I want to take time to record some of the process that I have been through since wk7. Together with the cohort, we finished our mid term presentation, presented and got feedback. The feedback I got was pretty straightforward as my topic is cleared to feedback givers, which is good to me. My first experiment of creating a voice proxy – combining external voice to a realtime face-tracking avatar continues to this point wk9 just before the Show-A-Thing Feedback Session. Although I didn’t fully realize this first experiment however I did four interviews (musician: bass player and vocal artist. public speech coach and sound engineer) in order to get a little bit more clear about how to proceed and make connection to the possible vision of voice-acceptance.

I received feedback in midterm presentation about appreciation toward the communication design of my topic/ presentation, which is always good to hear as I always enjoy using simple graphic to convey abstract thought process and meaning (If I understand). I have also gotten feedback from Parisa for willing to test out my experiment (thank you!). Ellen supported me with a project about simple avatar design, which helps to connect to my first experiment in terms of user journey. I found the example simple but also full of complexity on the back-end.

Most recently, I especially found Andrew’s feedback on thinking of metaphor helpful from his feedback email, . I believe this will help me to structure my idea and my form as well as bringing meaning to my audience.  He mentioned that my approach of framing the final form with the two experiments relate to my question and “The idea that our voices end up literally co-creating the result of your thesis is quite beautiful. It lets your form and function come together, to literally use the form to help us all embrace our own voices.” I took it as a compliment to a process-driven approach as a part of my thesis. Through experiment and process, co-creating with user/ interviewees is something that I always look forward to try. I guess, less prescribe, and more learning.

Here is a link to midterm presentation slides Po-Wen lowres thesis 2021