Week 11: The little work I did during Thanksgiving
What I did this week
Finished reading Boxers by Gene Luen Yang
Started reading Seeing Ghosts by Kat Chow
Read about cultural probes
Worked on writing draft of research plan and timeline
Added more things to my encyclopedia of Chinese New Year rituals
Boxers by Gene Luen Yang
I finished reading Boxers over the Thanksgiving break. I wouldn’t say it was the best at portraying an autoethnography; it’s literally a fictional story where people are possessed by gods. Like I said before, I really liked the way the novel showed a character’s inner thoughts. I will definitely use that in my illustrated autoethnography. In the case of the illustration, I was really inspired by the illustration style and the Chinese elements in the story. I think it really made me think about what “Chinese” things I know how to draw, and it’s really not that much. I will definitely have the practice of drawing those over the winter break while I get ready to make my designs and deliverables.
Seeing Ghosts by Kat Chow
Currently, I am reading Kat Chow’s Seeing Ghosts. Though it’s a book mostly centered around a woman’s grief over the loss of her mother, the story is irrevocably linked to her identity as a Chinese American. In the book, she really reflects and describes how she specifically experiences grief through these cultural lenses. For that reason, I think it’s a really good example of autoethnography. I’m really glad I picked it up. Even from the few chapters I’ve read so far, it’s really got me thinking of my own experiences and how my cultural-upbringing has influenced the way I experience different things.
Read about cultural probes
In preparation for finishing up the methodology section of my research plan, I did some secondary research on cultural probes to gain a better understanding of them. I read the following.
Bella Martin and Bruce Hanington. Universal Methods of Design: 100 Ways to Research Complex Problems, Develop Innovative Ideas, and Design Effective Solutions. Rockport Publishers, 2012.
Gaver, William, et al. “Design: Cultural Probes.” Interactions, vol. 6, Jan. 1999, pp. 21–29. ResearchGate, https://doi.org/10.1145/291224.291235.
Loi, Daria. “Reflective Probes, Primitive Probes and Playful Triggers.” Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference Proceedings, vol. 2007, no. 1, 2007, pp. 232–45. Wiley Online Library, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-8918.2007.tb00079.x.
Despite my vow to never read academic journals again, I think I’ve learned that I can make an expectation for ones that are short and not too descriptive. Like one of those Youtube videos where it’s 3 minutes long, has no prologue, and the creator sounds kind of bored. Lol, I love those. It gets right to the point. Anyways, I didn’t think the readings taught me anything super extraordinary. Rather, it gave me inspirations of different things that I can include in my cultural probe.
From the reading, I am inspired to make the kit as fun as possible. With many of my questions relying on memory and imagination, I want to make drawing and storytelling a key part of my cultural kit. Perhaps even a collage or mapping exercise. One thing I still have to think about is whether I want to make it physical or digital. As I will not be in the U.S. over the winter break, I am leaning towards digital, but also have the option for them to print it out and mail it to my apartment.
Worked on writing the draft of research plan and timeline
I worked on updating and refining my research plan. I added a clearer idea of what I have for my primary research ideas. The sequence that I think will work the best is sending out a survey first that will gather some preliminary information and also ask users if they would like to partake in the cultural probe. Then I will send the probe kits out to the people who said yes and others who have already agreed beforehand that they will fill out the kits (aka. My friends who I have asked for favors). Next, as the kits come in, I’ll schedule follow up interviews with them and ask about their experience and learnings filling out the kits.
The artifact that I created this week was my personal timeline for my thesis. I found this helpful as it gave me a big group of to-do lists and I translated mine to give actual dates on as that helps me more than labels.