workshop 1 - diaries and mapping
We designed a 2 part workshop directed at our target group being students who have recently moved to London. Some of the themes for this workshop were rhythms and routine analysis, exploring hierarchies of temporal signatures, and adding a three-dimensional approach to the stories.
The first part of this workshop was a diary exercise where we provided our participants a document containing an introduction on tempos and pace of life, and a brief explanation of their tasks followed by pages of a diary. We asked them to track 5 days focusing on cultural differences they encounter and how are they adjusting to this new pace of life. The second part of the workshop was asking them to plot the cultural differences, routine, or behaviour changes on a matrix having a scale with the x-axis being high to low priority and the y-axis being positive to negative feelings. The second part of the workshop was designed so that Ana and I could see which tempos are higher and lower in priority and the kinds of feelings they invoke, in order for us to be able to make a decision of which tempos we would be working with for the final outcome.
Part 1 - Breifing and diary. Part 2 - Plotting on the matrix
CHALLENGES​
One of the biggest challenges was getting participants who would be willing to keep a diary to track their behaviours for 5 entire days. We had planned this workshop to have 5 participants but due to the 5-day period of activity, we finally were able to only get 2 participants to volunteer.
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PARTICIPANT ONE
She is a student from Shanghai who came to London in September 2021 for her master's course in service design.
Participant one's diary exercise
For the second part, we asked our participant to plot the tempos based on priority and feelings on our matrix, as seen below.
Max priority, max positive feelings: Listening and speaking skills have improved
Max priority, Low negative feelings: The systems in place for buying from supermarkets
Max priority, max negative feelings: Food, and finding Chinese food
Max priority, low negative feelings: Increased usage of Instagram
WORKSHOP FINDINGS
After having gone through our participants diary entries, we highlighted parts (as seen in yellow) that reflected her changing pace of life and temporal differences. Some of our observations were as follows:
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Mostly indoors after 5 pm
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Has a rest around 12.30 pm
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On the lookout for things that are similar to her culture and constantly trying to replicate that in London
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Keen on understanding and learning about British culture and ways of doing things
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Makes constant mental notes about the weather, especially when its rainy
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Used clock time to track her days
Our next step was trying to identify where the gaps were. The analysis of her diary entries got us to find these gaps in:
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Food goes back to Chinese supermarkets/restaurants always trying to find the same quality/characteristics as back home
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Weather makes comparison with a sunny place
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Social media
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Language
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The systems like that in a supermarket
PARTICIPANT TWO
She is a student from Turkey who came to London in August 2021 for her master's course in UX design.
Participant two's diary exercise
High priority, High positive feelings: People respecting personal space
Max priority, max negative feelings: TWeather affecting sleeping patterns
Low priority, High positive feelings: Change of transport
Low priority, low negative feelings: Missing the beach life
WORKSHOP FINDINGS
After having gone through our participant's diary entries, we highlighted parts (as seen in yellow) that reflected her changing pace of life and temporal differences. Some of our observations were as follows:
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Food routine is changed
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Sleeping routine is changed
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Lonely
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Leisure activities different from home due to the city
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Not afraid to explore
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Likes feeling of things being new
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London is BUSY
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Climate is a very influencing factor - light hours, clouds
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Finds the public transport systems better than her home
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Sees a difference in people’s behaviour/attitude
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Tracks her daily life as rhythms
Our next step was trying to identify where the gaps were. The analysis of her diary entries got us to find these gaps in:
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Food, eating times and type of food and company
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weather doesn't enjoy the difference in light hours and temperatures
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the city - she lives near the sea in turkey
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The difference in the normal means of transportation - public transport in London
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Notices differences in the sound of the city
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lack of what to do and where to go and friends
PROTOTYPING
Having gathered a great deal of information from the workshop, our next step was trying to design this information. We started the prototyping stage, where we decided to look at data received from the second participant. We wanted to focus on the influence of the weather in terms of sunlight and clouds on her pace of life. For the prototype, we created a comparison of her home town being Izmir, Turkey to London. The sticks represented nature time, showing daytime and nighttime. There was also a scale that ran along the length of the sticks ranging from low to high. Using this we mapped her rhythm with the information from the matrix and this showed a distinct change between the two cities.
Making of the prototype
Having a prototype to represent our workshop, concept and ideas was successful. We still had a few decisions to make of deciding whether we were designing a tool or a method to identify these temporal gaps. The physical representation was something that Ana and I had created with the data received, however for the next step we were advised to get more participants and ask them to create these representations instead. Narrowing down and focusing on a few temporal signatures would lead to more understanding and clarity for us to design and organise as well.