Research

Franky Wang

Sep 3, 2018

1. Area of interest

(a)   What domain of interest did you explore for this write-up?

I set up my interest onto the domains of psychology, to make it specific, I’m trying to build up a systematic structure that connects personal mental health and the group incident that ever influenced or might have shown impacts to society and people. It is widely known that all the actions and behaviors are highly affected by psychological characteristics, most of which are implicit. But to some extent, negative mental health can somehow lead to explosive effects, especially when insignificant factors are revealed step by step, that will finally cause big problems.

In terms of content, I would probably focus on service design that undercover the facts on the current status as well as providing possible solutions and treatments towards individual issue from collective characteristics.

(b)   What focused research question guided this exploration?

–        How does the society impact mental health individually from different aspects?

–        In what aspects are mental health problems being revealed by implicit symptoms, is there any extreme examples that caused huge social issues?

–        In terms of “constellation effect”, is there any regular laws that cause influences beyond the mental health problems?

–        What kind of treatments or services has massively been ever used for mental health problems?

2. Research Strategy

How did you generate insights, ideas? Gather information to do this exploration? Briefly describe the nature of the research strategy used.

–        Literature and documentation

The documentation includes presentation videos of psychologists, social scientists, doctors, provides findings and research on the most up-to-date psychological issues. Paper documentation will provide massive content on social impacts from individual mental problems, which could become a combination and prove for the news, movies or other dramatized recourses.

–        Historical News

Figuring out the historical incidents including but not limited to shocking crimes, extreme individual actions, social hotspots, suicide cases, huge influential social crises, etc. Creating a timeline according to the similarities that help to find out the reasons behind, especially to the psychological extent.

–        Systematic and Structural Maps

A clear clue that connects individually to collective behaviors, and generates connections with social impacts is the basic structure of the research. In this process, the key nodes on the trends would be of great advantages for digging into factors and update with secondary questions. The “nodes” could be issues, actions, symptoms, conflicts…etc.

–        Interview and questionnaire

Designing some handouts that test out if the target audiences are being influenced by several symptoms. Also gathering data about their previous treatments on mental health, and find out the potential problems. (like the lack of self-awareness, or incomplete system of current mental treatment…)

3. Exploration & Artifact(s)

Briefly describe your exploration. Include any visual representation of research artifact(s) that help explain your process or document its results.

Since I’ve settled down the domains of interest that mostly addicted to humanities and social psychology, I started with the documentation research. To make it specific, I put in the keywords like mental health, society, psychology, and gathered the resources into several categories. For example, Investigation based on the historical issues that connect social influence and personal mental behaviors.

The standard definition of mental health and other expressions that give clear clues for secondary research.

Examples of positive connections between social service design and mental health treatments that could possibly become insights for the design process.

Extreme symptoms of mental health problems with its causes, upon the current technology and information era. Researching from this direction will be of great advantage to find out more up-to-date issues and better for active solutions.

Articles above are some examples of directions that will help my research, later on, I will switch to more detailed keywords, followed by more clear definitions and directions for the secondary research.

4.Emergent questions

What questions emerged during this exploration?

What could possibly be the most important factor that causes diversity in personal mental health problems?

When talking about some extreme crimes, how does the mental problem generated step by step and finally comes to an explosion? Are there any clues possibly existed for preventing?

What attempts has the government ever made to protect people’s mental health, compared with fanatical construction and military investment?

5. Findings

(a)   What did you learn? About domain-specific content? Or about precedent? Your interests in this domain?

From the research, I gradually find out that people’s awareness of mental health problem varies from groups to groups. Their treatments are also highly dependent on social status, financial affordance or environmental influence. In some places with high crime rates, people are more tend to obtain mental diseases, which would cause more extreme actions, and in return to the negative effects on the local environment. Also for some teenagers, the family would play a huge role in their mental health cultivation, much influential than we expect. But sometimes, parents are less likely to concentrate on their kids’ mental healthiness when compared with study scores, physical health, or talent achievements.

I would probably consist of concentrations to the mental health and put forward on the service design, in order to generate services including (but not limited to) devices, business modes, applications, etc.

(b)   Thesis Ideas generated?

NOT YET, but several directions based on the interests and research are becoming clear gradually. The secondary research might help me to settle down in one area (or branch) that comes from the structural map, and combine with the specific mediums, followed by the target users, the solution to the problems… Every possible idea needs to be briefly tested out before the direction or idea is settled down.

(c) Sources: list primary and/or secondary sources used.

Google Scholar, YouTube, NSU Database, ACM Library

6.Going Forward

(a)   What are new or updated guiding research questions?

Listed on the emergent questions above, while the guiding research questions is still playing their roles on the direction for secondary research.

(b)   Next steps? a deeper dive into sub-topics related to a specific domain of interest or new area of interest study? What domain and its subtopic do you intend to explore next?

I would dig more into the current domain, but will expand the exploration into the service design. When talking about service design, it becomes relatively more direct to people’s social connections and enhances their existing behaviors. So it’s important to get references from the related studies and examples of service design for a better understanding.

(c) Reflect on a conceptual direction (idea/approach?) Express your thoughts about the direction you are taking (or not). Write freely about where your interests, and early T1 research are taking you.

The research of domains is kind of general that consists of so many aspects. Especially when talking about themes of mental and society. So narrowing down the concentration is a must. Combining my own interest and the richness of recourses (so important to reach out resources as easy as possible…), and based on the overall structure consisting the people-society system that I’ve mentioned, the whole research and design process will be highly relied on the system, with a gradual progress on more specific aspects.