To begin working on our individual research project, we quickly brainstormed design and research topics that we were interested in. These fell under the following categories:
- social problems or phenomenon you’ve found compelling (recent, longstanding)
- personal challenges or passions people in your life are engaged with (elders, roommates, peers)
- new ideas, terms or questions that have come your way in DT/NYC
- fantasy tool/ toy /experience you wish you could invent and why
We individually listed as many as we could in a span of 10 minutes and placed them under the corresponding category as a class to review.
After this, we began zoned in our proposed research ideas:
- lonely grandparents whose kids and grandkids live in other countries.
- indoor plants in NYC
We identified and broke down our research idea into: subject | person | dynamic | info flows | parameters | feedback systems. We then worked on mapping our ideas under the following lenses:
- problem
- speculative
- critical
- expressive.
For this exercise, I worked with the lonely grandparents topic, after which I realised that it overlapped with my classmates’ inquiries who were working on lonely empty-nesters and lonely old people in the Upper East Side of New York City.
This helped me settle on my final research inquiry: Plants as a coping mechanism. We were divided into affinity groups based on our topics.
Along with Rama Deshpande and Emily Gary, who were working on animal adoption and loneliness respectively, we further brainstormed through mind maps to refine our ideas.
We were asked to frame our inquiry as specific as possible, so from:
Plants as a coping mechanism/ companion while orienting/adjusting to a new environment (indoor plants | new home | NYC)
the final research inquiry is now:
How can houseplants serve as a companion for new-comers in a New York City apartment?