The research aspect of the assignment was rough. So far in the semester, I buffed up my research skills and writing skills. Often in my older projects, most of my research consists of inefficiently documented primary research. I’m beginning to understand the importance of thorough research because it creates a strong base for a project to be built on. The benefit of how I researched before allowed me to find personable stories and make more unique solutions. However, It put a lot more communication strain because I couldn’t bring out a common theory or structured research that I discovered so I had to take a lot longer to explain how I ended up creating a basis for my designs. It also brought up questions if my observations held as a stepping stone. In my own opinion, if I could structure research into a comprehensive material then I would be able to communicate my thoughts more effectively.
One of the setbacks I’ve had with my research was when I pivoted my topic. This hindered the quality of my research since I felt like I had incomplete pieces of each aspect I focused on. I had research on Athletes, habit building and visualization. This became a problem since I was not familiar with researching. I ended up needing a lot of thinking time just to organize how each of these sub topics could relate to each other in the research book. If I had to redo this part, I would’ve put all my time to researching and then re-writing the contents that didn’t make sense together.
The project deadlines finished so I could spend time researching only about visualization and create a final artifact with a proper basis of research. I will be focusing on finding overarching themes such as ‘mental imagery takes practice’ and ‘visualization affects emotion’. These broader scopes would make it easier for me to explain my project and act as information I want people to learn.
I chose to pursue my artifact as a virtual reality experience that affects emotion. I wasn’t as familiar with installations even though I wanted to explore it. In the digital space, I’m unfamiliar with coding, but I want to pursue a digital oriented career. Initially, I wanted to use athletes as a basis for people to connect to. After talking to people about my topic, I found out that people connect to mental imagery and visualization more when its initially explained as a meditation technique.
🙂