and it is difficult to feel the other’s person mood. And I found that if you want to increase the sense of communication and interaction, the content and process of communication will become more complicated. So how to make my project creative and interactive and not just like an only solution for temporary something I need to think more about in the future.
To gain a industry knowledge of drama therapy online, I reached out to experts, Monique. She is a drama therapist and do a lot of stuff on drama therapy online.
Beneficial feedback I got started that: masks and costumes as a technique in the digital space, mask work is a staple of drama therapy work. As Jennings states, “some feelings can only be expressed through masks-feelings that are too anti-social, dangerous or depressing to be shown in other ways. Masks can contain the feelings that could not otherwise be expressed” (1990, ch.6, para.33). It is my belief that the online drama therapy space presents us with unique opportunities to not only work with masks, but to allow the client to see themselves in role with an immediacy that does not often happen in-person.
For my intervention 2, I will use mask as a technique, drawing their mood on the mask and invite people wear their mask to communicate with other people, but can’t speak, only rely on body language, this will last for 5 days, 10 mins a day. Finally, observe whether they rely on the face to have better communication.
RESEARCH QUESTION: How can bring understanding in views of marriage and love between different generations?
For this project, I found that there was a need for a way of communicating which allowed for a greater breadth of expression than could be conveyed through text and talk with each other face to face. In my journey to find suitable creative interventions, I drew inspiration from the approach I had developed as psychology, and based on the feedback I got from the stakeholder, I applied my drama therapy training to the field of digital media. I plan to use performance narratives, through interactive creation, actively explore the combination of drama therapy and digital media, and provide a way to express their feelings , communicate with each other and interact with others.
I had designed the framework of the technique to follow a trajectory that began with telling existing stories and ended with creating new stories.
FIRST STEP:
Recounting a story which collected from the people who has a problem on marriage and love (about blind date or marriage) Since some people unwilling to share their experience at the beginning, I collected some story in real life as a material that participant can use. If they want to share their experience, they can create a life map which illustrates important moments or events; the maps are then embellished with stories that were important in each of these stages of life.
SECOND STEP:
Reading the beginning of a story and creating one’s own ending
THIRD STEP:
Creating a new story The multiple platform would create a space in which participants work collaboratively to create their culture and have a sense of ownership of the outcome.
FOURTH STEP:
Share your visual story and your parents can edit it
SCHEDULE:
Consulting with experts (05/21 — 06/21) The next step for my project is it consult with experts as my project tackles themes of how to applied drama therapy to the digital techniques.
art therapists;
artists;
video game designers
Collect real story can be as a material in the step one (04/21 — 05/21)
Further engage with stakeholder (05/21 — 07/21) How to engage people in my idea and have them easily understand each other. Build, edit and share their visual story
Do some research on Shaping Networked Theatre (05/21 — 06/21)
How can bring understanding in views of marriage and love between different generations?
WHY:
China is clearly one of the world’s favorite countries for forced marriages. According to the “Survey Report on the Status of Forced Marriage in China” more than 70% of the respondents had the experience of being forced into marriage by their parents. The reason foe this phenomenon comes from their lack of communication, different growth background and different channels for receiving information.
HOW:
In my journey to find suitable creative interventions, I drew inspiration from the approach I had developed as psychology.
I found that drama therapy is a method to help them understand each other more. Drama therapy offer new ways to express what you are thinking or feeling in order to cope with problems. Here’s an example: if you are having conflict with your parents, you maybe asked to role-play a scene in which you pretend to be your parents and speak from their perspective. It is intended to help participants break them out of any rigid roles or frameworks they have been limiting themselves to. They can express themselves while sharing a new side to their personality and learn to look at problems from the other side’s perspective.
How to engage people in my idea and have them easily understand each other is the biggest obstacle I need to overcome, and I got some feedback from stakeholder:
face to face therapy is a bit awkward;
It’s inconvenient offline, because don’t have much time to attend especially during pandemic;
They have not studied acting and drama
To further my stakeholder engagement I had conversation with psychologist, I have came up with multimedia platform that is to be used as part of my project’s targeted intervention, which can provide engagement as well as communicative, and expressive opportunities for different generations. The platform can help create a multimedia story rich with complementary combination of text, still image, audio, and/or video that can be interactive and edited at any time. These steps are as follows:
Recounting a story that the teller feels a strong connection to, usually from material that I collected in the real life;
reading online the beginning of a story and creating one’s own ending
Creating a new story with each other
WHAT IF
Parents and us are independent individuals, we can’t really change each other. My project aim to want to be understand each other better rather than proving that parents wrong in the views of marriage and love. After this project, they can understand each other more, and willing to communicate with each other, and accept the existence of different ideas. I am not against marriage, what I am against is the uniform criteria of happiness, like you have to get married at a certain age, if you don’t, you can’t be happy, you are a loser in life. I hope this project can reduce the conflict and young generations can have a say in the marriage.
based on the last feedback, I continue to develop my interactive video, and I collected some real example in the real life, because real people and real example are more convincing.
here is three example:
example 1:
name: yuhui huang age: 28 fashion designer she was forced by her parents to go on a blind date about five times, but she has not met a suitable person so far, and her parents said that she must marry this year, because they think 28 years old is old for women and the fortune teller said this year is her wedding year, and she is very troubled and does not know how to communicate with her parents. she think that It is impossible to meet the right person in this year, so she decided to move out instead living with her parents.
example 2:
name: waner chen age: 26 insurance She has a boyfriend, but her parents are dissatisfied with her boyfriend, because the fortune teller said that her boyfriend has many female friends, and he is likely to cheat after getting married, so her parents want her daughter to break up with her boyfriend . She is very entangled now. On the one hand, she likes her boyfriend, on the other hand, she doesn’t want to go against her parents’ meaning, and she is also a little superstitious in fortune telling.
example 3:
name: dasen age: 29 medicine He has a girlfriend, but his parents are not satisfied with his girlfriend because the fortune teller said that his girlfriend will bring bad luck to his family, but he insists on marrying his girlfriend. As a result, less than a month after the marriage, his father was diagnosed with leukemia and passed away two weeks later (his father was healthy and showed no signs of illness), and his father’s company also closed down.
and I also did some research on psychology, and I found that one therapy is drama therapy. Drama therapy takes a unique approach by using drama or theater techniques, including improvisation, role-playing and so on… Drama therapy combines drama and psychotherapy methods to offer new ways to express what you are thinking or feeling in order to cope more effectively with behavioral and emotional problems
It is intended to help participants explore their inner experience and break them out of any rigid roles or frameworks they have been limiting themselves to. They can express themselves while sharing a new side to their personality
drama therapy can also benefit participants by providing them with the opportunity to:
Express their feelings Tell their story Act out/work out issues and problems Achieve emotional and physical integration Experience catharsis Develop trust Work out relationship issues Strengthen or expand their personal life roles
Role-Playing
Role-playing allows the participant to alter their mindset, act out in new ways, and connect their own experiences to those of another person.
Here’s an example: if you’re having significant conflict with your parents, you may be asked to role-play a scene in which you pretend to be your parents and speak from their perspective.
I think it can help people explore their inner experience and break them out of any rigid roles or frameworks they have been limiting themselves to.
I think drama therapy can help young generation to communicate with their parents better, and learn to look at problems from the other side’s perspective.
NEXT STEP:
I will show these real example to people and get some feedback from them, What they think of these example?
I will combine these example with drama therapy. How to apply these real example to drama therapy? What techniques in drama therapy?
