Evaluative report

MA Communication Design

Central Saint Martins

                           Evaluative Report

                                               By Bei Ouyang   

It was not easy for me to persist with this topic from the start of Unit 2 till now. However, I achieved much from this project in my research journal, and learnt how to use my own methods to help others. In the following report, I will analyse some unsuccessful works I have done and mention my problems I have encountered and how I overcome them.

In my initial experiments, I have worked mainly on the ‘W’ curve, and many people go through different phases of the process of adjustment going backwards and forwards several times. I looked for multi-media narrative installation associated it with aggregation of perceptions, like tough, smell, etc. I focused on my own emotional changes during ‘the disintegration stage’ of the culture shock to explore this moment back and feature as a main theme of my work at that time. An experiment called ‘A Calendar of Memory’ was designed in February 2012. This attempted to use the haptic method to explore the nostalgic memory of culture shock. With the Chinese government’s family planning policy in operation, the member relationship between members of a family has become closer than before. Hence they are likely to celebrate the traditional festivals and the special anniversaries together with a family. In this project, these special days on the calendar to a Chinese family from June 2011 to February 2012 all connected by black lines. This uncontrollable shape of the lines highlights the peace between the pains. However, its abstract form did not arouse audiences’ universal sympathy.

An issue for my project is communication which depends on verbal language, and this give rise to a associated question: ‘how can I communicate effectively with western people who come from a different background, and achieve empathy?’ I think this was a challenge for me.

According to that I started to reflect on my past works. The most important thing is that the aim of the design works is communication (Patrick, 2011). However, the big problem for me is the language. As the result, I tried to make some works which can communicate visually with very little language. In the other words, the audience could understand and achieve empathy when they participate in the project without my explanations.

This view above has been considered in an installation poster called ‘You’re the leading role’ (fig 1). After that, no progress was made during my research, and it depressed me that my new tutor did not appear to be interested in my project. I believe that I was suffering from the disintegration stage of the culture shock in my life. Therefor, I started to consider whether it was worth continuing with this project or not. However, jess’s appearance helped me through difficulties. She organised a ‘Chinese speaking support group’, and called on all Chinese students in our class to discuss our projects in Chinese after class so that it is easier to know each other’s work, and give specific suggestions. Moreover, some fluent Chinese and English speaking people helped those not confident at presenting in English, and this enabled our English explanation to be logical and plausible. In other words, they helped me state my communication questions more clearly, and I achieved plenty of helpful advice, thought we only met 3 times. The reason is, many people felt confused, that’s why I have been persist with this topic.

I continued to constantly collect data and developed my idea in my work. A point of view I considered was that most of the Europeans have suffered from culture shock which is in surface level aspect, but they never realise that. Culture shock is influenced by two factors: ‘culture surprise’ (Aish, 2012, Interview) and ‘culture shock’; at ground level, experiencing different climates, foods, languages and dresses belong to culture surprise. That is to say, culture surprise is one source of culture shock. So as a practice experiment in which I wanted to do something less literal to communicate, I made a flip-book called ‘The frog in well'. A big frog is on the first page of the book, and it will get smaller and smaller due to flip over the page quickly. Finally, the audience can see the frog in well on the last page of a flip-book. Its subject which is ‘Don’t doubt, you are in it’ was expressed directly.

In addition, another challenge to be mentioned is the communicating with my computer programmer who broke our agreement before the symposium. As a result, I didn’t show this app in my presentation of the symposium, but made a moving image as a substitute to display. I think if we had a better teamwork and clear ground rules, things would have been more efficient and smooth. Beside this, as a graphic designer, I didn’t have any experience of the computer program before, and it was my first time doing the interface design of the app, although I did some researches about that. However, good user experience often comes from practice. I learnt to make every function simply and create a more enjoyable user experience. Furthermore, so far, this app had not been publically tested yet. Therefore, people were invited to try the initial version of the demo app in order to improve the users experience and collect data.

The app is still in progress but the concept, the documentation (including product description, wireframes, flowcharts, interface design) and the initial demo app are done. The possibility of the development of this application is being considered. I love working with concepts like this - from the initial ideas to the final product. From this project, I learnt how to work and communicate with the computer programmer efficiently and persist with my dream. I believe that people may doubt what I say, but they will believe what I do.

I am in contact with the Red Scarf which is the local organisation which provides help and support to Chinese international students in the UK. Its founder Paulian Guo graduated from LCC in 2011. A statement I saw by her on their official website talk about ‘Helping Chinese students study and live better in the UK which was my dream in the past, but now is my job.’ In my view, as a Chinese overseas student, and a graphic designer as well, I should do something to help some of them who experience culture shock in the UK like me, despite the fact that this is unlikely to be my future career.