Contextmapping in East Asia
During my master I did an extra-curricular explorative research about the development of new tools and techniques to elicit East Asian participants to express themselves (van Rijn et al. 2006, van Rijn and Stappers, 2007).
I did this research together with Yoonnyong Bahk, a student from the Human Centred Interaction Design Laboratory of KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute for Science and Technology).
Based on literature research on cultural differences between the West and the East and interviews with East Asian master students at the TU Delft, new tools and techniques were developed especially for Asia. These techniques were brought into practise in South Korea. This study served as magnifying glass for gaining better knowledge and understanding on methods to facilitate personal expression in contextmapping studies.
Expect for building on the relationship with participants on several ways, we developed the tools I list below.
Kibun
In South Korea the concept of Kibun relates to mood, current feeling and state of mind. A tangible object called Kibun is made to guide turn taking in group conversations. It can be seen as a microphone for expressing emotions. The participant who holds Kibun has the authority to speak, while others listen.
YES or NO Game
Participants reply to statements presented by the facilitator by means of putting a yes or no card individually and anonymously into a box. After everybody has entered a card, votes are publicly counted and participants are invited to express the story behind their vote. The story is not judged on content and there are no rules of how many participants can tell a story.
Nunchi t-shirt
I wore a t-shirts with the overprint ‘I have no nunchi’ written in Korean. This means: ‘I am not as aware of situations and relations between people as you are’. This modesty puts users in the position of expert and gives the facilitator more social freedom to pose questions, even seemingly obvious ones. Also it loosens the atmosphere, since it is humorous.
Period: September 2005 – March 2006