This is the start of my project blog for Introflect, my senior thesis design project. For my first post, I’ll just post a little somethin’ somethin’ about why I’m working on the project. But first, I’ll explain what it is.
Introflect will be an interactive personal experience to explore the people’s interactions with a mirror. Instead of just looking at themselves, I want people to look within themselves. The project builds on the concepts of self-awareness and empathy to build a narrative for the user to go through. What that narrative will be exactly, I’m still figuring out. I’ll be using a mirror to both literally and metaphorically be the interface for my project.
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Here are some updates about how far I’ve gone now and what my timeline looks like for the next two months.
The past month, I’ve been gathering research about how people interact with mirrors and what do they think about their own interactions with a mirror. After sending out a quick 5 minute survey, I was able to get some quick insights about people’s daily usage with a mirror.
All this was important for me to note because it meant a couple things.
- People aren’t as narcissistic as I thought they were. Instead of looking at the mirror almost everytime possible, they usually look at it (more intensely) during certain times.
- People believe they have a good understanding about their emotions (perhaps this is something to test with my project).
- 13% of people do not always recognize themselves in the mirror
That last tidbit was very interesting as I thought most people would usually know that the person in the mirror is them. The concept of mirror self-misidentification is a phenomena that is really interesting to me, just because I’ve always been interested in the concept of ‘alternate dimensions’ and other worlds. Most likely, my project will play with this insight and tie it into the narrative as I develop it more.
I was also able to pull some quotes from people and have chosen a select few that I’ll put below. The prompted question was “How do you feel when you see your own reflection”? and here were a few of those responses:
Apart from the person feeling like Kanye, there was some good bits in there about self-awareness and their personal representation of their image versus what they think other believe of them. I will be working with all of this to help me move forward.
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And now for the timeline + updates:
Project timeline:
March 19th — Start project blog (done!)
March 19th — March 31st — Develop prototype & begin installation building
April 1st — April 24th — Experience development & testing
April 25th — May 1st — Documentation and repolishing
Updates:
• I’ve gotten the Raspberry Pi delivered so the next post will be of me setting it up and getting it altogether.
• I’m forcing myself to go to bookstores and find books (since I’m writing up a narrative) to help inspire me about what I’m trying to do. So far, I’ve glanced at leadership/self-help psych books like No One Understands You and What To Do About It by Heidi Halvorson. I’m thinking about getting into more story books and really trying to have fun with the idea.
And that’s all for now folks. Hopefully I make more progress in my next post and have more hands-on pictures to show you how I’m doing. Stay tuned!
V
