Senior Capstone 2018 //
My last studio at CMU School of Design
Hi there, I am Steven.
This piece of medium post documents my 16-week long Senior Capstone Project
Course Overview
Course Details | Syllabus | Course Objectives
Use table of content
to hep you navigate this document. Underlined links bring you to corresponding weeks’ notes via internal page anchors (not a new page), click on “wormhole to the top” to return to table of content
Table of content
Week 17 • Final Show x Project Website
Week 16 • Final Presentation + Play-test party 2
Week 15 • Final Iteration
Week 14 • Play testing 1
Week 13 • Learn from feedback
Week 12 • Pivot
Week 11 • Testing the prototypes
Week 10 • Think, write, make
Week 8 • Look further to the future
Week 7 • From Seed to a tree
Week 6 • The project kicked off
Week 5 • Adjust direction
Week 4 • Course correction
Week 3 • The project proposal
Week 2 • Finalize on the topic
Week 1 • Playtime
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
My team members are
Steven Ji
Ji Tae Kim
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
// Week 17 • Project Website(05/11)
www.crabsagainstrangoonity.com
Main Features:
1. Download pdf version of the game
2. Suggest new cards(fully functioning)
// Week 17 • Final Show(05/08)
- We invited Professor Geoff Kaufman to critique our project. His card game, Buffalo, was an inspiration to our final deliverable, and it tackles similar problems. Therefore, we are very curious what he thought of our project
- In general, he was very excited about our project, and here are some of the questions he raised for us:
1. How does this set of card deck align with your users’ goals?
2. What did you find from play-testing the card game with different groups of users?
3. How do you ensure that this game doesn’t perpetuate Asian stereotypes?
- Here are our answers:
1. Asian stereotype is a very difficult conversation to start because it is really heavy. However, when it is comfortable talking about it, people always find themselves have a lot to share and the conversation interesting and insightful. Therefore, the implicit goal of our players are to share their own point of views and learn from others’ point of views. Through this light-hearted and fun game, we provide our users a channel to express their opinions and surprise themselves of the views of other players.
2. The more diverse the players’ background, the more insightful the conversation. The game, especially since we ask players to actively make connections between the answer card and the prompt card, helps expose players’ views on gender, privilege, family history and personal background. Therefore, this game fits environments in which the players’ backgrounds are somewhat different. I was always surprised to hear stories from Asian females because I cannot personally relate to their struggle and am pretty privileged to actively ignore some of the burdens they face. For example, unplanned pregnancy brings more shame and burden to Asian females than males.
3. That is the most challenging part about this game. I think we can do our best to avoid it from happening by making the card East Asian specific but after all, we cannot change players’ intentions. Also, we are glad to know that one of our player’s white boyfriend learned through this game about the stereotype of White male asian female phenomenon, and becomes aware about the tensions that exist in this type of relationship.
- We also heard great things from non-Asian people who checked out the game:
I learned a lot from reading the yellow cards. I feel like I can at least understand some of them (after reading the description on the yellow card). In general, this is really funny and cool (Jesse Klein)
// Week 16 • Presentation + Play test party (04/30–05/06)
Crabs Against Rangoonity Party
- We decided to host a lunch party to invite friends to play test our new version of the game.
- Here are some key takeaways for us after hosting the Crabs Against Rangoonity Lunch Party:
- East coast Asian demographics and those of West coast have some minute differences:
- There are more 4th — 5th generation East Asians on the West coast, and therefore, they have stopped speaking their native tongues a long time ago. East Asians on the East coast are usually first or second generation immigrants.
- Because we are closely related to first and second generation Asian immigrants, our cards speak more to the first and second generation players than 4th-to-5th generation players.
- Writing a badass wild card give players a sense of accomplishment
I was proud of the custom card I did — the worst tattoo concept.
- One of the greatest fears of the player was that this game can be used to perpetuate East Asian stereotypes. One of the feedback we received was that maybe make the stereotypes ones that are completely East Asian focused so that even if other races want to play just to make fun of East Asians, they can’t understand what each card means.
- The game also exposed privileges not only as well-off Asians, but also the gender differences between male and female East Asians. This is a theme that we have been witnessing from the start of the game. One of the players couldn’t relate to unplanned pregnancy
- The game is quite successful at exposing privileges. The exposure comes when one player cannot relate to / understand a yellow card. In this round of testing, players exposed their own privileges when they don’t see unplanned pregnancy as a matter of extreme pressure or don’t recognize that Steve Yeun’s sex scene with a white female in Walking Dead as an important milestone on the change of perceptions in Asian male’s sexuality.
Presentation #(05/02)
The feedback we received from our presentation
- Overall goal is clear and people do understand who are our targeted audiences.
- The talk on process could be more succinct, since the audience can easily get lost from us talking about various branch explorations that lead to dead-ends. Within 7 mins, we should pick out a relatively clear path for people to follow.
// Week 14 • Play testing 1 (04/09–04/15)
- We made 6 copies of Crabs Against Rangoonity box version and 6 loose card version to send people to play test with
// Week 13 • Learn from feedback (04/09–04/15)
Reflection #21–Moving onward
Used the rule of Metaquilt, and found this game is quite successful at helping people talk about the issues of Asian stereotypes.
Reflection #20–90% Critique and future actions
Here are some feedback from the critique:
The next step is clear. Test our games and improve the card content.
// Week 12 • Pivot (04/02–04/08)
Reflection #19 — Meeting with Stuart 2 (03/26/2018)
Previously
After the last critique, we concluded that the goal for East Asian American Future Card Game is to educate participants about the harmfulness of the stereotypes of East Asian American. We decided to put seemingly harmless stereotypes on one side of the card, and facts corresponding to the stereotypes on the other side of the card. That way, the card game can be played during parties similar to Cards against Humanities, but with a deep twist on the back. That way, we can help participants realize the harmfulness of the stereotypes embedded in East Asian American society.
This new direction also helps us tailor the message and content specifically to East Asian Americans who are interested in racial justice. From our personal experiences and observations, people who care about racial issues might not know the hard facts that demonstrate the why, the how and the what of these issues. For example, many people know that Chicken and Watermelon are associated with the Black. However, not that many know that it is because the White only allow the Black eat Chicken and Watermelon during slavery. Therefore, the Black experiment with the best food they can cook with given ingredients, which turn out to be Fried Chicken. Knowing these stories expose a deeper degree of oppression that is not as obvious on the surface of this story.
See the content sheet below for specific examples:
Objective
- Learn from Stuart about designing Card Games, and how he designed a system that allows him to collect feedback from people playing his cards
Learning & Feedback
- There are three layers of outcome that Stuart’s cards have: The imagination that starts to exist in participants’ minds, the future ideas that are generated and the development of ideas by Artists and Designers.
- All of the ideas will send to the #futuresthing on Twitter
Some inspirations that Stuart points us to
Discussions:
Next step
- Continue collecting facts that illustrate the harmfulness of East Asian American stereotype
Class #21 • 04/02/2018
Objective
- Receive and collect silent critique from classmates
- Continue collecting facts that illustrate the harmfulness of East Asian American stereotypes
Feedback
- People are confused in terms of what we want to achieve. Part of the reason why is that we just pivoted from David Chang Story and without a proper context, it is indeed quite difficult for anyone to know for sure what we are doing.
// Week 11 • Testing the prototypes
Reflection #19 (03/26/2018)
Class #20 (03/26/2018)
Objective
- Reflect on the stories we have finished making
- Testing with East Asian American students in my class
- Prepare to talk to Stuart tomorrow
Feedback
Next step
Class #19 (03/26/2018)
Objective
- Test the story prototype with Molly and other East Asian students and collect feedback from them
Feedback:
- It seems like this is the future we are already in today, so what is the next step?
- The interaction with the audience seems to be missing — what can the audiences take away from this story?
- I would love to hear stories from people coming from all different backgrounds instead of ones who are famous, and also stories that cover all four different types of futures.
Next:
- We would love to make the story interactive by leaving half of it completely blank and invite the audiences to write on it.
- Try to develop different stories and figure out how to build a guideline or support to help the audiences generate the future of East Asian Americans.
Some inspirations we found recently:
Agreed that projects like this one cannot be done as a sustainable business but rather a campaign that lasts throughout a short period of time. Therefore, the inspirations above help us figure out how we can pull our project off in real life. One opportunity I identified is Three Rivers Art festival.
Next step
- Finish the story I am currently drawing
- Come up with a new story that is a little bit dark, starts to explore other types of futures (growth, transformation, discipline and collapse)
// Week 10 • Think, say, make
Team Meeting #19 (03/25/2018)
Objective of the day
Continue working on the current draft of the story. Start drawing the frames for the animation we would like to make. Made pretty good progress today: finish drawing half of our entire story.
Next step
- Ask Molly and Kristin for advice and feedback on whether or not our stories work.
- Ask peers for comments on the stories and what we have done. Prepare questions to ask peers and see what they say.
Team Meeting #18
Previously
After the class, we decided that we will focus on building one future story to test the water
Decisions
Next step
- Write the complete script based on the new story we defined today.
Team Meeting #17
Directions
We discussed the story of David Chang together.
Next step
Personal Reflection #17
Previously
During the class, my classmates and I hosted a round-robin with different groups to receive feedback from each other. I enjoyed the process quite a lot, and here are some feedback Ji Tae and I received.
Some inspirations that Ji Tae shared with me:
Great story-telling projects — not too sure how they will tie with our projects
I think our challenges lie in creating the first story. Once that story exists, we can move forward. The challenges are in finding the right direction to address the problem. My thought process is that I can take in these new dieas
- Draw storyboards to figure out the details of the expeirences
- I believe that the stories that people create can help us understand what are the
- Take inspirations from Stuart
- Model the stories off David Chang/other successful Asian leaders because some times it is easier to be believable and what are there to make, right?
- The levels of engagement with an experience.
- Stereotypes around asian American men on their sexuality and masculinity
Potential future changes because information about the number of Asian males appear in Hollywood. Be aware about your stereotypes — why it has to be a laundromat. I think right now just focus on making believable stories about Asian cook!
Class #17 • Debrief and in-class work time
The plan for today is to reflect on the previous works, review our steps and plan out the next 8 weeks for our project.
In-class
THE QUESTIONS
- Frame or re-frame the problem?
- What did you learn from each cycle of your research?
Setting tone and context
It is time to make with our hands and give forms to our final design, and think about what in the end we should come up with.
What comes after this? What are the future steps you can take?
The final deliverable is not the stopping point. What could bcome after your design? Have you considered the future of your design? What is the future of your design? Will it evolve, change, adapt or do other things?
Feedback
Are you planning to receive feedback from your audiences who experience the products?
How you want your exhibition to look like? What kind of things do you want to make, and how will it look like. It is time to narrow down the research phase and begin the generative ideation phase.
Outcome
- Use the outcome matrix to measure the desired outcomes of your project.
- Answering the questions Molly and Kristin asked add rapport to our project. Their questions will help our project become stronger structurally and become better to look at. What steps did we miss in our design process, if we did miss one, what would you do if you were to work on this project again?
- Compare the current project brief/direction with the brief we came up at beginning of the project. What changed and what remained the same?
Next step:
- Take one idea and go with it — you don’t have to overthink — come up with a scenario and go with it. Use the templates that Kristin gave us.
- Read Stuart Candy’s blogs about the future and take inspirations from there — continue sketching in sketchbooks?
Next step
- I would like to try to compose one story around an Asian chef since I am most interested in cooking and culinary art.
//Week 8• Look further into the future
Reflection #14 • Define the mission statement and problem statement
When talked to Kristin and Molly last time, our answer to the question: “What are you doing” seems similar but also different. Here are two version of the answer:
- building an alternative reality in which EAA is fairly represented in the society, that way, younger generation of EAA can be inspired to pursue their dreams in these fields and further inspire the next generations to achieve more
- Building a future that reflects the prevalent problems in society such as unfair treatment of females.
The two are similar but also different. Therefore, we brainstormed the mission statement together as well as the problem statement to help us stay consistent about our visions and goals.
Mission statement:
How can we Increase Eastern Asians Americans’ representations in fields of society, where media’s portrayals of EAAs are biased?
Problem statement:
Media’s biased portrayals of Eastern Asian American in many prominent fields of societies have made younger generations of Eastern Asian Americans believe that it is an unchangeable reality for EAA to be fully represented in the society.
Next Step:
- Further brainstorm the final deliverables — sometimes it is definitely easier to envision the future and then look at how we can arrive at that future
- Ask a lot of questions so that we can make sure that we don’t lose somthing
:^)
Class #14 • Debrief and in-class work time
Ji Tae and I regrouped today to reflect on the workshop we conducted. We decided that we will call our activities Asian American in 2050. We further conducted interviews with Asian Americans around us and asked them to portray the future of East Asian America in 2050
Mine is Asian Grandma who was Michelin Star Chef. Not only does she promote asian food in her community, she also makes her restaurant look like an Asian house, connecting back to her cultural roots!
We talked to Molly to seek for feedback
It seems like you guys are on the right track. However, on Asian Grandpa, think about it, what will the Grandpas be like when you become a grandpa. What will Q be like when he becomes a grandpa, he’s definitely going to be different from someone who you know in your years. Can you illuminate certain issues that you found that spoke to the present? For example, the problem with females being put on the pedestal
Is there a way for you to host a workshop with 3 people? Since it is very hard for you to find a crowd of 8 people.
We intend to continue collecting the stories from other s— maybe aiming for 100. However, at the same time, we also want to include different voices. The people we interact with are very similar to us, and we need to address that.
I think the next step is to figure out what deliverable we would like to build. Here are some of the inspirations from Stuart Candy. We should certainly talk to Stuart. We should schedule a time to meet with Stuart and brainstorm about how to build the future! In the end - we should have some fun deliverables - but also, think about why are we building these artifacts are also very importantWeek 7 • From a seed to a tree
Workshop #2-Envision a future for East Asian American
We wanted to focus on the future because it is a way for us to probe the hopes and fears of the Asian Americans living in the state. Talking about the future helps us see what Asian Americans pay most attention to in their lives and what they want to accomplish in their life.
We hosted the second workshop today, focusing on collecting more relevant information from our project participants and we lead a discussion about the future of East Asian Americans
The workshop has several components, and here are some feedback we received from our participants:
- Include non-Asian races / aggressors?(what’s the right word for this group of people?) in the workshop
- We were inspired by the generative workshop hosted by Stuart Candy
- We decided it is less effective to discuss and curb microaggression because it is a product of under-representation of EAA. It is more aspiring and hopeful to envision a future where part of Asian culture has evolved to become the mainstream. In part inspired by Afro-futurism, we want to portray an Asian-futurism that inspires the next generation of EAA to achieve and succeed in fields that currently lack proper EAA representation.
- We are not only interested in building the future but informing others how we can arrive at that future. (what are some factors we want to consider?)
- I think Participant BC’s response is especially interesting — it not only portrays a future in which it is possible but also address many of the pressures to be in that position to show up in high profile positions.
- The materials we collect could help the future participants to
- How to explain to participants about this — it is a generative prop we use to generate ideas on what possible future for Asians there is — Asian American in 2050 — what’s a story about an Asian American in 2050?
I think it would be interesting to discuss what is the framework to build the experiential future. What and how do you want people to experience. Very specific — it is a way to prompt people now to think about how we can realize such visions. By identifying desirable future, we can help people move to the desirable future.
USERS
ACTIVITIES
ENVIRONMENT
INTERACTIONS
OBJECTS
Reflection #14
Reflection #13
Attending another workshop
Ji Tae and I attended another workshop to learn how the grad students run the workshop. We learned a lot from talking to Zach and learn how he and his team approach their workshops. Here are some snapshots of their workshop:
We learned:
- Props are an essential ingredient to our workshop
- Also, I adopted a new style of storyboarding, which is both fun and quick to make!
- Their workshop is slightly different from ours because their workshop focuses more on International students. The end deliverable for them is to develop a tool that could help them alleviate discomfort in International students’ everyday life. For us, we are depicting a future in which a potential future can emerge, and we enjoy this future quite well!
A new member to the team
We welcomed an honorary member to our team today who has quite a lot of knowledge in inequal representation of Asians in America. Here are some interesting points we discussed:
- Black Panther: Afro-futurism connects to the their African roots. A hopeful future is where our East-Asian culture becomes dominant and cool. What I mean by this is that a hopeful future is where the Asian culture becomes much more accepted and
- East Asians are the white of Asia (majority race)
- The value and effect of greater Asian representation in high profile societal positions: inspire the next generation of children to achieve more since they know it is possible for Asian Americans to be in that position.
Chloe Kim especially empowers East Asian Female communities. East Asian Females are often regarded as submissive, and are often taken advantage of because their stereotypical traits.
- What do you identify the most with? Your race or your gender or other aspects of your identities? Our consultant told us that she sees herself first as a female, and then as an Asian. Ji Tae and I decided that we will specifically ask our participants on Sunday either race/other components of their identities are what matter the most to them.
- Our previous discussions helped us move forward with our 2050 envisioning activity. Here are the new prompts we came up with to accompany our card activities: How does the figure you picked:
- Inspire the next generations?
- Help break a stereotype about East Asians?
- What could happen now / help do now to deliver that proposed story / future?
These activities will help us build the final deliverable and allow us to be fully prepared to meet our future in 2020. The last question especially could help us build milestone stories that lead up to 2050.
Class 13 • 02/21/2018
There is a lot magazines we can refer to. Generative card activities
Class 12 • 02/21/2018
Week 6 • The project kicked off
Workshop #1
Workshop started
People’s feedback to us on the workshop:
- It is funny to share the experience, but we haven’t necessarily shown that we have thought about the issue in depth — we didn’t probe why we felt being offended or what could help other.
- Involve other under-represented Asian American groups such as Vietnamese Americans, Indian Americans and Parkistan Americans/
- Our selection process of the workshop particpants.
When you translate
- It’s more about why it bothers us than about what happened?
- Another population might not understand
- Why is it so much of a content of a joke — I know you meant well but it is offensive because this, that
Didn’t expect to show the video that Asians speaking to White people. Addressed the issue that
- We collected a lot of stories but people are not so sure about why these happened, or took place.
- “Preaching to the choir” “Preaching to the converted” To me, both mean essentially that you are trying to explain something to someone who already understands it.
Preparation
Thoughts on the preparation process
- Run it through with people
Personal Exploration #11
:^)
Class 11 • 02/21/2018
Class 10 • 02/19/2018
Molly gave me and Ji Tae several advice regarding our directions (by the way, our direction now is measuring microaggresions and explaining microaggressions to students coming to ).
- What kinds of activities you would like to do with the participants?
- Planning on the workshops! + Prototyping
- What artifacts you would like to produce from the workshop?
Made some significant progress on the workshop:
- Ji Tae and I are both excited about the idea to measure micro-aggressions. But what we can do after we measure micro-aggressions? For me, it might be providing personalized advice on how to cope with the micro-aggressions.
- Ji Tae has more interests in reproducing the in-the-moment micro-aggression experiences for individuals? However, how do individuals respond to that experience (remind me of what Stacie taught me to do at the end of a project, write up a list of questions to explore. These questions are key to exploring the problem space. More importantly, ask yourself, if you can answer these questions, what are some larger questions we can answer?)
Attached below is our current workshop planning doc
Week 5 • Adjust direction
Personal Exploration #10
Personal Exploration #9
Personal Exploration #8
The video Ji Tae sent me. I thought the last video is really funny in that it made fun of the statement “I don’t see race” in a subtle yet enlightening way. In the video, the women equated “I don’t see race” with not seeing “disability” or other rather obvious physical appearances. It took on racism in a light hearted way
I want to see if I can incorporate my interests in machine learning and communication design in my project.
:^)
Class 9 • 02/14/2018
Today, Ji Tae and I interview students on campus who have experienced micro-aggressions and see what they have to say. I think we should be mobile and walk around campus instead of sitting at one place and wait for people to come to us.
http://www.microaggressions.com/
Class 8 • 02/12/2018
Ji Tae and I decided to kick off our project with interviewing other asian students who have experienced racial micro-aggressions and see what they say. In a way, this is our initial data-gathering methods.
Kristin: “You should talk to Zach Bichiri and other design students who are tackling similar issues.”
Molly: “Why not try getting 1000 responses from asian students on the micro-aggression experiences they have had?”. I think it will help us a lot to use numeric measures to ground our explorations.
Some other resources I can get help from:
Week 4 • The Course Correction
Personal Exploration #4
The initial proposal by Ji Tae and me
Week 3 • The Project Proposal
Personal Exploration #4
I contributed three different directions for my team and we chose one. I broke down behaviors into three different categories:
- Intentional behaviors that people are motivated to take up/remove
- Unintentional behaviors that people are aware of themselves
- Unintentional behaviors that people are unaware of yet.
We chose the third direction because we believe that these behaviors are manifested by inner hopes and worries that people experience. By understanding these manifestations, we can help individuals be more aware about the inner hopes and worries that may yet be conscious to them, and even help them actualize the hope and alleviate the worry.
I believe after we draft the research prompt or research questions, we can better understand the direction we can take afterwards. Because one of the problems we face right now is that we want to discover meaningful behaviors that are worthwhile to the individuals, and something that can help us bring new directions instead of suffocating us.
I also believe that my team and I should start contacting other researchers to receive feedback on our project.
:^)
Class 5 • 01/31/2018
During the class, Molly and Kristin gave us feedback that makes Ji Tae and me think a lot about where this project is heading to.
Class 4 • 01/30/2018
Week 2 • Finalize on the topic
Reflection #03
Reflection #02
My plan of attack on the projects that I wish to work on:
Class 3 • 01/22/2018
Class 2 • 01/22/2018
Seamfulness vs Seamlessness
- Identifying seams in the interactions help us identify opportunities in understanding the design.
Talks on mail art:
Every problem in this world is reflected on the wall of Mail Art — discover them and reflect how you can turn it into a project (well, you can start with making a list on what you would like to make/do) — Kristin
I can’t agree more with this. We unconsicously expressed the common ground within ourselves through our creations. Our inner world are reflected on the pieces of mail art but also reflect on a broader scale what is happening in the world.
Senior Capstone project:
- Unconference style brainstorming: invite all participants to a specific space to share ideas and iterate on works we produce
BUILD Framework:
Bold: ___________ that bring forth new ideas in small ways.
Upbeat: Uses the power of kindness and play.
Intermingles: ____________outside of the ____________.
Local: Start where you are, right now.
Design: Demonstrates the practice of design in action.
Project proposal:
- Finish the proposal fast because we want to get to the design phase really fast
Build rules for Evaluating ourselves:
Molly and Kristin borrowed
- I didn’t quite understand people’s intentions behind the ideas that they are demonstrating
- Testing, participatory, co-design
- Reflect on things you would like to work on
- Effectiveness of the product you launched- how to evaluate your effectiveness
Assignments:
- In the next class, we will have an “Unconference” in which each student will pitch his/er proposal on final capstone project to others and receive feedback
- I should write my ideas on Post-its and show them on the wall
//Week 1 • The fun week
Reflection #01
We just started senior capstone studio and here are some my thoughts from the first week of assignment:
What I want to work on:
- A delicate balance between something that is relevant to what School of Design intends to teach me and how I want to connect dots of my previous self. A self-directed project in some way should relate to the past. I think it relates to what I previously learned in School of Design.
Reflecting on the progress you made last semester, what are things you want to continue improving on this semester?
- I would like to ask for feedback before I dive too deep into this semester
- A strong argument is constructed of Pathos, Logos and Ethos — so what is my narrative that allows me to explore what are things that I want to talk about — I think it has something to do with what I want to work on in the future — and I should relate to the
- I think the first thing to figure out is what are things School of Design allows me to work on — what are some measurements Molly and Kristin put in place
- I think the BUILD framework is to help us narrow down our focuses!
Lucy and I start to sift through all of the mail art on the studio desk. We divided them into groups that make the most sense to us. Later, we hang them on the wall. Lucy named her pile: “Visual Narrative”, and I named my file: “Tongue in Cheek” because I can tell all people who made the pieces had fun making it.
Class 1 • 01/17/2018
