Week 1 – Interested Topics

Even though I don’t have a specific problem in mind to solve yet, there are a few things that have always interested me.

1. How People Interact with Each Other in Cyberspace

You can always find some nasty comments in the comment section on whichever digital platform that you go to nowadays. This has always fascinates me – how can people say such terrible things so easily and irresponsibly to another person. I wonder if it’s because cyberspace has taken away the physical bodies, so it’s easy for people to forget that their words can have real effects on the recipient offline.

I wanted to explore this topic and see if there’s a way to solve or at least reduce this type of toxic interaction. Since I’m interested in UX design, I’ve always thought whatever the final product that I come up with would be some sort of plugin that can be applied. I know that I’m jumping to conclusion before even exploring the problem space, but my idea has always been something that can be applied across platforms.

During class we did this approach exploration exercise, and since this interest topic fell more under experiences, turns out the suggested approach is critical art/media/design.

My first reaction was “ugh I don’t want to do interactive exhibition, I want to be a problem solver and not an artist.” But the more I think about it, the more open I become towards the idea. First of all, this topic that I’m interested in is still so early on in the development process, I shouldn’t let what I think the final product should be dictate my research process. Secondly, the goal for lots of exhibition or experience design and artworks is to raise awareness and encourage reflection, which also has the potential of influencing human behaviour.

As I was thinking about this, Kat shared a video with our Motion Capture class. Watching this performance reminds me of a section in Lisa Nakamura’s book discussing how race, gender, and culture of a person have a way to reveal themselves even without the physical body in cyberspace. I thought this is another interesting aspect to explore more when researching about human interaction with each other in digital space.

2. Cultural Conflicts and Identity

I have quite a few friends who are either Asian Americans or with multiracial backgrounds. And many of them have told me that identity is still a big topic that they constantly think about or even battle with.

For me Media Theory class I wrote my final paper on the topic of Asian Americans’ identity tourism behaviour on Instagram. I’m still interested in exploring the topic of how cultural conflicts influences one’s identity because identity has such immense influence on a person’s life.