Talking it Out

So after another week in capstone, I don’t have too much to report on from a standpoint of grabbing more materials, but I was able to talk at great length with many different people about what I would like to do for my capstone, which has helped me to get to move forward, even though I felt like I lost a lot of steam this past week.

Results from Talking

My peers in the HCI/d program were extremely helpful in helping me to look at different aspects and far reaching-ness of the totality of cosplay and self-expression. I was suggested to maybe look at how people dress their avatars and try to make sense of how that maps to real life clothing. Some suggested to just take a look at what people are wearing and see what aspects of their personality are found in their expression of their clothes. I was also asked to see how the DIY culture can be found in cosplay and maybe discover something in that realm. I plan also looking into exemplars like the gap app for the iphone which help one to see what they will dress like with certain clothes on.

A repeating concept that was suggested was to look into how people form their own identities through their clothing and their actions, and I’ll be definitely looking into that. I was also referred to more websites and groups online who practice modding their own clothes, and I would like to see how those actions help to create whom the person is. I’ll also take a look at spyn, and the history of quilting as well to see how the story is embedded within each of our clothes. I was also reminded that some cosplayers like to have many different costumes, and to see why and how people choose the different costumes they choose to make and wear.

BUT…

This past week I also got in touch with some of my friends who are actually cosplayers. They are extremely good people and are quite willing to talk to me about cosplaying. So, I starting talking to them about how it was to dress in costume and then go to cons, and I found out something extremely interesting: while in costume, the cosplayer feels the need to be sociable, but is quite intimidated when around certain spectators at the con. This is the start I needed, and now feel the need to start researching and designing!

Protip: talking to actual people whom you care for in your design will help you substantially.

So, a Mini Elevator Pitch

Here’s a crack at it:

Cosplayers are a group of people who like to dress up in their favorite gaming and anime characters’ costumes. One of the places they go to express their love of anime and gaming is cons (conventions). While there, they feel the need to be sociable to the spectators and other participants, but there is a reluctance to talk and reach out to other people at the con. What I would like to do for my capstone is to take a look at the process of cosplay, the con life, and to see if there is a way to help vocalize this love to others who share the love of anime and gaming.

In order to do this, I plan on researching the self, costuming, the process of cosplay, the con life, and how the con changes the “game”. In order to do this, I plan on taking an ethnomethodological approach to studying the cosplayer and the con, by utilizing ethnographic observations, contextual inquiries, participatory design, focus groups, and experience sampling. Ideally, I would like to be able to go to a con to try out my tool to help vocalize the cosplayer, but if not, I’ll at least try and get a holistic view of their world through interviews and such.

I would like to attempt to make my submission eligible for the student research competition at CHI, hoping to represent the human-centeredness and practical approaches our program has to offer.

Wrapping Up Week 1

And so week 1 of the fall semester in IU HCI/d has come to a close. It was quite refreshing to get back to the grind of school again, and to also be able to interact with the people in my classes again. I’m taking 3 classes here: Capstone (a year-long personal project), Interaction Culture (I’ll also be blogging on the class’s blog as well), and HCI Theory. It should be a wonderful semester full of learning and growth. I’m also an Assistant Instructor for an introductory programming class in Python, and that should be interesting as well. I’ve already gotten most of the assignments done, which will be helpful when I get fully fledged into the design space of capstone.

Interaction Culture Snapshot

So what is it that we do in this class? Well, this week, although it was an opening, we first learned how to start thinking about critique and knowing how cultural and critical theory can help a designer not only grow, but be able to critique a design from a much higher-level of thinking. This will help to generate further insights about design, what the designer is designing, and how what is being design affects the system it is in. One example: we took a look at fancy (i.e. awesome) shoes, and we able to critique them. Here’s the shoe I was handed (along with a preview of what I’ll talk about next):





















Some of the thoughts I had about these shoes were: platform, 80s-style, thick shoelaces, amalgamation, combo of shiny and non shiny, entertaining, conversation starter, tread on the bottom goes onto the toes, hippy-like flowers, could see this as a DDR shoe, could be part of a set with a purse/satchel/manpurse, looks homemade, rich – the person hasa lot of money + DIY behaviors, the traditional tounge of a sneaker, some ankle supprt – the medium-high top, comfortable, yet warm, I wanna say disco, tight fit, not too many holes. Please feel free to add your two cents as well.

The goal of this exercise was to not only help open our eyes for critiquing purposes, but to also think the unthought and push this into the unknown.

HCI Theory Wrapup

During our first class with Erik, we were presented with the idea that this course will help us to find the metaphorical furniture of our brains and expose ourselves to these pieces. And by furniture, he means our own design ideas and biases. To first describe this, we did a quick exercise on how we work with other people: first, the goal is to draw a face with a friend, but each of you can only draw one line at a time. The face on the left (above) was the result of this process. The second face (right), was a result of taking the exact opposite approach in our heads to this design problem. It was pretty fun, and most of the class kept laughing while doing it. This was a fun exercise, which will help me keep liking the class, especially due to the high amount of reading involved. Images made with help of Ben

Capstone Fun

So, capstone finally started for our class, and I still have some questions as to how to approach or even get started with this giant project. So I am going to go and talk to some of my professors on this topic. It should be win – after all, the group I want to know more about and design for are cosplayers: these are the people who show their fandom by dressing up as their favorite anime and video game characters. There are few words to describe how excited I am about getting to know about this group, so I’ll save that for a future post. These will be under the category of “cosplay” here in the blog, so keep coming back for more.

Have fun! (^^)V

Stay Tuned!

So today we had a chance to work in groups dealing with creating paper prototypes of a “new” addition to Facebook, called video. When we are done creating our prototype, take a look here soon!

Also, if you would like to add your two cents about what should be in our prototype of Facebook NewTeeVee, please feel free to post.

Smiles!

What You’ll Find Here

So I’d like to say thanks for somehow finding my website. As an upcoming designer, you’ll find personal reflections and commentary about current designs out there. You’ll also find much commentary about video games and the experiences I have had with them. There’ll also be commentary about design and interactions I have had with video games and movies as well. There’ll also be some references to my own life, and hopefully some humor, pictures, and movies up here as well.

Please enjoy, and refer to others.