Interviews, but not as we know them.

How have students’ dress sense changed since they left home?

I know that I have went through a lot of different looks over my teenage years but I never really considered if my dress sense had changed once I left home. When I was 13 I was what some would call a ‘ned’ and I wouldn’t be caught dead in a dress, I then turned ‘emo’ and was wearing the most ridiculous outfits: black skirts with netted tights, studded belts, heavy black eyeliner etc. At the time I never thought I was being part of a set style. I seen myself to be inventive and to not follow the crowd; when really all my friends at the time were all wearing the studded belts.. I thought these dress changes were all about being young and not knowing who you were but I suppose for so many reasons my style has even changed from just leaving home and going to university.

Whilst thinking about how my dress sense had changed since I left home I conducted interviews with four people along with just a general chat with a number of students. At first I thought about the main points that interested me about this question. The main of which were:

1. What styles have these students had in their teens

2. How has their income changed?

3. Who influences them when it comes to fashion?

4. What are they studying? (hours a week etc)

To make sure the people who I interviewed felt comfortable and really got engaged with the topic I got them to draw themselves before they left home and now. This helped them think about what clothes they used to wear that they could draw and to look at the difference. I felt if I simply said what did you wear before leaving uni they would give one word answers, so physically drawing clothes made them visualize what they used to wear.

During the interviews I took notes, so together with the drawings they made I could record how they felt their dress sense had changed. The general feeling was that at the start all of the students didn’t really think they had changed. Once I asked them certain questions they began to think about little changes and why these changes happened.

Carly (20, Psychology student) notes:

“When I was growing up I went through so many styles! I was a tomboy, always wearing trackies. I loved horseriding so I wore jodpers and things. The most embaressing stage for me was being emo, Its always good to look back at photos on bebo posing with my friends with the side fringes!”

“I used to get clothes bought from my mum but now I’m always skint.. well dont spend as much on clothes unless its dresses for going out.”

“My friends influence me and now I have a boyfriend I dress nicer and I suppose just trends, whats in the shops. Being at uni my weight changes quite a lot so I like to dress to what suits me weight.”

Louise (21, Social work student) notes:

“I guess I fitted in at school, the girly look, dresses and stuff. I always read magazines and ordered clothes online. I buy to many clothes..”

“Ive had a part time job since I was 15 so I always have spent my wages on clothes. Being at uni I am skint sometimes but I still get some shifts at the hospital when I need more clothes!”

“Fashion magazines and people around me influence my dress sense”

Sarah (19, Law student) notes:

“At my school I played a lot of sports so I wasn’t as fashionable in those days. I guess I just wore jumpers and jeans.“

“I am just glad I have an overdraft since I now spend way much more on clothes!”

“I think their is a certain appearance in my law group so my classmates influence me aswell as my friends, my social life and whats in the shops I like.”

Jenny (20, Geography student) notes:

“When I was 14 I went through an emo phase like all my friends did. Other than that I’ve just dressed quite casual, I didn’t want to stand out to much at grammar school.”

“Im skint now! the little money I have goes on books and clothes for nights out, I dont like wearing dresses more than twice.”

“I used to always just buy clothes that everyone had but now Im pretty lazy, especially for 9am lectures so I just wear anything I throw together.”

Once I got a general idea of how these students dress sense had changed I looked into some of the reasons for these changes. The main three reasons I found were:

1. cost

2. what course they study

3. how confident they are

Generally students are skint, this means that they simply just dont have the money to be keeping up with their appearance as much. This means a lot of students dress a lot more casual for example just jeans and a jumper. I also noticed that maybe where the students do have money for clothes it is for going out clothes, as lets face it students usually go out more than they study!

Before even interviewing students, I knew myself that being an Art student did have a big effect on how my dress sense changed. When you leave everything you are familiar with behind and come to uni you do want to fit in and I think what you wear plays a big part on how people percieve you. Sarah seen herself dressing a lot more smart to fit in with her law friends and Louise and Carly also mentioned this idea of fitting in.

I think everyone before coming to university had a dress sense that fitted with how they feel about themselves. If people are confident it shows in what they wear, or in some cases people dress to make people think they are confident when really they aren’t. Uni is a time to really express who you are, find your style, even though there are still people influencing your choice all of the time; magazines, friends, shops, cost.. the list goes on.

Overall I was pleased that so many students had something to say about their dress sense and I think it is something that will always keep changing just not as drastically as it did for me in my teenage years. “Emo” “goth” “ned” “tomboy” most of us went through phases of clothes styles but university does change people and how they dress.

Assignment 3: Design Safari

The last part of this assignment was to go to somewhere unfamiliar and observe and record. I have been to a football match, bingo and the casino but I felt less familiar at casino because there is just so much going on that I dont understand and ive never properly observed what was happening all around me. To prepare for this observing I had questions in mind:

Are there any certain rules that they all are aware of? How did i feel? comfortable? uneasy? Did people interact with others or keep to themselves? How did people act when gambling, drinking etc?

At first we wanted to make sure it didn’t look obvious that we were watching people so we had dinner but soon realised it was not helpful whatsoever as we couldnt hear anyone and everyone was just simply eating food. We thought to really see how people react in the casino we had to do a bit closer snooping. By sitting at the roullette machines we had a great view of the live poker game and the roullette tables. This was perfect for describing the mood as everyone was deadly serious, it wasn’t silent as such but a serious tone was definetly set. The dealer starts off by fancily shuffling the cards and handing 2 out to each person, this is when I seen people who trust nobody, for some they were playing with a lot of money so they took no risks in letting anyone even glance at their cards, see expression on their face or distract them from the round that was about to take place. I think one rule (although maybe not set in stone) was that both cards had to stay on the table, to see the cards you just flicked up a corner of a card and then straight back down on the table. There was no holding the cards, or continuously looking at what you were given. Then the jargon highlighted just how regular these people were at this table. Theres no “right its your turn” or “i am going to bet this much” Its raise, check, blind; all simple phrases to keep the game going as smoothly as possible. We noticed that there was however, a player who although knew how to play poker was not as experienced as the rest of the table. This seemed to really anger some of the players and not surprisingly the old man who was sitting with the biggest pile of chips. He clearly was not here to socialise or help people who weren’t as confident as himself, he was there to win and everytime she slowed the game down or confused everyone with her unusual bets he seemed to just get more and more frustrated.

The staff at the casino are very professional, they make it certain that they do not deal to family or friends and they know everything there is to know about gambling. Some staff even go round the tables taking drink orders of which tea coffee and hot chocolate is free. I remember when I went to the casino that I just wanted to play poker for the free hot chocolate! but the players at the poker table were uninterested by this and just carried on playing.

After only being at the casino for a few hours me and my friends started to feel very uncomfortable, minus at the bar there was no friendly, social vibe. It was so clear that these people were just solely addicted to gambling, maybe to double their wages? get out of debt they have created? or just win back the drinks they had paid for at the pub after a night out. Snooping in assignment 1 helped me understand even more about this table of people. As Bourdieu suggests, places can be free and anyone can go but it doesn’t mean everyone will want to, people who don’t understand a place and its rules will no go. The casino may be free but they have bouncers who look at how smartly you are dressed and judge you. My friend once wasn’t allowed in due to her shoes. I think this just makes the place even more uncomfortable, you feel like you are getting watched and judged from the moment you walk in, everyone playing poker looked smart and quite wealthy.

Everything about the casino made me feel uncomfortable, the red carper, the fancy lighting the walls, the expensive food the expensive drinks the balcony smoking area. It was all just too much! I do understand that for some people it is a nice place to come for a drink and relax as their are couches and its just so much more chilled on that side of the room but when you go down the few steps into the gambling area its just nervousness and players only there for one thing, to win.

Overall I found sitting and observing people from afar was very useful in understanding people in their environment. I could have asked people who play poker what its like and they would have probably said its enjoyable, social etc but I gained so much more by just observing and snooping into everything from the decor of the building to the fact that these players get free hot chocolate and dont get excited! I feel like now everywhere I go im not as blank and in my own little world, im constantly judging people and how they react to places, whether I like this or not its all part of being a good designer; understanding who you are designing for.

Assignment 3: Activity 3B- Ethnography

   “A designer should care about ethnography because it can help produce more compelling, innovative design that really connects with users—in a way that creates delight. ”  Darrel Rhea, design research consultant

After reading a passage from “Ethnography Primer” I understand ethnography and why it is important to me as a designer. Ehthnography is a research method where you watch people in natural situations instead of it being set up to get the results so you can get a holistic understanding. As Darrel Rhea states, designers should care about ethnography because if you don’t understand who you are designing for then there isn’t much point. To completely know what people want, how they act to products and life situations you need to observe them in their everyday life; not by interrogating people. When a designer understands ethnography they are able to create products and services that appeal to people by evoking emotion. For the last part of this assignment I will observe people and collect results by being curious. I will look at attitudes, mannerisms etc and think about certain questions. Are the findings what most people would expect to be true? Now that I understand ethnography I look forward to observing people in their normal environment and looking past pre-conceptions.

Assignment 3: Activity 3A- Service Design Tools

I think the tools on servicedesigntools.org are all really helpful for design research. For the two projects I have done this semester I found Mind Mapping and Rough Prototyping the most relevant.

Mind Mapping is a very useful tool that helps you see your thoughts on paper in an easy way to understand them and make connections. For my identity project I started with “my identity” in the centre and wrote quick words around this on lines which then branch off to more. I think its always beneficial because if you see your project coming to a dead end you can look back at a simple map of thoughts and get more ideas.

Rough Prototyping is another tool that is important for designers. For the mobile medicine project our group used plasticine to make prototype “Patch Pals” to make it easier to visualize the point. I think in project 3 for Border Crossings prototyping will be essential as I need to know if what i want to make really represents Slovenian culture without spending lots of time on something that might not do so.

I also looked at the Train Ride; a research tool that highlights touchpoints of an experience or journey. I think its an interesting tool that I could use when observing people.

Assignment 2: What images mean

After reading “The Rhetoric of the Image” by Roland Barthes, I understood the three types of messages (linguistic, coded iconic and non encoded iconic) I found it quite a hard read but the group task really helped me understand “polysemy”

Our group chose 4 advertisements:                 

                                          ”Dont use your mobile whilst driving

                                                                                        

                                         ”Bring out your darkside”- Fiat Cars

         

                                                                  Durex advert

                                     “Eat what you touch” Anti-bacterial Soap

We had a range of people of different age, gender and occupation to answer the following questions on the above advertisements:

1-How does the image make you feel?

2- what does the image make you think about?

3- does the image remind you of anything? if so, what and why?

4- Do you like the image?

Once they had answered these we asked them what they thought each image was advertising.

It was important to not let them know they were advertisements till they had discussed what they thought of the images as Barthes explains there is more than one meaning to an image, so at first people had thoughts on the images and then once they thought of the image as an advertisement it let to new meanings.

Feedback

The experiment and the results really helped me to understand the meaning of polysemy. Nearly every person we interviewed had a different opinion to the four ads. Here are two of the different opinions to the Durex advert

Rose- in her 40s

1) feels familiar as her 2 sons have decks 2) makes her think about her sons 3) reminds her of dance music 4) its ok doesnt connect with it that well
Possibly for a radio station

Darren- 20 years old

I’m impartial. I mean, I think i kind of get it. Obviously it’s male/female and they aren’t in the direction they are normally at, something to do with…things being out of sync? Maybe? I don’t know. But, advertising…I imagine something sex related. Most advertising is. Do i like it? Without knowing what it’s for, no. It doesn’t make much of an impact.

From this I think it shows the difference in generations and how they see things, sex is so much more publicized these days and Darren may have even seen this ad or adverts like it on the tv whereas Rose looked at how it was decks and this attracted her to the photo as her sons have decks.

Another ad that made a real impact on everyone was the one for anti bacterial soap.

 Mhairi- 19 years old

1-Sad
2-Animal abuse
4-It reminds me of animal abuse and how its not taken seriously, in china cats were put into wine glasses and fed through straws until thery finally died the glass was then shattered and the animal sold on as some sort of novelty 5- battery hens  (she thought the hamster was a baby chicken)

Graham- 20 years old

1 – Hungry.
2 – Food.
3 – Eating lots of fooood. 
4 – I like food, so i’d say its a good one!

Some people simply felt hungry when looking at this! others were really shocked by it and thought about serious issues like animal cruelty and food hygiene. Rose even thought about the business of cupcakes as that is what she is interested in. This related to Barthes view on the non-encoded iconic message, Graham just seen a cupcake and thought of no real under lying meaning, whereas Mhairi looked further into the image. Darren was the only one to notice the very tiny writing that says “eat what you touch” and this text “fixes” the meaning and the imagery grabs your attention no matter what it makes you feel whether it be hungry or sad!

The Fiat Car ad had quite a split reaction between the female and males.

Female:

1- Happy as its quite funny
2- It makes me think about animals and how they are either dangerous or cute and cuddly

3-  Yes I like the image its fun to look at 
4- The image reminds me of  animals and how dangerous animals can be misconstrued as harmless aka killer whales as the film free willy shows the whales the be kind and harmless where as in real life they are very very dangerous and have killed humans
5- animal saftey

Male:

1 – Curious.
2 – The inner beast!
3 – Times where you’ve had enough of being nice.
4 – Yes, a good representation of inner feelings?

Another thought it could be an ad for a night time drink.

Generally car ads are slightly more aimed at men so I think this image related to them as they all understood that it was about bringing out different qualities in yourself, the “inner beast” was probably the closest. The fact that nobody knew it was a car ad is when text is needed to fix its purpose. It was important that we didn’t ask art students in this experiment as we look at images a lot differently as we I suppose have had it drilled into our heads to look deeper into image meanings especially in art exams at school when you had to write essays on just one image. I know when I look at this image the first thing I think about is the tonal contrast and the different facial expressions of the bears and this to me would suggest contrast in behaviour.

The “dont drive whilst on the phone” ad uses the shock factor to grab peoples attention, and even by the look on peoples faces before even answering any questions I could tell it had an impact on them, unlike the other ads there is actually obvious objects showing what the message is, as Barthes says “undoubtedly intentional” Most people were able to make a guess that it was to do with mobiles. One person thought it was about mobile radiation which I thought was interesting because at uni she studied sciences and i felt that had an impact on the way she looked at the images.

I think this experiment really made me understand  “The Rhetoric of an Image” and the results did show that images can have so many meanings and paths especially if you connect with it. Advertisements intentionally use ambigious images to make you interpret how you feel and what the image means to you. Some adverts are shocking and unpleasant to grab your attention and make you think about for example, the consequences of driving whilst on the phone. Other images are less serious but still have an effect on you.

As a designer I found this assignment really useful as there is no point designing if you dont understand who you are designing for, everyone is different and everyone has there own opinions.

What Do Images Mean?

On friday in our workshop we were asked to look at 10 images in our groups. By using our ‘snooping’ skills we had to write down as much information about the photos which were all advertisements (which we didn’t know) 

 

Although our group has guessed on some of the photos that they were ads we didn’t know they all were, we just wrote about what the images were conveying and when we heard what they were advertising it made sense to all the information we had wrote; well minus the nike advert. 

We got this image without the nike advertisement and we were talking about poverty and other points and so obviously were shocked to find out it was just symbolic for ‘just do it’ 

After this task we had to take one photo that we had analysed and go out and ask non art students what they thought of it, our findings really did show me a great deal. 

Our groups thoughts were that this was the ideal working man who springs over the white picket fence with the white teeth and shades. We thought it could be an ad for a job saying like you could be as happy as this! So we were surprised when we found it was an M&S suits advertisement, although it still kind of ties in with what we seen from the photo.

The  first people we asked to look at this photo was the receptionists in the Dalhousie Building (roughly in their 40s)

They said:

It looked like Matt Damon

It could be a poster for an action movie

He has nice teeth and is wearing fake tan

 

Next we went to the premier shop and asked a lady at the tills ( in her 30s) and she said he looked like an action movie star.

The woman we asked in the Royal Bank of Scotland (in her late 40s) simply said “What a tosser!” 

And the last person we talked to was a chef in the Union (in his late 20s) who said it looked like Christian Bale from ‘American Psycho’

 

I think these findings really showed that designers and ‘arty’ people are better at describing what photos depict and that your interests and lifestyle influence what you see, most of the people we talked to thought it was related to a movie whereas art students think about advertisement. I really enjoyed this task and think it will be very useful for Assignment 2.

 

21st Century Designer: Assignment One

“Are you what you wear?”

The first assignment is all about how we perceive people and if our observations are correct. To start out we had to all upload photos of either ourselves growing up or our bedrooms, although this was done secretely our group (Team 1) quite easily could tell who the photos belonged to! Also everyone says I havent changed at all… I now wish I had taken photos of my room! 

 

 

Laura Speirs wrote this about me:  From the photographs, we assumed it was a girl! We could tell it was a girl from her childhood due to the photographs.  We discussed that she is quite a happy, enthusiastic and family person as a couple of her photographs were her and her family or friends at a close age. Also, we figured she is quite active and out-going as the majority of her photos are outside or when she is doing something. ( Playing on the football table etc). Also, due to where she was at the time these photos were taken. We thought that she might have been a Textile Student because of the hand printed T-Shirt she is wearing in the above photograph. We were right! and we found out that her mum had made this T-Shirt for her. Therefore, we felt that she must have been influenced by her mum to become a textile student herself! 

I think these comments were very true! I also think if I put photos of my bedroom up it would have showed more about my personality now as I’m not as sporty now.

Here were Team 1s observations of Group 2:

Person 1

I never thought pictures of someones room could represent someone so well! Laura Speirs is in my class and I knew it was her straight away. Her room is very neat and minimilistic and thats how I see Laura, it even shows in her artwork. From the photos our group seen that she lives in halls, we thought either Belmont or The Hub which could suggest she has a job to help pay for expensive accommodation but then it could be her parents or a loan. From the magazine cut outs neatly on her wall we thought she loves fashion and even though I knew she studies Textile Design it hinted towards this. Once we looked closer we seen objects that suggested she was religious or had some sort of religious upbringing and the dreamcatcher above her bed could mean she is superstitious.

Person 2

 

The first observations of this person was that this was a girls bedroom and that she was an organized hoarder! After watching a programme on hoarding I associated it with messy people but I think this girl just loves collecting things that mean things to her and her desk has this mountain of things in some sort of order? We thought that she likes decoration and pretty things mostly girly colours. Due to the photos of all her friends, it seems she has many good memories with a close group of people and these memories mean a lot to her. Our guess was that she studies Jewellery because of all trinkety like things she collects. I think she is quite a laid back person but likes to keep some things really organized in her life.

Person 3

   The first noticeable thing about this girl is that she is eating or about to eat in every photo! We think she is very sociable and not shy at all, I think she is quite confident and loves to be with her friends which can be seen in the tea party photo. It can be seen that she has had a good upbringing but also very humble. After speaking to her she agreed with everything that we said especially her love for food! I think it is hard to tell what she studies at uni because she is very young in all of her photos.

Person 4  

Initially we thought these photos belonged to a boy because it resembled a typical guys flat, we thought this person was very quirky and had a good sense of humour from the things wrote on the fridge and the pretty awesome rubber duck collection in the bathroom! The flat is quite bare for example nothing on the walls I think this shows that this person would rather just live happily with the people in her company rather than spending time decorating the place. This person is quite laid back and not overly obsessed with tidying and everything being exactly in its right place. When we found out this was a girls flat she explained she lived with boys which made sense, she also showed us a picture that she couldn’t put up of her bedroom which showed a lot more about her. I thought. She agreed with all the comments we made, I think if we had more time with the rest of her photos we could have said more about her.

Person 5 

This girl was hard to analyse because half of her photos didn’t upload properly but from these two photos we managed to get quite accurate observations. Our group thought she was quite a “girly girl” as she was wearing nice floral patterns. It is clear she has had a good upbringing and loves her family as from the first photo it seems like a family outing showing they like to spend a lot of quality time together. Although this is all we said she agreed with all our findings.

I really enjoyed this task as we did manage to reveal a lot about 5 people with just a few photos and it was fun guessing who was who. I think everyone could have got more information with a few extra photos and it seemed that the photos of bedrooms were easier to make observations with than the childhood photos. 

Border Crossings

A few weeks out of Art College and I was actually dying to get back and actually do things!  At first it was a mixture of confusion and excitment. The brief is all about my identity and culture and that of students in Texas and Ljubljani. After A LOT of time making mind maps I discovered Im quite confused about certain parts of my identity, or you could say it’s quite split.

   I looked into how I was born in Chicago and lived in North Carolina for 5 years, to moving to the smallest village in Scotland ever! Lochfoot, in Dumfries and Galloway. I feel this represents my personality as im quiet and loud, sporty and arty.. basically I’ve always struggled to pick certain things that shaped me. Sports, Art, music of all genres, friends all with such different personalities. My friend Anna put this best with “social chameleon” I quite like that I love the city and country equally and so for this 2 week project im researching my city life and my country life and things that interested me in both. 

angel bear

Before Christmas I was talking to my friend David about what we were getting for Christmas, which led on to how his gran knits bears for children who do not get presents or are in hospital and many other situations. I was really impressed by this way of charity and David told his gran I thought it was a really thoughtful thing to do. To my surprise yesterday David said he had a present for me.. an angelbear knitted by his lovely gran!  Heres the link if you want to know more about this charity http://www.angelbear.org.uk/index.html 

Where to start..

Just finished trying to squeeze all my presents into my suitcase to get back to Dundee, it took quite a lot of skill to squueze in all the art things I got! 6 pots to keep colour scraps in and dyes, lots of masking tape, white fabric, knitting kit, sewing kit, paints, paintbrushes, sketchbooks, tonnes of felt and so much more stuff! Just incredibly happy that I finally have a massive leaf press so that i dont have to flatten the crazy amounts of leaves I gather up with books!  After a long break of doing absolutely nothing I’m actually looking forward to get back to art college!