Reflection – Dialogue in the dark

Briefly share your experience going through Dialogue in the Dark. What were some of the feelings, thoughts, challenges and insights gained while role playing a blind person?

This is my first time being to a place with 99% darkness. When I first entered the place, there were a lot of things going on my mind such as will I bump into the wall, what happen if I lose the person in front of me and many more. I was overthinking. But after few minutes of walking, I decided to let it go and just rely on whatever I touch and hear. The mindset is an important factor in helping me overcome the fear. 

After going through Dialogue in the Dark, my perspective have been shifted. We, as visual people, rely a lot on our visuals. Example, when we see a place from far, we can already know what is that place and what is happening there. Just with our visuals! But for people like Uncle Gary, who has been blind for years, has to analyse every single thing that he touches, hears and feels. Then he can conclude where he is and what is happening around him.

Hence, I feel that we take the small little things for granted around us. By playing a role of a blind person, it makes me realize that there are more than just visuals in our daily life. 

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

  • Experience of user

By observing or putting ourselves in the user’s shoe, we are able to understand the challenges faced by the user. 

  • Talk, listen and understand the users and people around

People have their own point of view in certain things. By listening and understand to their concern, we can find the root cause of the issue. 

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?

During research, role playing can help to understand the target audience better and hence getting more insights to defining the design challenge / issues that we want to tackle. 

During prototyping, role-playing can be useful to know whether the designs work for the users or not.  

Picture Story – Curating Self Presentation

 

Task 1 – Story

I am always in a search of new books to read, whether it will be in the library, book stores or even movies trailers. Most of the time, I will spend time reading at home or while travelling. But I rarely go to the library as I would rather buy a book than borrowing it. By buying it, I can keep it and collect all the books that I have read over the years. And I would like to have a shelf full with books, just like in the library.

I am someone who have difficulties expressing myself verbally. Maybe I just could not find the exact words to express myself or I just do not open up to people easily, which makes me hard to express myself. Through reading I more than just understand the character, I will always find a little part of myself relating back to the character.

It always astonished me how an author can make me feel; sadness, happiness, excitement, anxiousness. They can also write about a story that reminisces on my youth or perhaps my long lost love. Some authors can write about a world that I have never dreamed of. Possibly a fantasy world. When I am are stuck somewhere, trying to find my path out from the dark clouds, words from authors who have experienced a similar situation, can lead me to the brighter road. This are the reasons why I am always engross in reading.

Task 2 – Story

This room is significant to my two younger sisters and me. To us, it contains most of our memories and secrets between us and the four walls. In that room is where we chat, laugh, quarrel and cry together. There are so many memories build in that room over the pass few years.

Being the eldest sister, I get to take up the most space and sets rule for my younger sisters. As shown in the image, I do most of the things and how it is arranged.

This room shows the different type of personality that each of us has. I am the bookworm and artistic type of person, while my sisters are the sporty and messy type.

Our bedroom is always dim, as we wake up early in the morning for school and reach home in the evening. So we rarely allow light to enter the room. We also keep the lighting dim, as it is easier for us to take naps and rest during the day; making our room relaxing.

Reflection

Throughout the process of this assignment, I have learnt that angle, composition and lighting play a part in creating a mood in an image.

For angle, perspective can be one of it. Like how I want the book shelves in my images to be. Do I want to the one point perspective for book shelf so that my subject can be the main focus? Or do I want the book shelf to be part of the focal point? These are some of the question I ask myself when I am visualizing how I want the image to be.

Secondly, composition, its where I want to put my subject in the image. Do I put it in the middle of the image or put it at the right of the image? For composition, I realize that I tend to use rule of third most of the time while taking random pictures.

Lastly, lighting. In my images, I tend to use lots of flat lighting; maybe it is because I took my images in the library. But in the future, I would like to try using one point lighting to show some dramatic effect.