My Work, Research

Research Article Review: An Existential Phenomenological Examination of Parkour and Free Running

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This article is highly relevant to my choice of topic of outdoor recreational activity for young urban professionals, by providing me with keywords and boundaries to the define the scope of my project. This article is most relevant if my product is about creating a product which intentionally creates fun.

Free running is an emerging lifestyle sport which uses urban architecture as a means for purposive action. It is expressive and acrobatic. Although it is not the sport for everyone (most interpretations consists of a strong body and lots of energy), it fits the requirements that my project requires – for young urban professionals living in urban cities on a micro-adventure at any time, anywhere. Free running contributes to sport as a contested practice of cultural space, public life, and urban community.

Without formal rules and with many diverse styles, it allows a great freedom of interpretation. Adventurers choose their path, the movement, the speed and obstacles and decide on the techniques needed to negotiate obstacles.  It is a means of way-finding.

Space can be reinterpreted in creative ways, which upsets power relations in urban settings. Quoting a participant of the survey:

Urban environments are designed for one of many uses, but the aim is to restrict, direct, and slow movement. I try to practice in areas that restrict and slow me as much as possible – it appeals to my sense of defiance against all those who designed the environment to restrict and control.

An urban space does not have to be physically modified, or drastically modified  to allow new interpretations for adventure seekers. By working with the current urban landscape, new experiences can be created as well.

Perhaps at this point in time I am questioning myself about what I want to achieve from this project – a radical approach to designing an outdoor product to encourage fun, or an incremental approach, to enhance current experiences in urban outdoor activities by first picking out an activity which is could be re-interpreted to bring more joy than before.

For creating radical experiences and products to facilitate this, the article offers insights on what free runners look for in their sport, and the same ideas can be applied for most adventure seekers. It is a minimal requirement for sporting activities to provide a bodily experience and an interactive experience to be wholesome.

Dimensions of the sporting experience by J.L. Clegg and T.M. Butryn
Dimensions of the sporting experience by J.L. Clegg and T.M. Butryn

 

Participants described the sensations of doing parkour or freerunning from a subjective, first-person perspective. Three major themes emerged from participants’ descriptions of bodily sensations: play (general description), movement (specific description) and risk.

 

 

Article Abstract

The purpose of this investigation was to explore the embodied experiences of practitioners of parkour and freerunning. Phenomenological interviews were conducted with 11 (9 male and 2 female) intermediate-to-advanced traceurs (parkour practitioners) ranging from 18 to 33 years old. Specifically, Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological approach, which focuses on bodily perspective, was used to uncover and describe the meaning of these experiences. Following lengthy in-depth phenomenological interviews, two dimensions emerged: bodily experience and interactive experience. Several supporting themes also emerged, including play, movement and risk within the bodily experience dimension, and community, public, and the world within the interactive experience dimension. The findings of this study provide new perspectives of the experiences and meanings associated with participating in parkour and freerunning, and both support and contradict previous academic work on parkour.

Article: an-existential-phenomenological-examination-of-parkour-and-freerunning

My Work, Research

Observations: Urban Wheels Challenge @ Scape

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This is a one-day event. The Urban Wheels Challenge is organized by MediaCorp’s OOH Media, and it is a cycling competition with a challenging course designed to mimic the outdoor terrain in an urban setting.

Building up from last year’s inaugural challenge, this year’s cycling event throwbacks to the basics of mountain biking, engaging and introducing to the public about the sport. In line with this year’s tagline “Make Your Mark”, organiser also aim to encourage first-timers to contribute to the vibrancy for this sport by experiencing the thrills and adrenaline rush of an urban gravity race in the heart of the city.

Organizers were keeping barricades and tidying tents and clearing stocks of free gifts while I watched.

OBSERVATIONS

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The large amount of space taken up by tentages, barricades and entrance structure seems to limit the amount of space needed to navigate the bicycles. Space seems to be the largest issue to encourage more activity. (Nobody used the “obstacle course” set up while I was there.)
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There is a combination of modular tentages, stackable barricades, makeshift structures with wooden pallet and boards stacked together. Endorsements are placed on boards/barricades, flag banners (for sports events).

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Finger skateboard table that caught on as a trend for the younger ones. Also a form of recreational activity held in areas where people meet.

 

 

Assignment Week 5

Week 6 Reading Reflections: Lowgren

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The writer of the article introduces the ideas and processes of designing digital artefacts. He explains the differences between designing for digital artefacts (with interactive design) and normal products, on the natural basis of it, being a spatial and temporal medium. He explored ideas on what makes a good design for digital artefacts.

Design is a process of solving problems, which is an interplay of the designer,  the resources, and the situation. However, there are instances when either of the elements changes and affects the process to bring it to a different direction. When do we know how to stop and approach the problem from another perspective?

Also,  (mentioned in Chapter 1.7) What kind of questions can a designer ask to know that his or her understanding of a problem’s essence and character is valid?

Assignment Week 5, My Work

Week 6 Assignment

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Over a two-day period, do the following:
DAY 1 – create a diary of when, why and what you use your mobile device for. Observe how others are using their mobile devices. What are the most common uses and where do you see these behaviors?

Day in NTU

AM 6.45: My mobile phone woke me up with the sounds of my favourite ringtone, I kept it quiet for another 10 minutes. Woken up from my slumber, I picked my phone lying right next to me and brought it to the bathroom, and proceeded to play Spotify’s Wake Up playlist while I prepare myself for the day.

AM 7.30: The alarm rings again to tell me that I should be leaving the house.

AM 8: I peeped over the shoulders of others using their phones while I prepared myself for presentation with the Notes in my phone.  They were: scrolling through articles, reading social media updates. Most had their headphones plugged in. In all honesty, the sight of people “plugged into” the worlds within the tiny screen looks frightening to me. I was guilty of being one of them. However, I made no notice of that.

AM 8.30: I got a seat after transiting trains, finally, this time, the train direction is towards the suburban areas. Whipping out my laptop, I read some files which were too large to fit into my phone and then proceeded to edit them. Engrossed in my work, I glanced up to notice that most middle-aged men and women were looking out of the windows. Perhaps on my earlier train ride on the northeast line, people were drawn to use their phones because there was no engaging window view. Some were catching Pokémon.

AM 9.30 I touched my phone to receive updates from my messages. When I did so I zoned out into my own world. Guilty of distraction.

PM 12 Brought my phone out for lunch. When I am engaged in talks, I glance occasionally glance at the updates. But  do not reply them.

PM 3 I thought I replied the messages I have received. But I didn’t. So I replied all of them.

PM 4 I used my phone and laptop to buy equipment online from the US and SG warehouses. Mobile phone to contact the suppliers for immediate information, and it was done within 10 minutes.

PM 5 Proceeded with my friend to town to get other materials for a freelance job. Used my phone to check for opening hours of the shop I intended to go to. At the shop, I sent pictures of items to my friends so as to allow them to see and know what I am purchasing.

PM 8 Going home alone, I gave myself into Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Dayre, Spotify, Soundcloud, and online shopping for an outfit for an event.

PM 9 onward: I almost do not touch my phone for other purposes other than to chat with my friends on Whatsapp and FBM. My staple device at home is my laptop. I spend most of my productive hours using my laptop for school assignments and projects, and an occasional dose of video streaming on couchtuner.com and youtube.com.

My mobile devices maximise my productivity. I’m rarely satisfied and constantly crave for more information, I feel distracted. When I felt unmotivated, I look for connection and fresh information to stimulate my mind. Mobile technology provides me with the internet almost all the time to source for information anytime at almost anywhere.

I felt that it is difficult to gauge the most common uses by others because of the habits – I would categorise them into Communication, and Entertainment. I think that people around me use social media on a higher frequency than myself, like when they are waiting for someone, using the washroom, etc. Mostly while waiting, travelling. Like the article by Jan Chipchase, most would gravitate to the search button when they are looking for information that they need in order to be productive at work or school.

 

 

DAY 2 – Do not use your phone, computer or electronic device for 24 hours. Create a diary documenting and describing the difference in your behavior patterns. How did you do the things you would normally do with your phone? What other alternative behaviors did you develop? What else did you notice about the difference in behavior?

Sunday 18 September 2016

10 a.m. to 10 p.m.

To set this day aside for the experiment required much planning and “priming”. The week prior to the set date, many questions came to my mind: How should I spend this day? The natural thing to do would be to plan a day at home, or a trip alone, because of the hassle of meeting someone from another location. I wanted a challenge to do that, hence I planned a day out with a friend who gracefully accepted the challenge and introduced another element of fun – whoever uses the phone first would owe the other a scoop of ice cream at the end of the day. We picked a place that was difficult to navigate, without much care about the consequences (oh no, to preempt this it did not end up well, my good idea to conduct the experiment on this day.) I thought about the what-ifs as well: What if I couldn’t find the coffee place we intended to go to, what if my friend is late and could not let me know because we could not use our mobile devices. Should we limit the interaction we have on that day to people who do not need to use mobile devices as well?

The night before the meeting I checked the directions for the place I was going – Les Patisserie at Upper Thomson Road. I contemplated printing the map out. It was a hassle hence I decided to rely on memory and my below average sense of direction because it is only my third time going to the place.

 

AM 10

The next morning on my journey, it was awkward not to use my phone on public transport. Perhaps, by telling you my chain of thoughts on my journey in the next paragraph it could reveal so much more than I noticed: Firstly, I am quite the scatterbrain with my random thoughts, ideas, and questions, which I fulfilled on other days by recording it in the Notes App, and searching it up on Google. (I calculated the number of times I gravitated to the search bar on the day – at least 15!)  Secondly, the mobile phone felt like an extension of my body. It almost felt like an extension of my body language, and I felt awkward when waiting for transport. What do I do with my hands?

My chain of thoughts: Perhaps I should people watch. Am I staring too much? Perhaps I should look at the floor. What are people thinking of when they stop using their phones? Perhaps I should stand closer to the digital announcement board in the train station. My arms are hanging awkwardly at my sides, I will fold them – wait a minute, that body language is not great – how to I behave normally??

(Upon arrival) I have to double check on the route to Upper Thomson Road and memorize it. Unsure of the way to read maps without a compass, I memorized the relative direction to landmarks. At a junction I asked for directions with a planned excuse so as to not raise eyebrows – my phone ran out of battery power. 

There lies the second challenge. How do I locate my friend? How do I know if somebody has overslept? What if, I have to wait for hours and waste a day in a place like this?!

I had trouble locating the cafe because I did not know how it looked like. I searched for signs but there were none around the row of shophouses, and some shop houses do not display their unit numbers. Somewhere along the way people have taken our access to mobile technology for granted that locations do not design themselves to be navigated WITHOUT mobile phones. It will be great to go to a place which is easy to navigate without mobile devices – that will leave some space in my mind to experience the journey.

For safety reasons and emergencies I brought my mobile phone. I received a call at 11.30PM from my friend, telling me that she has overslept. I sat at a coffee junction to people-watch and pass time for about half an hour while waiting for my friend to reach.

 

PM 12.30

Without the distraction of mobile phones, conversations can be more engaging than usual. I realised that mobile phones are really important visualising tools in a conversation. (For fun’s sake, we repeatedly tricked each other into using the mobile phones placed within line of sight.) If we could use our phones, we would: Facebook stalk the people we are chatting about, find photo references for the things we talk about to make sure that we are on the par with each other, find new topics to make interesting conversations, find places of interest for our next stop, to check on our appearances (for people with braces, to check whether we get food stuck in our teeth with the camera app).

To make up for the loss of visual aid, we – describe our friends’ appearances in detail, list out mutual friends, explain things in detail, instead of saying “you will know why I said this when you see it”. walk aimlessly sometimes, and took long cuts instead of shortcuts while wayfinding.

Occasionally we caught ourselves pushing the home screen of our mobile phones to check on the time when conversations are getting less interesting. Although we were wearing watches. (Score 2:1) So we kept it away.

Aimlessly walking, we found an alley we wanted to explore. I kept it on my mind as a mental picture. I thought about how good it would look on Instagram with filters. What if Instagram and filters do not exist? What I see would be what I get.

Having a time-out from technology gives me a short window to collect my thoughts and feelings at the end of the day. Mobile technology has become a very important part of a conversation to make things interesting (which is something I did not expect at all).

 

PM 5.30

Dinner time. Instead of looking for food promos online, I looked at stands in detail.

 

PM 6.30

Movie time. I had to talk to Suntec’s Cathay to book tickets instead of buying it online.

PM 11.30 

Not knowing what time the last train leaves the station, I rushed to the station to find that it has not left. I was exhausted from walking more than usual, and fell asleep on the train home.

Research

Lower & Upper Pierce Reservoir

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With Peer’s recommendation, I went tripping to Upper and Lower Pierce Reservoir to observe outdoor activities. Peer referred the preferred entrance to an open area as an unmarked road on Google maps. Not being sure of the location, the first road I picked to enter was Old Upper Thomson Road.

Screen Shot 2016-09-15 at 11.37.27 pm

 

Time: 10.30am
Date: 11 September, Sunday

 

Home-maker with daughter and husband

Drove to the secluded location, for the clearer and cleaner park.

Her purpose for being there is to touch ground, have a breather, enjoy the natural elements. She welcomed me to share her bench and exchanged stories about each other’s families. 3 kids in her family, with the eldest at 29, and the youngest at 11. Her older children living metropolitan lives in NY. And her youngest daughter preparing for PSLE. The things she brought there: a handbag and a plastic bag of food and water.  Husband and daughter sat by the beach while the home-maker sat on the bench. Attire – sportswear, hat, sunglasses.

Girl playing with seeds and branches

I saw the girl afar playing frisbee with her parents and younger brother. I took a walk off and back, to find her using the frisbees as plates for the things she collected in the park – “coconut” seeds and a branch with a sharp end. She was using the branch to spear the seeds and removing their shells, then arranging them like she was playing masak. So I asked her what what is that for. She responded that she preparing the nuts for a game; the game she described sounds like marbles played by our parent’s generation. Her parents look as though they were only 10-20 years older than me, hence they fall within the young urban professionals category. But they played the same game as my parents did (they are in their 50s). That game of marbles seems to take a while to go out of time.

Monkey-watchers (in cars)

Harley Davidson bikers (no pictures, I was slower.)

Wedding photographers

Pokemon-catchers

Frisbee-players

Walk-takers

Filipino picnic-ers (who invited me to join them)

Illegal Fishers

 

 

Images:

P1150792 P1150791 P1150790 P1150789 P1150782 P1150795 P1150799 P1150809 P1150819 P1150824 P1150789 P1150827

 

 

 

Assignment Week 5

Week 5 Assignment

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Part I: Reading Reflections

In this reading, Jan Chipchase established a common ground that people are evolving with the digital age and analyzed the reasons  why what we carry has changed over time. He ended the write up with the big idea that our tools and our ideas of survival are constantly evolving. Its is great that tools are evolving – they give us a reason to carry less, to shorten the hassle of packing, a shorter list of things to bring in our pocket and a freer mind. The big question he has ended with was “How do we create tools that really matter?”

Why do we carry what we carry? If I were to take a trip exploring, and had only three items to choose from in my current handbag to bring with me, I would bring my keys, my mobile phone, and a PayPass card, because I would need my keys to exit the house, my PayPass/ATM card so that I do not have to keep changes, and my phone, to keep me occupied and connected, to people and space (through google maps). If I were allowed 4 items, I will love to have a mobile phone power plug. I mean. I will love to know that I can be connected for an infinite amount of time.

The tools we create now have to adhere to a huge set of requirements to allow us to fully utilize our resources. Time is an important resource, hence our ubiquitous devices and almost seamless digital networks allow us to retrieve information faster, at any time and anywhere. It creates the actual value of working faster in order for us to reduce waiting time. The author mentioned that apart from reducing load, we can reduce the risk of losing things, and the cost of replacing things. To allow people to use more while owning less. Digitised information and the internet platform reduces the need to physically carry anything more than a device to retrieve data. But I think many would disagree that this is the way to go – because digitising our information puts us less in control of the data we need and rely on. A mistake made in coding could delete our information at worst case scenario. For example this year, a man named Marco Marsala accidentally deleted his entire company managing more than a thousand clients by a single line of code called “rm -rf”. The basic code will delete everything it is told to. The “rm” tells the computer to remove; the r deletes everything within a given directory; and the f stands for “force”, telling the computer to ignore the usual warnings that come when deleting files. The mistake is simple, and the coder now knows what is wrong, yet it is not in anyone’s power to retrieve data.

I am not sure but I felt that this was similar to the author’s experience with losing his iPhone in a cab – a sense of losing a portion of the connection. He was frustrated not because of losing the phone but the fact that he knows through live data that the phone is around him, but out of his reach. If we rely on data clouds we do not own, it is pretty ironical that we feel a sense of loss at something that is not really ours.

Question: How do we mitigate the sense of loss over things that we think are ours, but actually have no proper control of?

Perhaps I am thinking too grimly. But another point I want to make about “We are what we upload” is – Google’s algorithms feeds us information which is most related to our searches, or contents of our emails etc, much like the example on Amazon mentioned by the author. So when we type in a search word, only a subset of all related things to it on the world wide web will appear to our screens. It is as though a person is placed in the same box and have to breathe in and out the same air which has gone through his or her lungs many times before – information becomes stale, and boring to the user alone. The saying goes that we are what we consume – the same type of information that is fed to us may limit ideas and creativity, and maybe limit the way that people identify themselves.

Question: What kind of tools matter more to us – controlled information or freedom to all information?

Part II

  1. Based on the lecture on Place, Location, and Ubiquitous technology, post an example of a product, service or design concept and post it on OSS.
  2. Look at the examples for part 2 posted by classmates and write a comment, response or question to their post.

Concept: Tactical Sound Garden (2012)

Project Website

Research

Background Research

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Young Urban Professionals and Micro-adventures

Young urban professionals, termed as the yuppies, first appeared in the 1980s, following the gentrification of older neighbourhoods. Aged 20 – 30s, the urban middle-class professionals with an income of $30000 and above are a high preference for old and rejuvenated neighbourhoods with lower rent prices (in the earlier classification). They love the arts and culture, rejects the mainstream, are idealistic, college-educated, are thirsty for success, are extremely conscious of health and wellbeing and loves to be autonomous. In the Singapore context, this phenomenon of the rising socio-economic group came into attention in the gentrified Tiong Bahru Estate. From the 1980s, many terms have surfaced to define similar but different social groups based on their ideologies – the 1960’s Hippies, the Gen Y or the millennials (born around 1980s-2000s), the Yuccies (Young urban creatives, defined in the 2010s). There is no clear definition of age and time, but clearly, they are radical about ideas on lifestyle, politics, freedom, etc. Generally, young urban professionals encompass a broad category of members of a socio-economic group comprising young professional people working in cities (Oxford Dictionary).

The yuppies and their lifestyles could have redefined city spaces. In the 1980s gentrification, some authors have defined the gentrified cities as cities on an urban discourse of loss, in terms of population, commercial spaces, public space and community spirit. Shopping streets were redeveloped to feature an over-representation of food and fashion stores of big global companies, leading to homogenised urban streets. Public spaces are increasingly privatised, regulated, and aestheticised – they are exclusive. The sense of community (or kampung spirit in Singapore) has shrunk.  With less public space planned and allocated for activities, urban professionals are meeting their needs by appropriating spaces. For example, students study at fast food restaurants and cafes because.

The yuppie lifestyle and preference points towards seeking experiences and journeys which offer respite from their everyday lives, that offers them insight into other’s life and culture and return invigorated, refreshed with new perspectives. One way of seeking respite is through tourism: It comes with many purposes, for example, food tourism, adventure tourism, geo tourism, eco-tourism etc; And in a variety of scale: international, between nations and between cities. While the work-centric urban professionals like having adventures, they have monetary and time considerations. Realistically there is always a trade-off between time, money, and a “life”. The more costly or time-consuming these larger scaled these adventures are, the smaller the frequency of going for these trips.

Micro adventure is a term coined by British adventurer, writer Alastair Humphreys. Micro adventure is a state of mind; they are perspective shifting bursts of travel closer to home, for normal people with real lives. Adventurers have a free choice in location, duration and scope, and there is as little barrier as to what it really is. They start with a challenge and goal. In his practice, Alastair’s micro adventures are small local trips that begin and end at his doorstep. Alastair devised a series of 10 challenges and encouraged adventurers to take them up and document them in 4-minute video trips. The term is often loosely used, especially in the Singapore context. Crowdsourced pictures with #microadventures would show that some would call a picnic, or a bike trip a micro adventure, although the challenge to self might not be obvious, other than to reach the desired destination.

In Singapore, there is far less variety of micro-adventures, unlike the foreign counterparts. Singaporeans have a limited natural land, and no access to the varieties of adventures that utilises natural geographic landforms such as water rafting, that requires little or no costs. (“Mock” alternatives such as water rafting and surfing at Sentosa Cove is painfully expensive for the average Singaporean. It loses its novelty after awhile, too.) To learn about the trends of Singaporeans and the activities they engage in, I researched about general leisure activities, which may or may not be perspective shifting, provide a challenge, and may have short term or long term goals.

 Plenty of interest groups on meetup.com.sg and other crowdsourced initiatives based online organise micro adventures like biking to Malaysia, yoga trips, farm visits, free-running challenges and movie screenings and so on. These are often carried out in parks (Marina Barrage) and in urban centres: spaces that are empty, like rooftops or rooftop gardens, spaces connected with mega malls such as Vivocity and Ngee Ann City, on the wide streets of Orchard Road, just to name a few. Outside the city fringe, activities often are held in beach parks, suburban malls, reservoirs, farms, neighbourhood playing courts and private clubs. From my own observation, the most common micro adventure is short distance travelling. One interesting observation is free running, an activity that runners treat buildings and its features as obstacle courses and devise a set of physical routines to fulfil the obstacle. It is a means of appropriating spaces, learning about a place by its nooks and crannies and planning an interesting way of travelling within it.

Some observations/trends/questions:

  1. Appropriation of existing space for leisure activity
  2. Paid-for leisure saves more time than unplanned micro adventures. Time is money for working professionals, the higher the income, professionals are more willing to spend on leisure, (Maslow’s hierarchy) as long as the basic needs are satisfied. Hence the higher income, the higher propensity to spend on recreation.
  3. The value that each person puts in micro adventures depends on perspective – who they are, what their interests and needs are.
  4. 5-9pm (weekends and weekdays) is a short, yet realistic amount of time to commit for micro adventures for working adults in Singapore. A good micro adventure should be able to fit within these 4 hours, inclusive of travelling time. This would mean that activities have to be catered to the evening and night time span.
  5. What can novelty bring?
  6. Is the intention of the micro adventure or the destination more important in a micro adventure located in Singapore?
  7. When interacting with strangers who share a similar interest, the agenda is important, because the quality interaction is important.

 

(Mapping will be uploaded later.)

Research

Proposal

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The middle class to affluent millennial around the world has shown the trend of rising interest towards engaging in a diversified array of leisure activities, especially in the radical and the alternative. With a majority of young urban professionals living in space constraint cities, many alternative indoor activities have seen to meet their interests in diversity, and as the next best solution when it comes to temperamental weather conditions. A huge platter of indoor activities in selection draws attention away from the traditional fun-in-the-sun, which has much to offer for fitness and wellness, in a way that indoor activities cannot provide – the benefits of the natural elements. This project aims to explore the changing expectations in an outdoor lifestyle, the alternatives to indoor recreation and the possibilities of an outdoor-oriented lifestyle, to create a product or a system for young urban professionals who make time for micro adventures on a relatable scale.