Living with your own ideas¶
Oscar Tomico, Kristina Andersen & Angella Mackay
31-2 November 2023
Content¶
The “Living With Your Own Ideas” seminar is focused on the First Person Perspective Design Research. This method is a new way for designers and creators to experiment their own design research on themselves (their body, their environment, theirs interests, theirs tools…)
The method says that we can use our own bodies to explore, to communicate, to research. This allows us to take the design process to another level, to analyze our whole body. When involving the body into the design process you relate the product you design with the experience your body lives. FPP allows us to be situated as actors in environments and generate change. Acknowledging situated and partial knowledge, creating interactive, transversal and open-ended RtD.
Involving yourself into the design process also brings all kinds of knowledge. It’s the responsibility of the designer to entangle it into the process (culture, history, values, identity, ways of working…). At the same time, you also bring all of your skills. Involving yourself is also a political act because you decide what to do and what not to do. The mix makes the design unique for yourself.
FPP allows different temporalities to coexist in the same process. You create past, present and futures with your experience, imagination and memory. You bring your roots, your whole brain.
At the end of the day, the goal of the First Person Perspective is to support affirmative creativity; avoid thinking what is right or wrong, instead analyze how the project/prototype impacts myself while testing it in my everyday life.
Deliverables¶
Create a companion¶
The first deliverable of the seminar consists of a rapid lo-fi prototyping of a personal companion that wants to adress a topic of your live. In my case, i decided to create a “Do You Want a Hug Machine” to represent my relationship with the concept of love. Although my heart is internally a mess and doesn’t know what it wants, a simple gesture as a hug will satisfy it momentarily.
First Person Perspective Design Intervention¶
How does it feel to be out of context in Barcelona? Is Barcelona welcoming to non-local people? I decided to buy 24h Bus Turistic pass in Barcelona and spend a day moving around only with this transport. It has 2 lines of bus, I have a stop next to my house but Iaac is not very well communicated. By blending into the touristic bus i want to observe my own city with other eyes and see how i react when i place myself into an unknown context in my own city.
Bus Turistic from Nuria Valsells i Vilalta on Vimeo.
The experience started from Iaac, Thursday November 2nd, when I embarked on the journey to get to the tourist bus to get back home. It took me 2 hours to get home, I had to stop to change lines and I forced myself to listen to the audio guide the whole way. At first, it felt a bit challenging to adapt to the new mode of transportation since I’m so accustomed to the public one but once i got the the station i just had to buy my tickets, that’s when I felt shy to speak catalan in such an “international” environment, it also felt like the workers who attended me were also surprised.
As the touristic bus journey continued through the streets of Barcelona, I couldn’t help but notice that the people around us were often indifferent, ignoring our presence. This provoked a weird feeling in me, even more when it was mixed with the perspective from above, almost like watching a movie, providing a strange viewpoint for urban sightseeing.
Even though the route I was taking was no different than the one I take everyday, the slower pace of the touristic bus allowed me to discover new restaurants and shops that I had previously overlooked. While I did appreciate this aspect, I found the overall experience a bit boring.
Reflection¶
Things that could have been done better or differently:
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Do an action that better reflects the tourist experience in Barcelona: the Tourist Bus maybe isn’t the most effective way to see Barcelona from a tourist perspective, I’ll keep in mind to explore other ways to pursue this goal.
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Do it more times: it would be interesting to see how the experience changes when it’s repeated more than once.
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Interact more with people: during the action i was completely a sponge, i didn’t intend to interact with anyone or anything actively, i wonder how this would change the experience.
Reflections:
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Separate myself from the action: I initially wanted to change my view of Barcelona and see the city from completely different eyes. While I was on the bus I found myself trying to force another gaze of the city and failing at it, this caused a bit of frustration. What I realized after that, is that I cannot separate who I am in my own actions, so I have to be conscious about it and accept this mixture between the event and my person. I will always be biased, as the more conscious I am about, the more coherent I will be with my actions and results.
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Test before imposing: after the action took place, I realized that if I’d had to design a similar action for someone else, maybe I would’ve made it more complex and effective (collect data in a more precise way, join more than one action in a period of time, involve 3rd parties…) but at the same time, probably, less adequate for the “user” or the person doing it. It made me go slower and easier on the process, be more patient on what is worth discarding and what is worth my attention. I tend to be fast, impatient, effective, resolutive… This method is making me slow down and appreciate what I would probably miss if I designed as I’ve always designed.
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What now?: When I was doing a brainstorm to decide what action I would take, I came up with a pretty long list of possibilities that relate somehow to my design space. Even though for logistic reasons I had to choose one, I still have the list and I plan on doing some of the interventions I thought of.