October 2022

• What did you learn?

First of all, I definitely learned more about the concept of plantation and coffee plantation situations around the world. I learned about ecological influences and economical impacts of plantations during the research. Secondly, this thinking process was a new experience for me. The methods of making system maps, thinking about metaphor, analyzing critical lens and audience were very helpful for me to get a better idea of what I would do for my project. The last but not the least, I learned more about doing research and utilizing research results, not to mention the coding techniques I learned to make my interactive map.

• What feedback did you receive? Any reflections on critique itself?

The feedbacks I received were focused on user instructions and critical information. I agree that I should add more guides for the users to understand the functions on the webpage. What’s more, I could also add more critical information to stress the problems more strongly. Other than showing the facts and data I researched, I could also illustrate more on how these numbers reflect certain underlying social problem, and maybe providing possible solutions.

• What might you do differently in terms of process or content?

For the process of this project, I might put more effort on researching social problems relating to plantations and possible solutions. As for the content, I might focus on other kinds of plantations like cotton, sugar cane, etc. I might also go an entirely different track, researching on planation in space. This is an idea I received in my interview.

• What was inspiring? What parts?

The process of this project was very inspiring. This is the first time I researched on something non-scientific, and to create an artistic form. Making concept maps and thinking about metaphor was inspiring, these processes help me cleared and organized my thoughts. And by studying my own though process, I was able to come to a more detailed goal and applicable goal.

• Revisit the assignment prompts: how did your project relate to the original prompts, in terms of critical lens, audience, tone, etc…

I think my project related to most of the points in the prompt. The final product is usable, audiences are able to gain more information on plantation. And by showing the facts of social problem, it inspires audiences to think more about social issues of local plantations. I kind of switched between metaphors when developing this project. Although in the end I chose the metaphor of iceberg, it was not very clearly suggested in the interactive map. I think that’s what I need to think more in later projects.

• How did you balance research and experimentation? Which is easier for you? How can you focus more on the areas that you shy away from

Personally, it’s easier for me to do research. I like to dig into different topics and learn more about things. When it comes to representing my thought, it was pretty hard for me to think of metaphors and design artistic forms. That’s the part I need to improve in later projects. And I think starting from learning from other projects and doing more user research and user testing would be helpful.

What did you learn?

I learn about the research process. It sounded obvious in the beginning, but having done some academic research in the past, I thought it would be the same. However, it was an interesting creative experience to start with a broad and vague topic “puppet” and learned to narrow it down to a topic like “puppet leadership,” it was not as simple and straightforward as I originally imagined.

What feedback did you receive? Any reflections on critique itself?

In terms of technicality, I have advised the shots can be from more diverse angles. There are also suggestions on making it slower, and easier to understand, as well as cutting to the point a little bit faster in the beginning as it was unclear at first. There are some suggestions of things to fix that were actually a part of my intentional plan, and so while I appreciate the feedback, I’m not sure I will want to change it. For instance, some of the information pass by fast, and sometimes the audience has to rely on the subtitles to understand things, it was sort of my experience as an ESL speaker, as well as my experience with infomercial growing up. Sometimes, things go by so fast, you have to wait and rewatch the whole thing again and again to get it. So, while it might irritate the audience a little, I think I would choose to keep the pace and the intention of using subtitles. Reflection of the critique itself, it wasn’t very lively, to be honest, I wish to hear a more direct critical voice from my classmates.

What might you do differently in terms of process or content?

I agree there can be more diversity in the shots I shoot, it can make the call to action a lot stronger. I also agree to take more risks in terms of the ideas or statements I’m trying to deliver. How exactly does it mean to take more risk, I’m not sure, but I agree that’s what I need to do more of.

What was inspiring? What parts?

I think the whole brainstorming process as well as all the turns I’ve taken before arriving at the final end result. The process of this project really taught me the ability to expand my horizons and not narrow to what I assumed and already know. Also that any topic can be a potentially interesting topic.

Revisit the assignment prompts: how did your project relate to the original prompts, in terms of critical lens, audience, tone, etc…
How did you balance research and experimentation? Which is easier for you? How can you focus more on the areas that you shy away from

I read the prompts several times carefully during the project of making the final video, so I would hope the result alines with the expectations pretty closely. It was hard to balance between research and experimentation for sure, very hard to not get into a “lecturing” mode with the project, especially after learning so much about it during the research stage. Learning to narrow down during the end of the research stage is definitely the hard part for me, and the experimentation part was fun. I was new to video editing, so was excited to try out all the things I just learned recently. In order to focus more on the areas that I shy away from, I think more intense and concrete research in a specific area is required. I don’t feel comfortable delivering information on things that I’m not completely confident of being somewhat of an expert on. Aside from the information, I also tend to shy away from things that might offend certain people. I often ended up making things way too vanilla as I sometimes get over-considerate of being politically correct. Sometimes, it’s all just in my head, and while logically I know art should be a safe space to make provocative things, rationally I often feel hesitate to do it. Hopefully, I can just learn to do it more and more over time.

• What did you learn?

From this assignment, I not only learned a lot about my topic “bark”, I also learned a lot about looking at an arbitrary topic critically. I was given the chance to be creative with a broad topic, and decide what exactly I wanted to tell the audience. Another thing I learned is that visual metaphors can be very powerful, sometimes more powerful than words or speech. It can grab an audience much more quickly than other mediums. It is also important to grab the audience’s attention so that they are more willing to look at the details of your work and ponder more deeply on it.

• What feedback did you receive? Any reflections on critique itself?

Some feedback I received was to be more risk-taking with my work. While my guide was easily assessable and understood, I could have add more interesting ways of critiquing my topic by pushing the boundaries of the form itself. I agree with the feedback, as I also felt the piece was lacking in something after I had submitted it.

• What might you do differently in terms of process or content?

In reference to the previous question, something I would do differently is to push the boundaries of the form. Some ideas I had, but was unable to fully realize or implement was to add some handwritten notes to the information packet, to make the guide feel more chaotic and unfinished. I would’ve also increased the length of the “side effects” section to add more emphasis to how dramatic pharmaceutical companies can be.

• What was inspiring? What parts?

When I was first brainstorming about my topic, I was pretty lost and did not know which direction to take. Initially, I was going to create an infographic chart about how bark is made, but I was not very excited about implementing that. When I decided to take the direction of the medicinal use of bark, I thought of a prescription bottle I had lying around the house. When I imagined the prescription bottle, then I was able to envision how I wanted my final project to look. Envision the prescription bottle really helped inspire the rest of my idea.

• Revisit the assignment prompts: how did your project relate to the original prompts, in terms of critical lens, audience, tone, etc…

The project ended up relating a lot to the original prompts. It was a physical, usable item which had a clear visual message. I wanted the project to be assessable to a general audience, which I think it successfully achieved since the prescription bottle is easily recognizable. It’s intention was to educate the audience about cinnamon, and its tone is meant to be more satirical.

• How did you balance research and experimentation? Which is easier for you? How can you focus more on the areas that you shy away from

I think experimentation was easier than research for me. I found that after I did light research about my topic, I already had a vision for the final project, and I needed to do research to back up to support it. Most of my research happened while I was writing the information packet, because I wanted to get accurate information about cinnamon.

What did you learn? What was inspiring?

I haven’t studied biology in a long time, and I think I had forgotten how broad and complex a topic it is. One biological subtopic that I am now realizing I spent a lot of time thinking about during this project, without realizing I was doing it, was Taxonomy. My understanding of taxonomy is the idea of categorizing livings into species, genes, family, etc. And Wikipedia defines Taxonomy as “the scientific study of naming, defining (circumscribing) and classifying groups of biological organisms based on shared characteristics.”

With colonial organisms, for me this meant trying to determine what is a colonial organism and what is not a colonial organism. I found it quite difficult to answer this question definitively, which was frustrating and really confusing. I’m realizing now that I think I was taking taxonomy for granted, and just accepting it as an inherit truth. This is just how things are – animals are either colonial organisms or not. But through this research, and specifically in talking to Margaret Smith, I’m understanding a bit more deeply that biology, including taxonomy is a human construct. It is an area of study, and a framework that humans have put on natural phenomenon in order to understand it better. And as such, there’s a lot we don’t know and what we do know is changing either because we’re learning more, or because things are actually change through processes like evolution!

I feel like there is a very deep, existential idea in all of this that would be interesting to investigate further, but am struggling to put into words what it is. 

What feedback did you receive? Any reflections on critique itself? What might you do differently in terms of process or content?

A lot of the feedback that I received was focused on the user experience, and the ability for my audience to clearly understand the ideas I was trying to present. Once I had a general idea of what I wanted the visuals to look like, I ended up becoming absorbed in making it look how I wanted, and lost sight of foregrounding my message to some extent.

I think part of my getting so absorbed in the aesthetics stems from my own insecurities in my drawing abilities, in addition to originally choosing a form that was brand new (a popup book). I ran into a tension where I had an image in a my head that I wanted to create, and iterate on, but didn’t feel like I had the skills to implement that image. And so once I found a way to implement something that was close to what was in my head, it was exciting, and a bit difficult to pull myself away from. I wonder if the project would have been stronger overall, if I had spent less time on the visuals, and more time telling the story. One specific piece of feedback I got was to add some simple narration or text to the images to help explain what is going on. This is really helpful to reflect on, and to realize that though the visual representation is pretty close to what I was envisioning, this may not be how others interpret the work. Perhaps having a rough sketch with some well thought out text would have been a better representation of the ideas.

Another piece of feedback I received was to include a call to action. From a high level, if I’m saying that the diversity in individal functions in a colonial organism is good, what is the audience supposed to gain from this? From a process perspective, I wonder if it would have been helpful for me to have answered this question before I even started creating the visual images. As I went through the process, I am wondering if I was focused on what I was able to accomplish visually, and tailoring my message to something feasible. It would be interesting to instead try to focus on the message, audience, critical lens a bit more, even if the end result is visually not as polished.

How did you balance research and experimentation? Which is easier for you? How can you focus more on the areas that you shy away from?

Since the topic was pretty unknown to me at first, I think that I spent a lot of my research time trying to understand what it was. I think I felt pressure to portray something with scientific accuracy, and felt overwhelmed about not being able to know everything about it. I think this is why I originally focused so much on trying to put “colonial organisms” in a box, and did find myself in a rabbit hole of taxonomy. At some point, I think I made the decision to focus on polymorphism because it felt understandable and I could kind of envision a way to explain that idea in metaphor. However, by making that decision I think I almost stopped exploring new things because I already decided that polymorphism was going to be the main focus. One one hand, with the time restrictions, that seems to make sense. But on the other hand, I feel like I may have almost skewed my research habits in order to find more evidence for my initial point of view. It would be cool with my next topic to allow for a bit more mental freedom in the beginning, and not form an opinion or focus quite so quickly. Maybe something more fleshed out and interesting could come from that approach.

I would also have loved to do some more exploration with physically making and my form. Like I mentioned above, I think that I was worried about my ability to create a popup book like I had envisioned. I again think that I experienced a bit of overwhelm about taking on another new, and complex thing, and didn’t spend as much time exploring and playing with the form, or the narrative style as I would have liked. I like how my project turned out, and I think that working in Figma was a great was to get my ideas out into the world, but, I wonder if in the future it would be helpful create a prototype in Figma, or on paper, earlier in the process.

I also realized later in the process that using a Figjam to gather ideas, research, resources, etc was a really good tool for brainstorming for me. I enjoyed being able to use a flexible, non-linear way to document my findings in a document where I could also create a diagram, or put a random picture or sticky note was really helpful. It feels like a way to capture organized chaos, which I very much identify with and am eager to try to use this technique for the next project.

What did you learn?
This is the first time I have done such deep critical thinking. I think it has helped me profoundly. First, critical thinking helps me to be innovative in work and life. 1. Critical thinking helps me find problems and discuss the way and method of my life in another way. 2. Critical thinking helps me come up with multiple solutions, and divergent thinking, such as brainstorming. 3. Critical thinking helps me make changes and adjustments properly.

What feedback did you receive? Any reflections on the critique itself?

I am very grateful to my classmates for their suggestions to my guide, and I have made appropriate revisions according to their suggestions. I think my problem is that I am usually a little shy. If I can discuss it with them after class before the final, my progress will be much faster, and the final output will definitely be better. In the next project, I will supervise myself not to be shy and communicate more with my classmates.

What might you do differently in terms of process or content?
I think I have two main problems.
The first is that views are too fragmented. I listed more than a dozen cosmetic-related metaphors, each of which is covered but not in depth. I should delve into one or two of the best points in more detail.
Second, I have a big problem with typography. My plan was to make a magazine, but it really didn’t look like a magazine. I hope to improve my ability to design layouts in the future

What was inspiring? What parts?

I think metaphors are very inspiring. It helps us summarize many seemingly different but essentially the same things, saving us the time to analyze and judge each thing. Metaphors help us to compare, generalize, and summarize so that we can understand the world more systematically.

Revisit the assignment prompts: how did your project relate to the original prompts, in terms of critical lens, audience, tone, etc…
I think my work is based on the original book and the basic requirements of the homework. But in the next stage, I hope to achieve a bolder breakthrough

How did you balance research and experimentation? Which is easier for you? How can you focus more on the areas that you shy away from

Research is a gradual process, but not always smooth. Maybe after a certain smooth period, thinking will suddenly fall into some kind of bottleneck. It may also be enlightened after experiencing a bottleneck. I think the ups and downs, the good and the bad in the research process are its charms.

In contrast, with the theoretical basis provided by the research as the support, the practice will be much smoother.