Two possible brief plots:

1. Topic: Mystery, Stories, Puzzle

Inspiration: Gone home

Purpose: A collection of stories/memories that aims to be immersive that hopefully triggers player’s own emotions/memories. 

You walk around rooms that unlock to different environments and in each you can pick up objects, photos, letters, notes or diaries or talk to people that feeds you about some of their memories/stories. At the same time you can also reflect back or be reminded of your own personal ones. Some memories that you pick up are touching, some sad, some happy, some funny, some infuriating, some are even mysterious.  Audio in the background would make the game more immersive.  

note:

-could be based on a real life story or fiction or a mix. 

-could take on a fantasy/dreamy theme as well?

-Could be about discovering self(character) or about other characters. 

 

2.Topic: Mental health, Daily life

Inspiration: Life is strange

Purpose: To help one in understanding more about a person who deals with this mental issue by putting the players in their shoes  that could hopefully raise awareness regarding this issue as well. 

You have a mental disability and because of that you’re trying to escape from it while at the same time trying to live a normal life. You find yourself in your room and can look around to find out more about what type of life you’re leading. Essentially, you live a typical life where you go to school, you have friends, you do some part-time work. However, your disability sometimes gets in the way and overwhelms you, preventing you from being “normal”.  Your goal is to find out what is causing your disability and overcome it. While living your daily life routine, you meet the people in your life as well as new people. The people that you keep close or distant, your actions and how you decide to deal with issues in life may result in them either aiding you or harming you. You might also face dilemmas. You eventually find out the truth and how to deal with your mental disability.

note:

-could be based on a real life story or fiction or a mix. 

-possible adventure theme?

 

 

The first key point that jumped out at me was the term, rapid cultural calibration. It was defined to not only put yourself in the local’s mindset but also to put the local phenomena into global perspectives, both implicitly and explicitly. There are many ways to carry out rapid cultural calibration and it doesn’t necessarily have to be carried out for a long periods of time. It is also interesting how he states that the optimum time to observe a city is around the crack of dawn and the hours that follow since the start of the day tends to be more consistent and more regimented than a day’s end.

This is interesting as I personally did undergo observations for a project, both during the earlier hours and during the much later hours of a day. I did notice that at a day’s start, it was indeed much more consistent such as usual vendors busily setting up their stalls before customers come, to the elderly doing their morning exercise like “tai chi”, to the gradual increase of people from all age groups rushing to work or school as time passes.

I agree that everything in a particular environment, no matter now big or small is crucial in piecing the big picture together. Also, it is not just what we see visually that we have to take in but also to be immersed with our other senses – smell, sounds, touch, tastes. I also note how it is important to strike a balance so that one is not overstimulated. He also stated there has to be a need to find the right balance between the formal and informal data collection, and having the right mental and physical space to process it, to set apart good design research and a great design research. Personally, I find that finding the balance is difficult and it might be helpful to take a step back to first figure out and truly understanding about oneself before embarking on the research journey.

 

Question 1: To understand the people with disabilities, instead of just observing them or interviewing, would it be more helpful to literally role-play living like them in their environment?

Question 2: In the case if the locals have been living the wrong way and we decide to design something that guides them towards the right or better way, but they are adamant to change. Is this still counted as bad design and not understanding the consumers if it is to change something for the better when they do not want to but need to?