Intercultural Design - Task 1: Proposal

3/1/2022 - 20/1/2022 / Week 1 - Week 3
Loke Yeanne Tung / 0343853
Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media / Taylor's University
Intercultural Design / Task 1 (30%)

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LECTURES

Lecture 1 - Netnography

Netnography
Requires you to make lots of observations online.

• Key aspect: Technology mediated studies

Ethnography

Requires you to be IN the culture, usually researchers stay in the tribe for a few months/years.

• First-hand experience
  
• Participatory (you learn the things they do)
• Face to face (get to know their personalities)
• On-site (observe environment and ambience)
• Observational (collect data by writing, take photographs etc)

Figure 1. Netnographic approach

Figure 2. Example of inductive/deductive approach

Inductive

• You think you know something about it, so you want to prove it. In order to prove it, you collect information to confirm that.

Deductive

• You don't know much about it, you have many questions and you want to work from ground up. Therefore, much more information are to be collected. From that pile of information that you gathered, you come up with a theoretical statement.

Figure 3. 3 types of data collection

Advantages of Netnography

• High scope of potential valuable data (information overload)
• Can overcome geographical limitations
• Data is naturally-occuring (example: twitter and facebook, real time information)
• Opportunity to discover unexpected findings (wasn't what you thought you knew)
• Data may be available online that wouldn't be unearthed in a face-to-face context
• Contemporary (it's current, it's now)

Disadvantages of Netnography

• Largely empirical and not contextual (not much qualitative context; no experience)
• Researchers may not be familiar with online platforms or choose irrelevant online platforms (some researchers may not be good at it)
• Data collection and analysis may be time-consuming or may have invalid data (can be overwhelming)

Figure 4. Analyzing responses chart

Figure 5. Example of analyzing responses

Lecture 2 - Culture & Us

Figure 6. Painting of (a) "Narcissus" by Caravaggio, (b) "Echo and Narcissus" by John William Waterhouse

Who is Narcissus?

In Greek mythology, he is the son of the river god Cephissus and the nymph Liriope.
He was distinguished for his beauty.
He fell in love with his own reflection in the waters of a spring and pined away (or killed himself)
because of his rejection of the love of the nymph Echo.

Figure 7. Flower "Narcissus"

The flower that bears his name sprang up where he died.

"NARCISSISTIC"

Many of us have knows this word and what we understand language wise:
Having an admiration of oneself (Oxford Languages, 2022).

We may not know of the visual contexts of these images
if we're not exposed to the cultural backgrounds of the Greeks.

The words that we use in a certain context comes with a meaning
and could be tied to a particular culture.

Figure 8. Iceberg as a metaphor #1

Figure 9. Iceberg as a metaphor #2

According to Edward T. Hall (1976), if a culture of a society was the iceberg then there are some aspects visible above the water but there is a larger portion hidden beneath the surface. 

Figure 10. Visible signs that govern the culture

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INSTRUCTIONS

Figure 11. Task 1: Proposal 1st attempt, Week 2 (12/1/2022)

Figure 12. Feedback and meeting notes, Week 2 (12/1/2022)



Figure 13. Task 1: Proposal 2nd attempt, Week 3 (19/1/2022)

Figure 14. Feedback and meeting notes, Week 2 (19/1/2022)

Final Task 1: Proposal

Figure 15. Final Task 1: Proposal Presentation Deck - PDF, Week 3 (21/1/2022)


Figure 16. Final Task 1: Proposal Recorded Presentation - MP4, Week 3 (21/1/2022)

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FEEDBACK

** All feedback written in meeting notes **

Figure 17. Feedback on Task 1: Proposal, Week 4 (24/1/2022)

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REFLECTION

It was interesting learning about netnography and how the word "narcissist" originates from - totally did not know about the Greek mythology and the flower's name. Researching about the culture our group have chosen fascinates me how similar yet different our cultures are despite we are in different cultures. Thanks to Ms Jinchi, my group is able make progress and effectively compile all the required data into the proposal presentation.