Week 6 Consultation

This week's consultation discussion was centred around my RPO progress. With the completion of two reading pillars, my RPO was left with just one. I gained a deeper understanding of the subject through the readings.

For instance, there are two different kinds of attention: hyper and deep attention. While deep attention is an excellent tool for tackling complicated problems presented in a single media, it comes at the expense of environmental awareness and response flexibility. Although hyper attention is excellent in quickly changing environments, it has the drawback of making one impatient when focused for extended periods of time on inanimate objects, such as a challenging mathematics problem.

Additionally, I learned that there are two different kinds of brain strain: cognitive load and perceptual load. The quantity of sensory data that a job or scenario exposes to a particular sensory system is referred to as the perceived load. A low perceptual load activity could be anything as simple as reading a book in a quiet area with little sensory input. When mental effort and cognitive resources are needed to complete a task, this is referred to as cognitive load or working memory.

I would like to draw a few inferences from what I have read:

In order for an interactive installation to be successful, we would need to address and permit users' hyper-awareness. It would also be good to have a scenario with low cognitive load and high perceptual load in order to maintain the participants' attention. It is indicated in the research articles that there is a correlation between increasing cognitive load and an increase in irrelevant distractions.

As Andreas reviewed my research proposal, he made some insightful comments. He suggested that I add more literature evaluations that are relevant to Asia in my study and reviews. Experience and "wants" vary greatly, just as the Asian and Western markets are very different from one another. I had the opportunity to see the project pitch briefs and proposal decks that the global team presented for their project pitch firsthand during my internship, and I was able to compare them to the Asian market. The disparity between what'sells' and what they prefer is significant. Things that are presented in Asia tend to be flashier and must be "new" or "never done before" due to the region's generally faster pace; in contrast, wellness is prioritised in other parts of the world.

There were also several tips that mentioned my writing style, even if my RPO is still being worked on. Some of the sentences lacked information, while others were far too long. The writing style should be such that I have to presume that readers have no idea what I am writing about, and at this point, my writing style is not clear enough. I should write for the audience, not for myself, to put it simply. As usual, I had trouble putting my ideas into words. I want to improve my writing over time so that it will be more succinct and clear when I submit it to the RPO.

Concerning the section where I am expected to write about the methodology I would use for my study, there was another difficulty that I had to take care of. I understood that prototyping would be the main methodology and that critical journaling would be the tool, but I wasn't sure how to explain it further. We discussed several alternate methods for conducting my study as well as several samples of RPO from prior years. The two approaches that are most pertinent to my research, in my opinion, are research through design and the double diamond. But as of right now, I think I'm leaning more in the direction of the research through design approach.

We presented our earlier experiments with our students during the Thursday session. We were also given post-it notes to give our peers feedback on their experiments and a piece of paper on which to write a brief explanation of our project.

These were some of the feedbacks collated:

Q:  What works well in your opinion at this stage of
     research and experiments present?
A:  The Red light, The button

Q:  What stands out to you in particular?
A:  The materiality stands out, its crafted very well and
     has a very linear input-output process.

Q:  What works not so well yet? Any constructive
   suggestions that you can share to improve ideas,
   concept, execution?
A:  How does it relate to your idea of attention span.
     Its heavy, might break?

Q:  Where do you see a need for improvement?
A:  I hope your rocket can blast off in the near future. I like
     the mix media of different texture and interactive
     features. Maybe can have more like sound, etc.

Q:  How is the making informed by the research?
A:  The stimulants that affect attention span are well
     reflected in the making.

Conclusion

This leads me to various conclusions that I could draw. Even though the technology performed as expected, it was just an input-output system with little to no backend. Although the craft and material are unique, they are insufficient for further interaction, and some people expected more stimuli like movement, sound, etc. The relationship to "attention span" is also unclear. However, there were some things to learn from the experience.

First, increased communication. Actually, to be completely honest, my experiment consists of only a button and an LED, with the button serving as the light's source. In my opinion, a surprise element could be an option introduced in future experiments to potentially maintain participants' interest in the subject. Secondly, my experiment actually has no purpose or connection. Even if my experience has been random, I thought it would have been better to include a link to something related to my subject. Although the project doesn't always have to do with attention span, it should test audiences' attention spans. Finally, construction and size. I was prompted to consider the scale and location of my work in relation to the audience by this experiment. I don't know much about it at the moment, but I felt it was an essential point to consider going forward.