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Yueqing Dai

Topic 2 Final Reflection

What did you learn?

I  learned how both research and experimentation could help me develop the project, especially for daily practice. Also, the research process is something I’ve got a deep understanding of. In the beginning, I was still confused about what a critical lens is. For now, I know that it can be a point that I want to audience to see through and see what I see.

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

The user’s main experience is not clear, and the instruction is too much. Interestingly, I believe that part of the reason I got this feedback is that due to the time limitation, I didn’t show what my project was well. I agree that the project might need some simplification or a more readable instruction to reduce the study cost. Besides this, the project has a clear experience for my target audience.  However, as a physical project designed for Mandarin speakers, I face difficulties presenting online to non-Mandarin speakers.

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

I would set my audiences differently and include my classmates. I would struggle less to balance the content and focus more on the project. Also, I can get more feedback during discussions.

What was inspiring? What parts?

As I mentioned above, daily practice and janky prototypes are super inspiring.  They pushed me to try different directions and forms and bring out other possibilities under the same topic.

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 easy to start but hard to get helpful information when narrowing it down. Experimentation is hard to find a beginning point, but once I begin to test something, it always gives me a surprise. I would say the experiment is more straightforward for me, and I need more practice in research. I believe doing some long-term projects with deep research required can help me improve my research skill.

Poet Suit Final Post

Presentation and Project:

Link to the slides with pics and more links inside:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1AP0EMOc_WBaUL26TeJAsf2UIhs_z2B3nj3EHAjcMFMs/edit?usp=share_link

Poet Suit is a physical suit that allows the user to become a poet and play with different styles of ancient Chinese poems. The poet suit is divided into four parts: intelligent glasses, Metrical Clothing (Left: Qiyan Tang uniform; Right: Zayan ancient clothing ), Rhythm Lenses, and Poet Instrumen. The question I want to discuss is how to avoid cultural loss while the evolution of language is unstoppable since language is the record of history, but the pronunciation of ancient Chinese has already been lost. This Poet Suit is the solution I bring out, turning writing a poem into entertainment. 

The target audiences are Mandarin speakers and learners with basic knowledge of ancient Chinese poems. The primary experience I want to bring out is interacting with or experiencing the poem. I did not choose to let the audience simply read or listen to a poem because most Mandarin speakers have a terrible memory of reading and memorizing ancient Chinese poems to pass the exam. As a result, I decide to link the poem with the music to create a new experience. However, reading or listening to Chinese poetry can be the future core experience for non-Mandarin speakers.

Trail of Research

Topic choose

I’m pretty sure I want to discuss the policy of deleting the pronunciation of some characters in Mandarin. However, my intention is not clear at the very beginning. I know that I can’t entirely agree with this policy, but I didn’t think deeply enough about why I object to this policy. In the first half of the progress, I was trying to ask my audience to be against this policy together while personally, I hate influencing other people’s opinions. Then I realized I just wanted my audience to see or experience what is happening now and what questions we were facing. I want to let them decide whether this policy is reasonable and whether it would lead to some harmful effects. As a result, my intention changed to discuss the relationship between the development of the language and the heritage of the culture in a restrained way.

Daily Practice

During my one-week daily practice, I choose to try to play 水调歌头（Prelude to Water Melody)  with ~6 different instruments. Prelude to Water Melody is an ancient Chinese poem. It has been set to music, and the song is popular in different generations of China.

By doing so, I realize that music can shorten the distance between people and poetry and make poetry less severe. This discovery led me to make the instrument in the suit.

System map

Link to system maps:  https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVPI0fKpY=/?share_link_id=466501556636

Two maps are made to figure out the history and structure of the ancient Chinese poem. During the research, I also found a website for generating ancient Chinese poems with AI. This website inspired me that although it might be hard for normal people to create poetry, they can finish this task with the help of AI.

Janky Prototypes

Janky prototypes show three potential directions I have. The rhythmic beauty evaluator is trying to question what decides a poem’s ” beauty “: the content, the structure, or the sound. The poetry printer tries to arouse the discussion of whether AI can replace writers in literary creation. The poet suit is more about “who you are” and what makes you a poet. The poetry printer and the poet suit later become parts of my final project.

After finishing three prototypes, I realize I am pessimistic about these questions. However, I still want to make something more positive and convey a positive attitude. I ensured that I wanted to share that people and technology complement each other, not that artificial intelligence/rules limit humans.

User Journey Map and User Testing

The user journey map is the “predecessor” of the instruction book. In the beginning, the map is only for me to reverse my project, but during the user testing, I found some problems.

I invite my parents (55 years old), my friend (25 years old), and my former colleague(34 years old) to the test. The general process of the test is as follows. First, I introduce the project’s background; second, I show them the suit. The next step was a bit different; I played a 1min30s instruction video to my friend but explained how the project worked and what they needed to do to my parents and my former colleague. Then I let them interact with the project and ask questions. 

User testing is not going well. They all start to ask questions like “what should I do now？”, “then?“, “am I right?” and so on. My friends have the fewest questions, but he also says that the video did not help much. As a result, I added an instructions book for the project and asked the audience to finish it before interacting with it.

Also, I realize the importance of figuring out the age range of my target audience, and the project might need some simplification in the future.

Bibliography

Publics and Counterpublics

Game Title: Undertale

Platform: Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux

Genre: 2D role-playing

Developer: Toby Fox

Game Writer/Creative Director/Narrative Designer: Toby Fox

Undertale is a role-playing game with a simple background: a long time ago, Humans and Monsters had a war. After the Humans win, they send the Monsters underground. Many years later, one human came to climb a mountain that no one had ever come back from. As a result, the human fell into the underground and needed to find a way out.

The game has three different Route; Neutral Route (the player kills at least one but not all the monsters), Genocide Route (the player kills all the monsters in the game), and True Pacifist Route (the play doesn’t kill any monster, a Neutral Route has been completed and a Genocide Route has not been completed). Each Route has its own storyline. Though these stories are independent, these three endings can be combined into a complete world outlook.

I want to point out Sans. He is one of the only two characters that use typefaces as their names and have different typefaces in the dialogues. However, he is more unique than this. Developer plants many seeds on him. Sans knows the player has the power of SAVE. He knows how much EXP the player gains. He has the ability to teleport. All these facts make Sans a mysterious character. His presence makes the player want to keep playing the game and even play more than once to discover the truth.

The most decisive Element of Undertale is the relation between the three storylines. On the one hand, unlike other multiple-ending games whose endings are independent, Undertale’s endings support each other. Only when the player finishes all the Routes, they can get the final, true story of the Underground. Each end is still a single story though it will leave some clues about the truth.  On the other hand, the endings can influence each other. This is unusual for a game but is very reasonable in reality. Once the player finishes the Genocide Route and awakes Chara, they cannot reach the True Pacifist Route because Chara has already been awake and will keep trying to destroy the human world. This point makes the game close to the real world and distinguishes Undertale from other multiple-ending role-playing games.

One key element showing up from the game is that the monsters’ said that although the monsters may have muscular bodies, their souls are weak and easily broken; however, the Human has “Determination” in their heart, so the main character can use the SAVE function in the game to restart everything.

Fox said he had no intended target audience for this game, just gamers. This may explain the non-binary nature of the player character, an androgynous figure who can be named at the player’s discretion. According to the Undertale Wikia site, naming your character certain monikers will trigger custom responses from the game and, in one case, even raise the difficulty level. One interesting fact is that Undertale has a unique community, although it is a short indie game. The game creat a public with the world it builds. Although the game ended with the “Determination” mentioned in the game, all the players tried to continue the story outside of the game.

Topic 2 – Janky Prototypes

Having some difficulty visualizing the scansion in a non-digital way.

Janky Prototype

  • rhythmic beauty evaluator
    • reading the poetry with a microphone, the vibrations will deliver through the string and control the pen to draw a line on a row of paper
    • the smoothness of the line display and evaluates the rhythmic beauty of the poetry.

  • poetry printer
    • Insert a poetry style, choose a relater topic, the printer will generate a poetry for you

  • “poet set”
    • “put on the poet suit and equipe all the parts, you will be treated as a poet”
    • A folding fan, a wine gourd, a mandarin(officals’ hat), a  jade pendant, and a fake beard

 

Topic 2 – System maps

Topic:

The deletion of words’ pronunciation reduces the rhythmic beauty of some ancient poems in Chinese and may lead to some cultural loss.

Random thoughts:

  • Based on the research, this topic can be somehow related to feminism since most poets in ancient China were male. There are brilliant but controversial female poets, and I am interested in them, too. I’m a little hesitant to change my intention. Or maybe I can find a way to show both perspectives but mainly focus on one of them.
  • Culture&beauty are too big. I need to find a way to narrow it down to some specific points or concepts.

Questions:

  • What’s the history of ancient Chinese Poetry? How does it evolve based on time? How do the content and the theme change?
  • How has the “beauty” of Chinese poems been decided? (focusing on rhythmic beauty)
    • Future question: who decide this?

Maps:

Link to system maps:  https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVPI0fKpY=/?share_link_id=466501556636

Reference:

Ideas, Arrangements, Effects Response

  • At some point this week, look around you and produce a drawing (or take a picture) of a space that you feel is rich in arrangements. In a style similar to the diagram on page 33, annotate your picture or drawing with the “hard” and “soft” arrangements you can identify.

  • Map an aspect of your topic to the Ideas/Arrangements/Effects framework. Since arrangements are “a rich and frequently overlooked terrain for creating change” (32): can you identify a way you could change your identified arrangement, and how that might reflect a different idea, or have a different effect?
    • Idea: The words’ pronunciation should be simplified.
    • Arrangement: New version of the textbook
    • Effect: The deletion of characters’ pronunciations leads to the loss of culture.
    • Change: Separate texts and articles with uncommon pronunciations to the textbooks for elective courses. Let the students decide whether they want to learn more or not. While reducing stress for beginners, the textbook can still preserve cultural heritage.

Daily Practice – Day 6 Harp

Daily Practice:

Try to play 水调歌头（Prelude to Water Melody)  with ~6 different instruments.

Prelude to Water Melody is an ancient Chinese poem. It has been set to music, and the song is popular in different generations of China

The wiki link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuidiao_Getou

Day 6:  Harp

I don’t have a harp, so I controlled my character in-game to play the harp for today’s practice instead.

The harp is a stringed musical instrument that has a number of individual strings running at an angle to its soundboard; the strings are plucked with the fingers. Harps can be made and played in various ways, standing or sitting and in orchestras or concerts. Its most common form is triangular in shape and made of wood. Some have multiple rows of strings and pedal attachments.

The Record:

Audio Player

Daily Practice – Day 5 Electric Guitar

Daily Practice:

Try to play 水调歌头（Prelude to Water Melody)  with ~6 different instruments.

Prelude to Water Melody is an ancient Chinese poem. It has been set to music, and the song is popular in different generations of China

The wiki link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuidiao_Getou

Day 5: Electric Guitar

An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar, it uses one or more pickups to convert the vibration of its strings into electrical signals, which ultimately are reproduced as sound by loudspeakers.

The Record:

Audio Player

Daily Practice – Day 4 Chiptune

Daily Practice:

Try to play 水调歌头（Prelude to Water Melody)  with ~6 different instruments.

Prelude to Water Melody is an ancient Chinese poem. It has been set to music, and the song is popular in different generations of China

The wiki link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuidiao_Getou

Day 4: Chiptune

Chiptune, also known as chip music or 8-bit music, is a style of synthesized electronic music made using the programmable sound generator (PSG) sound chips or synthesizers in vintage arcade machines, computers and video game consoles.

The Record:

Audio Player

Daily Practice – Day3 Piano

Daily Practice:

Try to play 水调歌头（Prelude to Water Melody)  with ~6 different instruments.

Prelude to Water Melody is an ancient Chinese poem. It has been set to music, and the song is popular in different generations of China

The wiki link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuidiao_Getou

Day 3: Piano

The piano, you know.

The Record:

Audio Player