1. 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?

It is hard to fully understand how the elders suffer from their poor hearing and vision. After experiencing the interactive exhibition I then am able to truly understand the level of difficulty is really challenging for the elders.

One of the most impactful stations was the medicine pills station. I had to put in 4 different types of pills into the respective boxes of the week including the different time period of the days.

Overall the exhibition is interesting and gave a new perspective to me regarding the problems their elderly faces. It really hurts when I really tried the trembling station, where we need to open the door with the key. It was vibrating very badly and the struggle to put the keys into the hole is really difficult.

 

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

Role-play, as a research method, allows us to assign people certain scenarios and roles. Through observing the improvised scenario-specific performances, we can capture insights on people’s emotional, physical and social experience which could inform the design or refinement of mobile solutions in international development.

https://www.ictworks.org/role-play-user-testing-methodology-mobile-applications/#.XjgNaRMzYWo

Making a similar exhibition that is interactive, allow the audience to step into the shoes of the elders this help to the audience to be able to think in their perspective.

Going down to the details of what typical elders will experience, and being able to translate or reenact the situation in order to make the experience feel as close to reality as possible.

The variety of experience is very creative and allow a range of different ways to understand the experience of an elderly.

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?

Allowing each individual to be able to express themselves in their home language. It is easier for people to express themselves in their home language. Always be prepared with a professional translator if you know that your target audience is more comfortable in a language that you may be unfamiliar with.