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Yuqian Ma

Odor – Reflections

What did you learn?

The “critical” and “experience” 🙂

The tools and terms such as “system thinking”, “IAE”, “public and counter public” are really useful to structure a project.

And there’s a mind-shifting moment, which is the best part I learned in this class: What is an experience.

I realized that I misunderstood the “experience” after a meeting with Monika. It should not be preachy. Instead, let the audience use or feel what you want to deliver.

Then I reviewed the whole class and gained new understandings of why we have to learn these thinking and terms. I haven’t fully applied them. But they will help me in the future.

 

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

The most important point to think about is “What can users do after they feel empathy?”

So far my project is raising the problem only. It would be better to show some directions.

However, I do know what we can suggest exactly. This is more of a personal choice after a person realizes there is a symptom called olfactory dysfunction.

 

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

It might be better to start from a question, or something I want to improve.

The topic odor was like a form direction instead of a point. Although the question related to odors can be the critical point, I find myself easily attracted to forms.  (I admit that I do enjoy building something).

 

What was inspiring? What parts?

The moment I understood the term “experience”. A good experience is like if your work is going to exhibit in an area uses another language, the audience can still understand.

This leads me to think more about what artworks can do.

 

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

There was a shifting while the initial idea, odors are ignored is unchanged.

 

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

Both are not easy or hard. I’m just not used to this research and experimentation. It’s not uncommon for me to start from a problem, search information, find solutions, try some implements, and decide the way to solve it. But they are from engineering angle. From an artwork angle, the biggest difference is who I want to talk to is “the public”, or audience. It is different from a machine. It is also different from a product user.

So I have to figure out the system, the stakeholder. Know more of the situation currently. Learn more about what others care about. Imagine what form they may resonate. And the most important question, what we can do better in life.

 

Odor – Final Post

Intention

Give people a sense of smell dysfunction (anosmia, parosmia) in order to make them empathic to these patients and raise more concerns about olfactory dysfunction.

Project

The project form is an olfactory testing machine placed on a table in the restaurant waiting area. Before customers have dinner, they may be curious and have a try.

The machine releases one odor per question to ask the user to distinguish. While the final odor is a mixed scent to give the user a feeling of parosmia.

See pictures on slides.

Presentation

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1QTVK3f1mKVR-lGbc4eWIAcR8Cx7RnNRSaf92d0hiOK0/edit?usp=sharing

Trail of Research

System Map

https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVPGOhG4A=/?moveToWidget=3458764539780840152&cot=14

Interview

Doctor Lu is using olfactory testing and MRI in his study. I interviewed him to get more understanding of odor and olfactory.

Olfactory dysfunction is related to neurodegenerative diseases. There are many ways to assess this kind of disease in general: Scale, PET/MRI, Structural MRI and olfactory testing. The scale is too subjective. PET/MRI has radiation. Structural MRI is too late to show the disease. In comparison, the olfactory testing is a better choice.

Specifically, the olfactory testing has these advantages: The machine is relatively small and portable. Which makes it suitable for mass screening. Besides, olfactory dysfunction is an early objective indicator of diseases. Because the olfactory cortex is connected to older, subconscious portions of the brain.

Talking about the relationship between olfactory and Covid-19, Dr. Lu was not surprised by the symptom. As he said, the virus might invade the brain and cause frontal lobe damage. Flu also has similar symptoms. However, he agreed that olfactory symptoms are easy to ignore. Since it is not as noticeable as visual or auditory. This is one of the reasons why he included olfaction in his study.

Daily Practice and Prototype

Daily practice

https://itp.nyu.edu/lowres/critex-monika/2022/10/20/daily-practice-day-2/

https://itp.nyu.edu/lowres/critex-monika/2022/10/21/daily-practice-day-3/

https://itp.nyu.edu/lowres/critex-monika/2022/10/22/daily-practice-day-4/

https://itp.nyu.edu/lowres/critex-monika/2022/10/24/daily-practice-day-4-3/

https://itp.nyu.edu/lowres/critex-monika/2022/10/25/daily-practice-day-6/

Prototypes

Form Decision

The most challenging part  was deciding on the form. For the experience “smell distortion”, the basic form is releasing the odor which is not expected.

But it is so weird to release the wrong odor directly to the user. So I had been trying to think of a more natural form for days.

As the link shows: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVPGOhG4A=/?moveToWidget=3458764539274013960&cot=14

I came up with 15 forms in the end. Some were fleeting thoughts. Some seemed rational, so I made prototypes to do user testing.

The form No.3, a simple “fruit matrix”. Same fruits a line with different scents. This is the simplest one of these forms. I thought it was clear too. But after the user testing, it was still confusing.

The form No.13, a box with a screen, a camera and odor vent. The idea was “mixing” the use’s expression with an orange scent. I did a user testing of this prototype. It seemed like they were too complex. An iteration was keeping only two expressions.

Then I did another user testing with my friend, who is a UX/UI designer. The testing itself was fair. After that, we had a chat. Because she’s a designer, she was interested in this class. I gave her some project examples. And she gave me an idea: If it was not clear to represent olfactory dysfunction, I could try to make the user feel that smelling is easy. Sounds like a contrasting. But the form was still hard to decide. We continued our chat on some other topics. Then, I got an inspiration suddenly. Why not make it just an olfactory test and put a turning point at the end? This makes it easy for users to go along the process and give the user the feeling of odor dysfunction.

The interesting thing is that it is the original form I took. Except the last question. It’s like a cycle and I return to the start point. However, I learned a lot during the process.

Others

There is an art form called “Olfactory Art”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olfactory_art

Bibliography

  1. Wang, Yuting, and Ziqing Li. “Living with Smell Dysfunction: A Multi-sensory VR Experience.” In ACM SIGGRAPH 2022 Immersive Pavilion, pp. 1-2. 2022.
  2. Moein, Shima T., Seyed MohammadReza Hashemian, Babak Mansourafshar, Ali Khorram‐Tousi, Payam Tabarsi, and Richard L. Doty. “Smell dysfunction: a biomarker for COVID‐19.” In International forum of allergy & rhinology, vol. 10, no. 8, pp. 944-950. 2020.
  3. Cattaneo, Camilla, Ella Pagliarini, Sara Paola Mambrini, Elena Tortorici, Roberto Mené, Camilla Torlasco, Elisa Perger, Gianfranco Parati, and Simona Bertoli. “Changes in smell and taste perception related to COVID-19 infection: a case–control study.” Scientific reports 12, no. 1 (2022): 1-11.
  4. Neumann, Franziska, Vitus Oberhauser, and Jürgen Kornmeier. “How odor cues help to optimize learning during sleep in a real life-setting.” Scientific reports 10, no. 1 (2020): 1-8.
  5. Parker, Jane K., Lisa Methven, Robert Pellegrino, Barry C. Smith, Simon Gane, and Christine E. Kelly. “Emerging pattern of post-COVID-19 parosmia and its effect on food perception.” Foods 11, no. 7 (2022): 967.
  6. Burges Watson, Duika L., Miglena Campbell, Claire Hopkins, Barry Smith, Chris Kelly, and Vincent Deary. “Altered smell and taste: Anosmia, parosmia and the impact of long Covid-19.” PLoS One 16, no. 9 (2021): e0256998.
  7. Smeets, Monique AM, Maria G. Veldhuizen, Sara Galle, Juul Gouweloos, Anne-Marie JA de Haan, Jesse Vernooij, Floris Visscher, and Jan HA Kroeze. “Sense of smell disorder and health-related quality of life.” Rehabilitation psychology 54, no. 4 (2009): 404.
  8. Hsieh, Julien W., Andreas Keller, Michele Wong, Rong-San Jiang, and Leslie B. Vosshall. “SMELL-S and SMELL-R: olfactory tests not influenced by odor-specific insensitivity or prior olfactory experience.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114, no. 43 (2017): 11275-11284.
  9. Woods, Stephen C. “The eating paradox: how we tolerate food.” Psychological review 98, no. 4 (1991): 488.
  10. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/23986-parosmia

Publics and Counterpublics

Try to identify: Who created it? For whom? With what materials and metaphors? With what intention? What impact? On whom? How? Did the artist identify a public or create a counterpublic?

Project: https://www.zeelab.xyz/Ancient-Family-Tree-Am-I-a-Descendant-of-a-Royal-Family

The project was created by artist Fan Xiang and engineer Shunshan Zhu. They began this project with the question: “Am I a descendant of an ancient royal family?” For those who are also curious about their ancestor. Then they collected the data to build a family tree. There are two versions, a 3D-printed tree and the tree on the screen. And the metaphor is the tree, obviously. The intention is to raise curious about people’s family origins. That gives a strong sense of connection to family and history. Because the user can search their family names to see the branch. The public is who has a Chinese family name. And the counterpublic is who not has.

There’s another angle to see the tree according to an author’s speech. The traditional family tree recorded only men. But how can we born without women? So there is another intention: Review the history and social we documented. We should remember women. From this angle, a public is men, or who have the right to record the history. And the counterpublic is women, or who has no right to record the history.

Ideas, Arrangements, Effects Response

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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: Goods’ odors should be adapted to cultural customs.

Arrangements: Merchants offer different items for different regions.

Effects: Different regions have different perfume/food flavors.

Change: Offer the same goods in different regions. It might promote cultural communication if we can smell odors from other regions. On the other hand, it might inhibit local culture if merchants only produce goods that are in high demand.

 

Daily Practice – Day 6

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Today’s odor: Coffee.

I don’t know how to represent coffee’s smell. So I drew a coffee bean.

Daily Practice – Day 5

Today’s odor is hairy crab (big sluice crab, 大闸蟹). But the odor in my mind is not the crab itself. Hairy crabs are usually steamed. The taste is delicious, but the smell is not obvious. The odor comes more from green onion, ginger, or yellow wine drunk with it.

So maybe even the same food has different smell memories in different cultures?

 

They are simply steamed and served with ginger tea or yellow wine.

Daily Practice – Day 4

Today’s odor: Mandarin Orange. More specifically, the peel.

I have a small habit: squeezing mandarin orange peel to smell the odor. The smell is refreshing.

Daily Practice – Day 3

Today’s odor comes from chestnut. I just bought a pack.

In autumn and winter, the taste of sugar-roasted chestnuts (糖炒栗子) is always mouth-watering. You’d better wait for the hot chestnuts just out of the wok. They exude a so sweet smell you cannot avoid.

The process of roasting is unique. It mixes chestnuts and sand.

But my drawing today is not ideal. 😂

It’s hard to draw a simple object.

 

Assignment 2 Topic

Topic:

Cultural bias in (olfactory) assessment.

Inspiration:

Once I was taking olfactory testing for research. The machine released an odor for each question and asked the user to choose the odor’s image. But some odors in this test were not common in China because it was imported from the US.

Possible angles:

For the assessment and machine inventors, they might take the cultural difference in mind after viewing the work.

For other people, they might notice the uniqueness of the odor and think more about the odor, culture, and life.