1) Imagine that your project was successful- what would that mean to you? How do you define success in this project? Will your project be successful if more than 10 people interact with it or view it? Will it be successful if they walk out from the interaction thinking about their choices and how they negatively or positively impact the world? Will it be successful if they compliment it and want to take a poster home? Will it be successful if they want to follow up and find out more about the project? Will it be successful if you submit it for a competition or exhibition and it gets accepted? Will it be successful if it makes people think twice before they enter an inaccessible restroom or waste food or pay for transit or smoke? What else?
Think carefully about what will it mean for the project to succeed and how you will measure this success. Will you ask your audience to fill out a small survey at the end of your interaction, ask them to discuss the different images and their impact or ask them for their email and then send them a bunch of follow up questions? Will you keep track of the number and diversity of people you interacted with and their different modes of perception? Can you list 2 to 3 questions that you can include in such a survey?
SUCCESS:
I personally think that is really hard to define success, since it can mean different things depending on the person or the project they are working on and the results they are expecting.
In this project I think the way I want to measure if it was or not successful is if by the end, when I am presenting my final art piece, to see how the class reacts and maybe ask them what they think and what would they have done differently or what can be improved. Maybe I can do this by doing a survey with 2 or 3 Qs they can quickly answer.
But also something that I have into account is that I think this project would be successful if by the end I am happy with what I created. I think that is the most important point as well as see if my idea of language barrier was well presented in the piece.
Also when the final art piece is done, I want to scan it or photograph it and put it around the dorms so people who were involved in the data gathering process of the project could now see what they contribute to. I think that would be something important for participants to see since they would be seeing that they do have an impact and influence on others even if they don’t realize it at first.
SURVEY Qs:
- What did you like about my project? Would you change anything about it?
- Do you think it transmits the idea of language barrier to a certain extent?
- Do you personally felt connected with the project?
2) Second round of testing with strangers (3 pictures, with descriptions)
So this is one of the pages I took back from my dorm floor which contained various responses. I was hoping for more symbols and hopefully in the next couple of ones I will get them.
3) Answers to customized questions about strategy
Form – Now that you have an interesting idea about what kind of information you want to collect, what form can the platform that is used to collect people’s thoughts and opinions take? Posters and social media are the easiest things to think of but as you have observed, not very effective in meeting your goals. I suggest that you experiment with some creative and experimental ideas that go beyond providing or collecting visual information- can you put up mini oral-history or story sharing booths (can just be tables ad chairs) where you ask key questions or ask folks to play a word game or respond to key prompts or some easy questions and record their reactions (through your phone as a recording device)? You can also use your visual poster activity as a part of these and figure out spaces to set these up on different days in a week in order to figure out what was the most successful. The way you set up this table can also help bring people to answer questions- perhaps a big sign or a live painting wall where you are painting out symbols from what folks have answered? Maybe you can invite people to converse in different languages, even if they don’t understand each other and try to guess what the other person said? Can you crumple words from different languages that include a visual clue, leave them around and ask students to guess what it can be? This can also connect to your idea of building a language learning interface along the wall. If you want to use the medium of film, how can you get people to interact with the film at different points and answer some questions in order to move forward- remember that for students hurrying from one place to another, this might be a challenging ask. Always try to think about what would work as you as a student yourself.
Questions, Activities and Facilitating Interactions- Mock up a series of different activities that use creative ways to ask questions and try to ask the same question in many different ways. Think about a hook- instead of asking a difficult question about language barriers- can you break it down for your audience and have a big visual sign that asks- “What would you do if you couldn’t always say exactly what you wanted to?” OR “What unites us more than it separates us?” OR “2 minute language lessons” . Think about how the activities that you design can facilitate this conversation and how you will explain your bigger idea to them. At this point, I do not want to hear about these ideas, but actually see them in the form of prototypes and see pictures from testing sessions and lessons learnt that influenced your design.
Location – As earlier mentioned, try out various different places in the school (As you have already begun doing) to figure out where they most strategic places are to talk about language, communication, immigration and diversity? Is it the lobby of International Student Services where students often wait? Can you speak to the Student Health Services to be able to park yourself for some time in their waiting area? The Social Justice Hub? Instead of waiting for students to come to you, can you go to them at various places and ask them for 5 minutes to go through different interactive activities with you and have a conversation?
Engagement – Why are people not reading or sketching in the way that you expect to, at the moment? Think about this thoroughly and use your insights to adapt your prototypes. Do you need to include examples? Is your activity too passive and not exciting enough to draw people towards it? Is it not disruptive in the sense that students have to reckon with it even if they would rather ignore it? Use the above questions to really make your piece engaging and oriented towards the audience whose minds you hope to impact through the project.
Happenings – What is the difference between just pinning a poster up and leaving as opposed to creating some kind of interactions or happenings that foster a sense of unity and bring people together to work on various activities that not just collect ideas, but also connect and give the opportunity to exchange knowledge and educate one another?