FMP (2) — ANALYSIS & SYNTHESIS
Topic: Religion of Money
Timeframe: 02/10/23–23/11/23
Team: R.Hodge, R.Suri, T.Singh & Myself
READ ABOUT OUR RESEARCH HERE: FMP 1
ANALYSIS
At the beginning of the fall term we tackled analysis through thematic coding. We found the method suitable for this exploratory stage of the research, as it provides a lot of flexibility in interpreting data through categorising them into themes.
Having four brains, with four distinct professional, academic and cultural backgrounds helped us (I believe) reconcile differences in answers of different age groups and cultural backgrounds with sensitivity & mitigate a common risks involved in thematic coding of a large dataset — overlooking the nuance.
AEIOU & ARTEFACT ANALYSIS
AEIOU and Artefact Analysis, within capitalism and religion respectively, helped us get started and inspired further direction for research, but the findings ended up offering only a very limited insight into people's behaviours and emotions:
- AEIOU revealed both are (architecturally) designed to be a monument of power and strength — they inspire silence and make you feel small
- Artefact Analysis 1— key observations were related to the emotions inspired by physical and digital money, and the transition from one to another. while physical money often offers a commentary of economic status, digital money's ever-presence, ease of use and elusiveness is largely understood as empowering as well as suffocating
- Artefact Analysis 2 — key religious and capitalist artefacts are symbolically important, as well as of utility
DIRECTED STORYTELLING & LOVE/BREAK-UP LETTER
DS & LLBL research methods offered nuanced insights into participants' relationship to money, and its influence over their worldview, identity and social relationships:
- money makes us feel afraid, controlled, insecure, isolated
- money makes us feel free, capable, in control
- how money we make and have is a part of our identity
- money is a lens through which we look at the world
THEMATIC CODING / SYNTHESIS OF FINDINGS
Limited insight into the topic of religion within our primary research made us drop the ‘Religion of…’ angle, and focus solely on the context of Money Money Money Money Money. We then navigated, organised and reconciled the range of our findings through thematic coding analysis — and synthesised them into statements and clear ideas, with which we moved forward.
The dominant outcome was money & control — does your money control you or do you control money — with the subtopics of identity-making, sense-making and social relationships. We moved forward into the design research and ideation phase, with the aim to position our project somewhere on this spectrum.
