For our seminar this week, we discussed the results from this weeks assignment; The Design Safari. Three of us went to two different shopping centres in Dundee; the Wellgate and the Overgate. We talked about our experiences, the people we observed and the stories we could make up about people; the tale of the lesser toed single mother turned lesbian being er, a Natalia specialty! I'd actually like to go and follow someone for the day, make up a name and a life for them, based perhaps on the things they buy and what they'd tell you about them? They would essentially be a blank canvas for you to manipulate any way you saw fit. You'd need to be fairly subtle to follow a person for the amount of time you'd need to make up their story, hence why this may not be the best idea for me! Time to whip out those dark sunglasses ...
Don't think the shopping centres were the best idea for people watching - there's a limited amount of information you can gather on a person in the 3 seconds it takes them to walk past you. Unless they have an extra leg. Or a very humorous walk. If we knew this before we'd done it, we would have opted for a train station or bus station; someplace that emotions would be more obvious, goodbyes and hellos, harassed parents, students lugging backpacks from whichever parts of the country they're zooming off to. Plus, there'd be people waiting around for other passengers or for a bus/train to arrive, so you'd have more of an opportunity to study them, whereas you only get a glimpse of someone pacing past you in a shopping centre.
Doing something like this makes me ponder what people passing me must think of me. I tend to have a very serious face (constantly being told to cheer up; it may never happen ... well, obviously it has freakin' well happened if I'm wandering around looking like this!) and no doubt I must look a miserable git to passers by! If I don't know someone well, or feed off their nervousness around me, I become very quiet and reserved - quite unlike how I am around any of my friends or family, and it makes me wonder; after a 10 minute meeting with me, how do people perceive me?
In terms of relating it to my own discipline, I think this method will make me observe a person more closely; what do their movements and body language give away about their character? I’d focus on that quite strongly, because like me, I know that to someone who knows nothing about me, I’d come off completely different to how I am. I think I could manipulate this method, because you can tell plenty about a person by their clothes/makeup/hair because these are all methods of self expression and can usually take a relative stab at their music taste, interests and possibly in some cases, their sexuality as well; you just have to be selective in what assumptions you make. For instance; if a person wears trainers, it doesn’t necessarily make them a chav. They could be someone who practises a sport, or prefer them purely from a comfort perspective. We judge people on a daily basis, not necessarily fairly, but there’s no denying it. You just have to be fairer and more objective to use it in a beneficial way.
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