Week 2: Refining Thesis Topic

Out of the five interests that I listed from last week, I have narrowed down the choices into three main ones to focus on for this week’s exploration, in which are: socializing, memory, and architectural history.

Lotus Exercise

This exercise that we did in class was really helpful in a way that it forces me quickly choose the three topics I am mostly interested in, as well as asking as many relevant questions in refining these interests into more specific research topics.

In-class Lotus Exercise

This week as I moved forward with these initial questions, I spent more time redoing the lotus exercise by selecting critically and coming up with better questions to further develop the mapping. I also kept in mind to raise at least one question for each of the who, what, why, when, where, and how. In the process, I found myself having a hard time branching out specific questions for my interest in “architectural history”, so I decided to just focus on the first two interests “socializing” and “memory”, with the hope of finding relevant connections between the two.

Brainstorming Questions for “Socializing”

Important questions to further consider for socializing:

1. How skilled are these people when it comes to communication?
2. How is the environment affecting one’s emotion or behavior?
3. How to come up with topics or shared interests to converse about in order to keep conversation going?
4. Does age group matter in defining one’s expertise or experience in socializing?

Brainstorming Questions for “Memory”

Important questions to further consider for memory:

1. How has the memory been shaping one as a person?
2. How has the memory been affecting one’s performance in interacting with others or daily activities?
3. Is the memory shared? How is it being perceived by all parties who are sharing the memory? How is it affecting their relationship?
4. Does age matter in retrieving memory?

Brainstorming Questions for “Architectural History”

Similarities between “Socializing” and “Memory”

Here I am connecting topics that overlap between the two interests. The orange dotted lines represent connections within the same topic while the blue dotted lines represent connections across topics.

1. Matter of age: It seems to me that one’s age, meaning the time period of how long one has lived so far, correlates to a certain extend with how experienced one is when it comes to socializing skill as well as how it is affecting one’s ability in retrieving a particular memory. I would not necessarily say that it is the main factor in defining these two conditions, but it does inform the degree of one’s past that has been building up into that person oneself, leading to the next point in shaping one’s character or identity.
2. Character shaping: Past memories might have an affect in shaping one’s personality, depending on how traumatic or pleasant one’s childhood memories are.
3. Emotional state: One’s emotional state is affected by numerous elements of the built environment, this then informs one’s actions in terms of how well one can perform within a social setting.
4. Sharing: We tend to feel more secure and vulnerable with others once we learn of a shared experience, or even past memories.

Here is the link to my brainstorm in Miro board.

Next Steps

After grouping some questions and connecting the similarities, I start to think of possibly designing an experience where users can feel secure and eventually let go of their traumatic memories in the past, through a curated social interactions. From here onwards, I think the next steps to take would be learning about the correlations between memories and emotions, specifically the psychology of traumatic experiences and how they affected one’s behavior as well as how one grows up to be that person. Also what it means to feel secure and how to possibly achieve the state of being vulnerable, especially to strangers. Finally, listing out the various elements of the built environment and how they can help transform one’s emotional being through senses.