Design | Learning community’s language through Metaphor Game
Brief reflection and takeaways from the street survey activities
Over the summer, I read Paulo Freire’s ‘Pedagogy of Oppressed’. It unpacked the relationality of oppressors and oppressed as I witness George Floyd’s murder the civil unrest of the Black Lives Matter movement. In this historic moment, words of Freire shaped my thinking of how some communities in America exist in the ‘limit-situations’ where the environment not only limits the possibility of their ontology but also their thinking and frame of the world.* Freire advocate for dialogical pedagogy that enables the oppressed beings to see the limit-situation critically, which leads to starting their revolution to full liberation. In chapter 3 of the book, the author explains how the dialogical pedagogy process begins by providing an example of a literacy program. In the search of the program content, investigators conduct observational visits to the community to gather materials for the community-led codification. It is similar to ethnographical research, but the synthesis happens with the community. Freire emphasizes the importance of understanding the language from the community which is the community’s contextual knowledge of the world. After reading this, I wanted to try this methodology to begin my participatory project from the community’s point of view.
When I found out I will be working with the community of Sto-Rox, I wonder how I can access the community in a more authentic way. Thanks to the Seminar III module about research through design taught by Professor Dan Lockton, I gain inspiration for using metaphor games.
What kind of metaphors do they used to describe the concepts of participatory capital, such as ‘neighborhood’ or ‘finance’?
Through the activity I hoped to get a glimpse into the community’s value, needs, wants, colloquial vocabulary, social norms which will help us formulate better questions, hypotheses, and design better workshops.
Survey Design: Metaphor Game
I started by gathering some of the concepts that are related to participatory capital and community-based program. Words that I came up with are; Finance, Money, Family, Health, Community, Neighborhood, Neighbor
And I gather some of the concepts that related to critical pedagogical theory from Freire; Freedom, Trust, Safety, Prosperity, Independence, Power
After sharing the list, my advisor, Professor Kristin Hughes, also suggested I added the word Faith; something that I didn’t think about before. This concept turns out to be very important to traditional American culture.
Afterward, I started to gather images for the metaphors. Some of the aspects I thought about are images that are associated with positive, negative, or neutral emotions. I also tried to have variation from concrete everyday objects to abstract objects such as magic or ghost. Whenever possible, images were familiar or directly from the Sto-Rox community.
Street survey with Sto-Rox Community
After gaining IRB approval, I asked a few of the community leaders to participate in the game. I was nervous since this was my first time trying a design methodology on non-designers. However, after the first round, I realized the simplicity was the best design choice I made; the instruction was one sentence (pick a word from the bucket, select an image that is the best metaphor), with one generic example of ‘Love and a Key’.
As expected community leaders were more patient and willing than the general public, which made a great audience to practice my facilitation skill. Some of the highlights from the great 2-hour conversation I had;
- Independence as bridges. It gives chance to crossroads to somewhere else. It’s a pathway.
- Prosperity as time. It doesn’t always mean money.
- Independence as a solitary tree on a hill. It is on its own, but it’s beautiful, it’s doing its own work on itself.
- Faith as magic. You think you hit the end of this road, and something impossible happens. It hit me on my 60th birthday, that there hasn’t been anything I didn’t get through.
With the practice and confidence from this experience, I went out to the street to survey the bigger community. The first challenge was having limited time; some people were just on the go and didn’t have time to talk in-depth. The second challenge was handling all the materials. Since I didn’t have the table surface as I did with the community leaders, my participants had to navigate through a stack of flimsy paper images while standing. Some individual had shakey hands or low dexterity on their fingers which detract from having meaningful conversations. None the less, I was able to get a better sense of community through this session. The metaphor was often a more difficult concept to go into on the busy streets, yet with it, it gave me a way to start the conversation and prob more for more meanings. Some of the discussion we heard;
- A shoe with faith. Living Sto-Rox, children being able to go play outside without being worried getting hurt from the street (like wearing a solid pair of shoes) is a faith you need to have.
- Independence as an open door. It’s my choice if I go through it or not. I can knock it down or lock, I can do any god damn thing as I want with this door and my life.
Overall Takeaways
- There is a general sense of ‘it used to be better’. Two interviewees from different demographics talked about this aspect of the Sto-Rox which correlated to my research. Sto-Rox hit peak population during 1930s steel area, but have been in decline in population and income ever since. Some people talked about having no hope for the future, while others talked about the cause of the problem such as lack of unity.
- There is a sense of community- however, it is small disconnected pockets. Many of the Sto-Rox community members are people who lived in the area all their lives. They care about the community deeply, however, I observe that people have a small close-knit group and have a mistrust of the community. There is work to be done on building trust with each other and embracing diversity.
- We need both external and internal motives for community revitalization. This was an interesting point to me as someone who is coming in from the outside with outside resources. One of the participants said, ‘You need guidance but you also need willingness (to build bridges to independence)’. Since sensing a strong value of independence, I want to investigate further into what is a good balance of external and internal motive.
- Money is more than money. It means more time, it means enablement, it means a bigger possibility. Money is a tool. I realize that when talking about finance and capital investment, we need to talk about what is the core purpose beyond monetary support.
- Bring diverse racial backgrounds, trama, and lifestyles to our design are important to build a community. Sto-Rox is very diverse in culture in many spectra. It is also a neighborhood that is going through a transition and possible gentrification. How do we keep diversity and authenticity while bringing people together as a community?
Metaphor as Method
Overall, the metaphor game was something that successfully introduced me to the community that I am foreign to. The community leader commented, ‘This is a good exercise to allow people to converse in a level that is internal.’ Understanding how Sto-Rox views the posed concepts was incredibly helpful in not only understanding the community but also thinking about my own positionality.
Another thing that I didn’t realize is the value of sheer action of asking. Another community member told me,
‘It’s nice when someone asks you for your opinion. People are always pulled in different ways, taking care of others, (but during this exercise) you get a moment to talk about yourself and what is important to you, I feel like a lot of people never get to do that.’
Hearing this, I know the project has a long way to go. Sto-Rox needs so much and I am excited to support them to build something that will enable them to move closer to fulfill those needs.
*Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 50th-anniversary ed. New York: Continuum, 2018. Print. I kept coming back to limit-situation as I saw Black and Latinx supporters of Trump in 2020 election and the division of minority communities. It is a fearful path; the revolution. It requires us to see critically, not just the world but also ourselves. True criticality often means uprooting what we know and taking on a whole different role; not oppressor nor oppressed but as fully human beings.
