Our task was to create a gift to someone else just by looking at the other person’s 10 chosen photos from their own social media.
The post below shows my process in gathering information from observation, making careful assumptions, leading to the final decision on what I want to gift
To start with, these were part of the photos that Sean chose to show himself on his instagram.
From seeing Sean’s photos, my first thought was “Wow. He really has character”. Most of his photos that were actually of him, were very distinct, showing his character and attitude. And another thing I noticed was that he was making art.
Based off of that, I took an emotional? psychological? senses? approach. I wanted to make something that showed a bit of effort, to give him the thought that someone else is going to make art for him in return for his art “giving”. The visual approach I made was to give him a pencil drawn self portrait because I think they show the most purest? most natural form.
I don’t have a picture of the portrait drawing I did of Sean.
COUNTERGIFT
Getting a gift to Jade wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Well it was the same with getting Sean a present but overall this experience of gifting someone with something that we made wasn’t easy. The observations had to be direct, which was her overall attitude, things around her in class.
Jade gave me a paper model of a camera which I thought was very interesting because that’s something I’ve never expected from someone. I saw the effort and thought into it and especially coming from someone I don’t know well, I was happy.
Countergift Strategy
Giving her a gift was hard in a sense that I didn’t know what to begin my inference with.
All I knew from seeing her in class, and from her introductions in class was that she was super into fitness. One thing I noticed everytime class started was that she had such healthy drinks or packed food from home. So I decided to give something that my mom always packs me when I’m about to miss breakfast as a replacement for a meal.
Misugaru is the term, it’s a very Korean drink that goes with hot milk or hot water. It’s a fine powdered 7-10 different kinds of grain and is considered the most healthiest lattes in Korea. Older people more often likes it because it has a very healthy grainy taste.
I didn’t know how I’d pack it for her so I found a ziplock bag and put quite a lot in there. I’m not sure if she’d even try it because of the weird packaging but i feel like she’ll get a sense of what it is when she tastes it once.
For me and probably for every korean kid who grew up with Korean parents will relate to a glass of misugaru moms make. And knowing that Jade is part Korean, I thought it would be a new experience for her.
I didn’t know how I’d pack it for her so I found a ziplock bag and put quite a lot in there. I’m not sure if she’d even try it because of the weird packaging but i feel like she’ll get a sense of what it is when she tastes it once.