Dialogue with Time Reflection

Briefly share your experience going through Dialogue with Time. What were some of the feelings, thoughts, challenges, and insights gained while role-playing an elderly person? (150 words)

Dialogue with Time was an insightful experience learning facts about aging from the various rooms and real-life experiences as shared by the senior guides. We were given some factual information about how we age, and what are the things we can do now as young people to prepare to age happily and to also help others if we can.

I was able to empathise more especially in the Yellow Room where we had the chance to experience some of the physical limitations that the elderly face in their daily lives.

The limitations that we had to experience in the yellow room were not foreign to us. We hear it from our grandparents, we see it from the aunties and uncles at the market, we see it from TV shows and movies. Seeing these challenges everywhere in our daily lives somehow made me feel that these problems seem normal. However, through role-playing, it helped me to experience the pain and challenges which I have never thought would be so difficult and frustrating. Furthermore, we only had to experience one limitation at the time. Some elderly have to experience most of it at the same time! 

Drawing on your experience, can you think and list some of the benefits inherent in the design research technique of role-playing? (150 words)

Participants are able to put themselves in the person’s shoes through role-playing, which in my opinion, gets the message across clearer and more effective than just reading about it or watching a video. The interactive element of it helps the participant to experience it which can invoke emotions or thoughts that they will remember instead of watching a video and forgetting about it days later.

Can you think of some contexts where role-playing can be useful to help discover and define design challenges or contribute to the development of design solutions? (150 words)

I think role-playing can be useful in uncovering insights to improve the user’s understanding as well as to sieve out some problems which were not uncovered when going through it on theory. One example is during the development of new products or services during the prototyping stage.

Published by

Leave a Reply