Blog post 10: The ‘Task 3’ Journey

Based on my research journey I had a very distinct idea of the area of my topic I wished to explore further coming into task 3. My research had led me to question something that had appeared in my task from the very first blog post.

I wanted to explore this idea of language and how we selectively choose language, which more subversively shapes our views. Language is also extremely powerful in how it creates these verbal boundaries between people such as us, them or alien. This carefully curated language is what starts to dehumanize a group that is removed from us an unable to tell there own story.

It is almost as opinion leaders like the media and political leaders start to define boundaries through language that the general public becomes more complacent with such language adoption and therefore the subversive meanings of grouping and separating people. From reading the news articles, statements by politicians and discussing this topic with people from opposing sides of the arguments surrounding asylum seekers that you can start to differentiate the language that shape bigger ideas. This plays into ideas of how we associate of a human level to asylum seekers, there right to our land or the right to come to our land.

Originally with task 3 I wanted to attack the problem head on and this idea of the rumor mill where half-truths develop into truths. I wanted to address the misconceptions and half-truths that develop at their source. With this challenge my goal was to create a twitter bot that analyzed isolated language and replied to tweet correcting misused language such as illegal alien in an effort of help re-humanizing asylum seekers. After discussions with Tom left the conclusion that a twitter bot was to clinical and detached making my aim of humanization counteractive.

From here I went back to square 1. Really analyze what I was trying to express in language. This is what brought me back to the articles and an observation I had made about evocative and descriptive language.

Through sound data visualization I have chosen key stakeholders that have played a pivotal role in shaping the public opinion of asylum seekers. These people include Tony Abbot, Peter Dutton, The Australian and The Herald. Creating a database of all language and its frequency used by each individual stakeholder will be recorded. This will be the basis for a verbal iteration; in which the data will be read out. The words will be ranked in order to their isolative and both negative nature. Through a motion graphic using faces of asylum seekers each piece will be labelled by its maker, for example Tony Abbot. With each word that is spoken the face will be visually stroked out with a black line connoting the idea of redacted text which it about the censorship of language. The message of this piece is a representation of how the voice of the asylum seekers is not heard but their story and the media and politicians have shaped who they are which help shape these misconceptions.

In particular this project is about creating mindfulness through awareness of language and its subversive power in shaping opinion and therefore is aimed at being an accessible public piece.

Caitlin Kerr

Post 10: Concept on Concept

REFLECTION

Since presenting my draft proposal and my other ideas last week to both the tutors and my colleagues, it was great to get feedback and be able to be steered into a clearer position for my proposition.

 

Initially, I had a handful of ideas and not much to go on from there. From speaking to my colleagues and showing them my key points, they preferred the ‘Borders’ idea in testing 18-24 year old’s knowledge of where key locations regarding refugees were. Example questions would include: Please point to where you believe Manus Island is/Nauru/etc., and see how educated our youth are by going past the surface of the issue. I recorded their feedback in dot points:

• Further draw on the ‘Border’ idea on what is open, and what is not
• Look up the Passport Index for design example where it shows you what countries you can visit and receive a visa, from high to low. Syria, Iran and Afghanistan have the fewest opportunities to travel.
• Research on who is permitted through the borders of Australia
• Manus Island and Nauru plot example
• Point out how little we understand on this topic
• See how terminology usage has changed and developed over time. E.g. ‘migrants’, ‘asylum seekers’ and ‘refugees’

Their feedback was great and although I loved their preference to the Borders concept, I felt like it could be pushed further also. I also took the chance to go back and read through all my blog posts, pick out key points and reoccurring themes to reflect on what I gravitated to with the issue of Refugees and Asylum Seekers. This included themes associated with education, children and stereotyping. From there I did another brainstorm, this time keeping the 18-24 audience in mind, to see if I could create anything further along with the ‘Borders’ idea.

NEW CONCEPT

I came up with a new concept that I will propose in class this week. It relates quite well with my previous blog posts and draws on my perspectives and passions for this issue. I’ve named it ‘Cut & Paste’ which will look into Service Design Practice, and focus on informing  the youth and reminding them to choose their news sources wisely as their education is a choice from the age of 18 – whether or not they decide to enrol in tertiary study. The strong bias held within news media in Australia and social media news sites can seem to steer from the real truth of refugees and Australia. From this project, the ideal outcome would be to highlight how news media sites have control over perceptions of a range of topics – along with refugees. There seems to be some sort of gap between the public’s perception of refugees; with both political parties, and the Australian public, polarising the issue.

Design action would start by surveying the 18-24 audience and asking what their main source of everyday news is, from a range of newspapers to social media sources. From there, I will analyse the most frequently visited websites and analyse their perceptions of refugees from previous articles, as well as pull keywords and recurring themes from the stories to construct a refugee persona.

I’m not too sure if this idea is too complicated as the ‘Borders’ idea sounds a lot more simpler and easier to survey, but I will present both to the class and see what they think. Reflecting from this and my previous posts, it has been really insightful being able to research this topic for a full semester and drawing your own perspectives and interests into this project.

BLOG 10 — Reflection & Proposal

Poppy Rodrigues 

 

Discussing my revised proposal to my colleague today was definitely a helpful task in raising issues which I had not yet come across. There were still a few areas in my revision which were a little hazy, however, talking about these clarified some doubts that I had and allowed me to define my idea a little more. I came to the realisation that I need to remember that I am targeting a young age group…it was easy for me to trail off from this one or two times. Due to this I also need to review how I target 18-24 year-olds in todays society, a clear direction would be social media yet in my case I still need to determine how I target those who are uninterested in refugees to better educate them so I get my message across. Another point made was to think about using hashtags to reach a wider social platform; this is something to re-evaluate once I refine the final proposal. I also need to keep in mind that I cannot rely on providing facts as research shows this does not always change peoples mindsets and I think with such strong divides on the topic this is a major consideration I will have to make.

Revised Proposal:

Project Title — Undecided at this point in time.

Practice Type — Generative System

The Issue — An increasing number of Australian’s are backing the rejection of refugees and asylum seekers and more recently are voicing their views in being anti-muslim. From my research it is evident that the opinions of these people come from those uneducated about the religion and are only willing to accept the negative. It all comes down to fear.

In a new polling released Wednesday 21st September 2016 found “that 49 per cent of people support a ban on Muslims coming to Australia, compared to 40 per cent who oppose a ban. (The remaining 11 per cent weren’t sure either way.) Young people aged 18-24 were the most likely to oppose a ban on Muslim immigration. Fifty-eight per cent of young people opposed a ban, compared with 28 per cent who supported it. Respondents of the 1000-person survey, undertaken by polling company Essential, were most concerned about Muslims not integrating to the Australian way of life or failing to share Australian values. Just over one in four who support a ban were also worried about terrorism.” (Shalailah Medhora 2016)

The Possible Change — To adapt a generative system which combines those with anti-muslim views and refugees living in Australia, particularly those of muslim decent to create either an indirect or direct connection which educates those with negative outlooks and aims to show how the integration would be of benefit to Australia.

The Design Action to Support Change — The aim of my generative system which is also an experimental process is to identify the fear that Australians hold against the muslim culture and develop a system which can better educate the religion to de-generalise the notion of fear within these people. This may mean breaking down islamic society in its simplest form.

By using social media analytics to track down the people that use key words and phrases which are negative, pop-up advertisements will appear and display factual information to hopefully shift the perception of these people. I can also include analytics and flash cookies from pages such as patriot sites which track the target market. Once the desired audience have been targeted and the advertisements are displayed, the user can click onto a link which will redirect them to a website. This website will be the platform in which negative users can discuss diplomatic opinions and  more importantly, a place where muslims can share their stories (videos included) to hopefully enlighten the negativity and support change.

 

Shalailah Medhora 2016, One in two Australians want a ban on Muslim immigration, poll finds, Triple J Hack, viewed 23 September 2016, <http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/half-of-australia-wants-muslim-ban/7865630>

Post Ten Reflection and proposition

Being the final project , I wanted to create something that really creates awareness in the refugee issue which we are facing in Australia right now. From all the reading and research that I’ve accumulated so far, I have decided upon creating a calendar. 

From the social media research I have gathered that people only take a few seconds scrolling through different topics and only stay on the topic and trends which interest them, from this we can assume that 80-90% of the social media users would not take more then 5 seconds on “refugee” related topics, I don’t blame them , why read about actual problems where you can watch a cat video right? 

This got me thinking if the average attention spam is only at around a few seconds, then I need to create a product that targets that kind of a mind set and use it to my benefits. I have decided to create the traditional “Rip Off” type of calendar where you have to physically turn the day or rip the page off at the end of each day. 

I want to tell the story of refugee through day to day short sketches, the problems they are facing and the solution which could solve the problem. being a day to day colander it gives me 365 individual pages to create the story. maybe the 1st few pages might not really make any sense to the user. but one months into the year the user will gain more awareness and eventually looking forwards to flipping the page and know more about the refugee. 

Just a few seconds a day , the time it takes to pull a page off the calendar will have a tremendous impact at the end, after all few seconds a day x 356 days = 30 mins + of viewing time. this resulted in a much higher view time then any other media. a short animation would only take 1 minute , a poster might take up to 30 seconds of viewing time, but regardless of what media you choose majority of the viewer would forget parts if not all the relevant information of what you were just being subjected to. 

I believe that continues small dose of information is a more appropriate way of targeting today’s audience. 

Post 10: Reflection & proposition – Asylum seekers and refugees

Reflection

There’s a special time each semester when I just completely lose it. This week was that special time.

Blog Post 10: Drafting my draft final proposal (draft)

Reflection & Proposal
In our last lesson I ran through the initial stages of my final proposal. With assistance from my classmates and tutor I managed to finalise a problem statement and the direction for my final project. I got positive feedback regarding my area of interest and have thus begun thinking about how to visualise the project. My issue is centred on promoting the voices of people in offshore detention, emphasising their narratives using original content from social media platforms and in turn, enforcing a sense of connection and tangibility to these narratives. To maintain a focus on the stories of people in offshore immigration centres, the piece will focus on language, in particular through unadulterated and self-directed refugee stories. I will contrast these stories with mainstream media narratives and official statements given by the Australian government. This lends itself to a generative printed project resolved using typographic detailing. It was suggested that I might want to use older projects from last year to influence my resolve, for example the book TL;DR. Using this idea of a publication design, I’ve furthered the resolve into a newspaper format, reinforcing notions of the media and how it influences public perception.

Revised Proposal

Project title: Voices in Manus

Practice type: Poetic Generative Data

Problem Statement:
Since the early 2000s, the Australian government and the media have politicised refugees and asylum seeker issues. Our government and legal system have engendered a societal complacency on these issues, through the introduction of mandatory offshore processing, an effective media blackout within the detention centres, and other measures that place the plight of refugees outside of the public spotlight. Our media, often depicting asylum seekers as ‘swarms’ and ‘masses’, has successfully alienated their experience from Australian society, to the point where the majority of Australians believe that they are unworthy of our help. If racist attitudes towards those seeking asylum aren’t challenged, these attitudes will continue to proliferate and become further normalised amongst a larger proportion of the community.

Possible change:
In my project I hope to shift public perception and attitudes towards refugee and asylum seekers by focusing on refugees’ subjectivity, recognising and acknowledging the sense of identity that has been robbed from them. To achieve this I will be exploring ways to visualise and compare the stories of people in offshore immigration detention with official statements and comments from prominent members of the Australian government, who have shaped this issue in the past few decades. The resolve will be in the form of a publication design. I will be exploring how to visualise key messages through various typographic techniques, and a range of materials. The power in this project lies in creating a sense of tangibility to the experiences of refugees, who are too often overlooked and sidelined. It therefore aims engage an audience that might otherwise be disinterested or disengaged from the issue.

Image Reference:
Wallman, S, A Guard’s Tale (2014)

Post 10: Hope and determination

By Erland Howden

Design proposition

Title: Hope & determination

Practice: Data visualisation and generative design

Issue: Asylum seekers and refugees

Possible change: Targeted at changing Australian attitudes toward asylum seekers and demonstrating to decision-makers, such as the Immigration Minister, that significant support exists in the Australian community for a change to more welcoming and compassionate policies around asylum seeker claims and resettlement of refugees.

Design action: A poster series to be distributed to local pro-refugee organisations that highlights one person or family each who has resettled or is claiming asylum in Australia. The posters would display an image representing the asylum seeker and an aspect of the person’s story chosen to engender compassion and empathy in the audience, with a clear message advocating a change in asylum seeker policy.

The scholarly research I conducted has strongly influenced this design proposal. One paper in particular investigated determinants of attitudes to asylum seekers and suggested that, “encouraging people to adopt a macro justice perspective may be a useful addition to community interventions.” (Anderson et al 2015) With this in mind, the policy change messages for the poster series would be designed to prompt a macro justice perspective. For example, they might include phrases along the lines of, ‘everyone deserves a chance to live in safety.’

The posters fit into the emergent practice of data visualisation in that they apply designerly thinking to visualise the data of asylum seeker stories, which have been collected by organisations such as the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and GetUp, or published by news organisations such as The Guardian. Further to this, there is another element to my proposal that brings in an aspect of generative design – the poster series would also incorporate a template design that local pro-refugee organisations could use to highlight the stories of refugees and asylum seekers they are directly working with. In this way, the design proposition becomes something that applies research to create communications more likely to change attitudes, while being localised and as relevant as possible to the audience.

Feedback

In discussing this proposal, the key feedback I received was around fleshing out the generative aspect of the proposal. Originally, I just wanted to create a strict template and guidelines for the poster, but since discussing the proposal with my group, I’ve been exploring ways to make the generative aspect more open and able to accommodate more diverse outcomes. For example, rather than creating a strict guide for photographic portraits, I was thinking that space could be created for a variety of images that might represent the person whose story is being told, like an artwork they created or an alternative photographic treatment. Additionally, rather than a strict print poster series, which might have limited uptake from under-resourced community organisations, I’ve been considering a digital template which could be used on websites and social media that delivers the same outcome in different media.

 

Featured image: US Department of Defense 1975, ‘South China Sea’, US National Archives / Flickr, viewed 27 September 2016, <https://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/23123589306 >.

Anderson, J.R., Stuart, A. & Rossen, I. 2015, ‘Not all negative: Macro justice principles predict positive attitudes towards asylum seekers in Australia’, Australian Journal of Psychology, vol. 67, no. 4, pp. 207-213.

POST 10: Reflection and proposition

Reflection:

In this week, I have share my draft proposal to my peer and tutor, my draft proposal is to create a online study app for refugees children, this app can provide education to refugees children who are lost education. My peer and tutor give me many good feedback, my peer has discuss with me about how to make my proposal positive, she told me I can make a big data map about how many refugees lost education in the world, that can be a shock news to reminding audience refugees children education is very important issue in the word, people should pay more attention on this issue, to engaging 18 – 25 ages  group students become a volunteer to help refugees children, students know how to effective study a new knowledge, their can share helpful skills to help refugees students. Feedbacks from my tutor also most important to my proposal, before I did not  really sure how dose my design process work, because I was very confused does refugees children have internet to access online course, my tutor has answered this issue, and give some help ideas to help my development my final proposal.

I get some inspiration from my peer and tutor, in my proposal, I want change the media platform app to website, because does not every refugees children have phone to download app. However, the website can be used in many platform, such as a group refugees children can study together use one display screen, so that can solve the problem of lack of displayer resources.

Proposal

Project name: ELO( E-Learning Online)

Project type: service design

The issue: most of the refugees children lost their education in the Australia

the possible change and the design action to support change:

My proposal is to design a website which can help refugees and asylum seekers children study online, my target audience are refugees children and 18 – 25 ages students, based on my research, only half refugees children enrolled in primary education, 25 per cent are estimated to be in secondary school and just one per cent have access to tertiary education. My design challenge is to encourage youth students use their knowledge to help refugees children get education, education is  important, it can provide access to life-saving information, and provide a stable and safe environment for refugees and asylum seekers, it also helps people to rebuild their new life communities.

This website is provide online study, it has a class timetable on the website, and each week the website will update a new class timetable. Refugees children can choose to what course their want learn, and based on the timetable to attendance online course. One the weekend, refugees children can choose to replay the course video, restudy what knowledge their do not understander. Also they can depend on subject to choose volunteers to one by one solve questions to refugees children.

The volunteers can get a timetable which depend on their own choice of subject and time, the website system automatic generation interactive teaching schedule, during this time, volunteers need to solve the problems of refugees children have encountered in their study. Volunteers can get a certificate of  complete a period of teaching  course.

The possible change of my issue is this website can provide education to refugees children and my  audience can get special experience of their life,  the Australia government can gain the trust of refugees and asylum seekers.

Post 10 —Reflection and Proposition

REFLECTION

It’s funny how I felt quite confident before pitching my original proposal to my group member and tutor… and then the complete opposite after feedback. I explained my original two proposals: the first about a two books that acted as a representation of public attitudes (based on the very strong for/against attitudes found from my twitter data research). It would be presented in an official government document format to policy makers — the pro-refugee book would be obnoxiously thick to illustrate that majority of Australians (on Twitter) disagree with current refugee policies. Initially, I thought it was simple but embodied and interesting visual metaphor of public attitudes. However, after class discussions, I realised that it didn’t really serve a purpose — the book would be made and then no-one would really see it. Another flaw was that even during the data scraping exercise in week 5, I found that the Twitter results were not an accurate or very valid representation of Australian attitudes as it only reflects a tiny percentage of the public (those who use social media to voice their outrage/views). It would also be impossible to go through thousands of tweets and categorise them into those that are for or against current refugee policies.

I also presented another proposal that encourages people to consider alternative perspectives, rather than just using bias information to support their attitudes. I explained that I could design a twitterbot that would [attempt to] distinguish attitudes based on wording and hashtags used in tweets (i.e illegal, #stoptheboats, #letthemstay). It would then match these with a tweet that presents the opposite stance on the issue, encouraging a conversation where the two parties gain a bit of perspective from each other… However, realistically speaking, I highly doubt that this concept would result in peaceful, civil conversations, especially considering it is using a social network renown for trolling, abuse and obscene language. Rather than encouraging empathy and understanding, it would most likely create more conflict.

After a few days of anxious despair due to not having a solid concept, I began brainstorming and discussing possibilities with a peer from another class who was researching a different issue. I found this to have been one of the most beneficial brainstorming sessions as I was conversing with someone who didn’t know what I had been researching and focusing on. I realise that I had been stubbornly holding on to this idea of having some sort of metaphoric concept that responded to the big picture of the issue. Rather, I should have tried focusing on a specific area of my research, one in which I could actually have the potential to change. I found it helped to revisited the reflections I made from previous exercises, particularly the notions of changing attitudes in a positive way and encouraging a sense of understanding.

During my brainstorming session, my peer also suggested that rather than just identifying the problem, why not try to mediate it. The problem has already been established and it is well known that many people have conflicting attitudes, so why not try to find a common ground of reconciliation. This notion was also previously considered in one of the 5 possibilities listed in Post 8, suggesting I aim to build long-term relationships between the Australian public and refugees. I found that service design would be the most effective response to this possibility as people will be actively involved in sharing an experience with others and creating lasting emotional connections with them. 

CULTURAL FUSION FETIVAL PROPOSITION

As the gap between the Australian community and refugees continues to escalate, so do tensions, conflict and negative attitudes towards each other. A lack of understanding and ignorance seems to be driving these people apart, focusing on how vastly different their backgrounds are, rather than embracing them. Thus I propose to design a service/campaign that surrounds the notion of a cultural market/festival. This festival acts as a space for an exchange of personal and cultural art, craft workshops, books, food, music, performance and stories. The Cultural Fusion Festival can be held once a week at various schools, which also alludes to educating everyone about different cultures, values  and backgrounds. Schools are also associated with family orientated events, thus encourages positive and friendly attitudes. Flyers and brochures will be sent to households, local businesses, schools and refugee NGOs to inform them about the event. Posters will also be put up around the community, encouraging people of all race, gender, age and religion to join. The refugee festival ultimately encourages people share their background and embrace the backgrounds of others, thus demonstrating the benefits and enjoyments of multiculturalism.

This proposal responds to my research regarding empathy and how those who are so far separated from other parties, find it difficult to understand and relate with them. I found that it would be impossible to create a universally recognised system that could somehow overcome conflict and bigotry. Thus, I found it would be more constructive to focus on making a large impact on small scale — this then has the potential to expand to a larger market/audience.

My research also reinforced that there is no single solution that could satisfy all clashing attitudes within this issue. Thus, rather than trying to find a ‘solution’, I am attempting to change the attitudes. I have found that emotions are a primary actor for change as they have the ability to influence other attitudes, authority figures and policies/outcomes. Therefore, by  creating a physical space where resettled refugees and the Australian community can enter and engage with each other, they are enabled to really identify with others on a much more emotional level.

Variety of ethnic food stalls.

Different kinds of foreign music.

POST 10: Reflection and proposition

During several weeks since week 6 and specially week 7, I have a better and stronger idea within my proposition, clearer about my visual design and extra feedback from classmates and tutor for the proposition that lead to the final idea.

About my draft proposition, the whole idea that I want to deliver and focus onto is the lack of information within Australia about the asylum seekers. A piece of design that could possibly using something realistic to make it a solid statement, a solid piece of design. As interview asylum seekers, to get a better understanding and record the experienced they went through since the very first days they arrived Australia. Through social media, I able to collected information from leaked footages, video tapes from the asylum seekers in Nauru, about the way they got treat which is against the human rights. Further research will be continue as following to the final design.

Project title: SPEAK UP!

Tag line: human right, everyone deserved !

Practice Type: Visual Design

Issue: Lack of information, asylum seekers.

The amount of information produce from the government about the asylum seekers, specially the people (teenage) age from 18 – 24 have a lack of knowledge about the asylum seekers, which lead to a misunderstanding.

Target Audience: Australia, for everyone that living within this country would have the right to know, to understand. For people from different genders and ages.

Possible Change: Government will take more action base on the human right for the asylum seekers visited Australia.
Design action:

While boasting we are a ‘multicultural nation’ since the 1970s, Australia’s apparent inherent acceptance of asylum seekers is even enshrined in the second verse of our national anthem, Advance Australia Fair.

To develop a piece of visual design to deliver message to the audience, to deliver the information, the truth behind the asylum seekers. The visual design will be focus into “reality” and “truth” by using data I’ve been collecting since week 6 from social media, reality and real victims. Every piece of data I provide within the design will be truth and solid message to could reach out to the audience easily.

Smith, H. (2013). A Comprehensive History of Australia & Asylum Seekers | Grassroots. [online] Seeseeeye.csu.edu.au.<Viewed Sep. 2016> http://seeseeeye.csu.edu.au/grassroots/a-comprehensive-history-of-australia-asylum-seekers/?gclid=CjwKEAjwjqO_BRDribyJpc_mzHgSJABdnsFW3aV1yeaJMTQWfCjra3YLc07FgoC7z6QqQADB-C3LWxoCzAbw_wcB.

POST 9: Visual documentation of the brainstorming session

 

After blog post 8, everyone developing base on their issue and brainstorm ideas for the proposition, but after that we start working together as a group as collaborating the idea and issue occurred.

As a group we started to discuss again about our stake holder and the possibility outcome from the proposition from each person. As our issue is based on the asylum seekers and it quite similar to each other so we decided to listed out the most possibly stakeholder and problem or ideas would occur.

After the brainstorming session, we talked to each other about our proposition, as the feedback I got about the visual image (poster) would be a very strong piece of design that could deliver the message directly to the audience but the weakness with in my design is how lay out the image clearly and it has to be suitable for people within different kind of gender, age. Therefore, collecting data is the most important within this proposition because the stronger the message the better outcome the audience will be receive.

Post 8: Brainstorming possibilities for a design response

After last week research and find data visualisation about asylum seekers, based on social media, as a group we start brainstorming ideas about asylum seekers with individual statement. At looking back into my previous blog posts and I desire to start develop on visual design that would present the statement about the slack of information within Australia from social media to the asylum seekers. By using realistic quotes from the victims, the comments from social people, the outcome possibly is to raise the awareness of the society.

 

By brainstorming exercise with 5 ‘Wh” questions to get the draft ideas and for further develop our statement.

 

The problem: Lack of information, asylum seekers.

 

Who does the problem affect?

 The asylum seekers, there are the “victims”, the people that strongly getting affected, specially the people who are staying the Nauru, Christmas Island, …Women, children, teenage, elders, …

 

What are the boundaries of the problem?

 The fear from the Government, that would lead people living within Australia miss understanding about the Government static and for security bounder as well. The fear of the power of the internet, but still, video tapes and information still leak out, but in general is still banned.

 

When does the problem occur? When does it need to be fixed?

 The problem started few years ago, since the day the Australia Government signed a contract with other countries like Indonesia, Nauru… and start sending the asylum seekers away and the since years lately after a few leaked information, so this need to be fix ASAP.

 

Where is the problem occur?

The problem occurs everywhere, around the world, but specially focusing on Australia. Where ever the asylum seekers located.

 

Why is it important?

This is a very important issue because everyone has the right to be freedom, the right to talk, to free their ideas, but the Government within Nauru (for example) banned the victims from media, social network and staying in “jail” which is they called it refugee camp. As Australia is such a peaceful country, at least we have the right to know about the asylum seekers, where they sent to, how’s they living…

 

Problem statement

Develop a visual image that could raise the awareness for the people living in Australia, to change, to talk about the human rights for the asylum seekers.

 

Five points summary:

 

1. Develop a visual poster by using quotes of the victims from leaked video tapes.
2. Create a visual image of people as a victims and the Australian citizen together, combine them as illustrated image to raise higher notice.
3. Create images by using quotes about the asylum seekers to make a portrait image.
4. Collecting data from reality society about their opinion on the issue occurring.
5. A service that can be designed as an app that can be used for everyone that interesting in news and footage about the asylum seekers, can be donate and sharing their opinions.

 

Draft Proposal:

Issue: Lack of information, asylum seekers.

Target Audience: People living in Australia.

Visual Response: Visual poster.

After I went through the five points summary about the issue I desire to work along and develop a piece of visual image, creating a poster that could represent the asylum seekers, to remind and raise the awareness to people. By using their images and quotes to present the idea within the poster. Could be change as moving on the following weeks, but the main material still will be illustrated images piece.

I will directly focus on the main point, which is the asylum seekers as the centre of attention I want to delivery within the design. The visual image, hopefully the best and easiest way to delivery to the audience, which is a strong and solid peace of material, hopefully can be used for anywhere around the world, not just focusing within Australia.

post 10: Behind the scene

I miss the brainstorm session on developing a proposal, so I didn’t get any feedback about my proposal. But I have talked about my idea to the tutor, I have some positive feedback from it.

Revised Proposition:

Behind the scene

campaign/participatory design

In this information era sharing and getting information are at your finger tips, and share you opinions and show support for a certain issue. But what we see and hear from the internet newspaper is not always the truth, the government manipulated the media platform spread the information to us and shape our perception to suit their needs.

issue: people use different social platforms such as twitter, Facebook and Instagram to express their negative and positive opinions about the refugees and asylum seekers. However, all these opinion doesn’t really help the refugees and asylum seekers, on the other hand all these information confuse and cover up what refugees and asylums seekers are facing when they want to come to Australia.

What if there is a campaign that involves refugees in Australia and Australia public, that they can get to know each other and discover what is really happening to those refugees and Asylum seekers?

solution: I am proposing a campaign that will be happening around different big cities in Australia, so it can get much attention as possible. This campaign will be operated by refugees and asylum seekers in Australia. This way Australians can experience their unique personality and maybe change their perception towards refugees and asylum seekers.

This campaign will start spontaneously around Australia, start in Sydney CBD. During this campaign there will be a site created to mimic the situation all the refugees and asylum seekers have been through, such as check points and refugee camps. A volunteer which will be in refugee background will take people through with explanation of different situation, also their personal experience as a refugee. At the end of the trip the worker will ask the people to take a photo with them to post on social media to spread the words, to let more people know about this event.

The aim of this campaign is to rise the awareness and change public perception towards refugee and asylum seekers, hope that by changing public perception can affect government’s action toward refugees and asylum seekers.

post 9: Visual documentation of the brainstorming session

 

Through this semester we have done tons of different mind maps and brainstorming during class time, but the topic is always very broad. This brainstorming session is build on our sub issue in a group of four. This time we are developing the specific problems statement and possible response to the issue.

I wasn’t here during that session so i asked my group member to send me the maps they have done.

During the brainstorm session my group did brainstorms around:

The “attitudes towards refugees”

That is what I want to focus on as well so this mind map really helps me to generate idea so I can develop further.

Blog Post 10:Reflection and Proposition

Over the last two weeks, I feel like my ideas for the design proposition has changed quite a bit from the original ideas I had from earlier blog posts. I had been thinking over about basing my research on finding out the resettling process from the perspective of refugees and asylum seekers, thinking about possibly figuring out a way to map their emotional state and matching it with key stories via primary research. But although I had been fascinated with this idea, mapping the emotional response and relying on the visual representation to evoke empathy seemed rather too static for the general audience.

So I went back to the previous blog posts (post 8 and 9), to rethink over some of the design proposal ideas I pitched out. The two ideas I was interested in was the service design aiming to connect Australian individuals and refugees on a more intimate level – something akin to a social forum, and the second idea was looking into generative design, focusing on gathering data from the current Australian public in regards to their current knowledge/opinion/stance over the refugee crisis and turning the collected data into a visual representation.

However I felt like these ideas I generated didn’t quite address my problem statement to an appropriate depth, more like just scraping the surface of the problem. So instead of being fixated on the previous design ideas I had pitched out, I decided again to take another step back and take a further look at the generated problem statements and tried to come up with new concept ideas. Breaking down the statements/questions, I defined them into two core concerns:

1. Raising awareness
2. Assisting resettlement / transition process – creating safe space.

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Design Proposal

Project: Stories for Us

Practice: Campaign / Generative Design System

Issue: The low level of awareness, interest and engagement amongst the younger Australian audience (aged 18 – 25) is contributing to the slow alienation of the resettled refugees struggling to find their place in a foreign and indifferent environment. The project aims to encourage active awareness among this demographic and further contribute towards developing a safe space for the refugees in an emotional, social and physical context.

Possible Change: The campaign/service design will encourage the audience to learn more about the cultures of the participating refugees and asylum seekers, breaking down stigma and barriers instilled by the media in their fear mongering and political propaganda. By building friendship between individuals in the local neighbourhood, both parties will cultivate a sense of ‘safe space’ together starting from their homes.

Design Action to Support Change: This design proposal aim to breakdown social barriers between Australians and refugees through storytelling workshops conducted in a comfortable environment. Australian volunteers will be helping refugees to learn more about the English language, and together they will be writing a narrative that explores and reflects common values between them. These stories will be presented quarterly, and at the end of the year from each local community they will be voting in one narrative to be compiled into a book for Australia’s domestic release, sharing the collaborated works between the young people with the rest of the Australian audience to raise further awareness and break down harmful assumptions spread by the media. Through this proposal, both parties (Australians and refugees) will be able to learn more about each other’s culture first hand without the intrusion of third party influence.

Post 10: Reflection and proposition

By Olivia Tseu-Tjoa

Feedback on initial design proposition

At this stage, my design proposition was not fully formed. I hadn’t entirely settled on the practice type or even an idea. Talking with my peer, discussing our research, our insights over the weeks and design examples we came across, the difficulty of targeting 18-24 year olds. Considering feedback from my tutor, it was still too vague and broad. It needed to be “specific but simple” and potentially something that is universal. She liked the idea of amplification, mentioning the strategy of ‘amplification’ by female aides working for US President Obama. Women would repeat each other’s ideas while giving credit in meetings, ensuring that their ideas would be heard in male dominated spaces. Needless to say, at this point it needed a lot of refining.

Revised proposition

“Asylum seekers are not free to speak to the media, to explain their situations, points of view, or motivations. In the absence of any power to create their own narrative, asylum seekers are beholden to the narrative created around them by others.” (Doherty 2015)

Project title: ‘Why Are You Here?/Hear me/Listen to Me’ (subject to change)

Practice type: Generative systems/service design

Keywords: Poetic, Thought-provoking, Confronting, informative, emotive

The issue: Refugee voices are underrepresented in the public discourse surrounding the debate about asylum seekers in Australia. This can lead to misinformation, dehumanisation and a lack of awareness/empathy in the general public. Due to this lack of representation, they are seen as this disembodied entity of ‘illegals’ or ‘boat people’. They are unable to convey their own opinions or stories. Instead, their narratives are created and controlled by others and as a result they are silenced.

The possible change: A chance to reframe the discussion about asylum seekers and amplify refugee voices. Bringing refugee voices to the forefront, allowing young Australians to hear these voices in public spaces and take control of their own narratives. It would encourage a more empathic approach and tone to the debates surrounding refugees in Australia.

The design action to support change: 

Targeting the demographic of 18 to 24 year olds Australians, the service will involve an app for smartphones or tablets where users can access a database of voice recordings by refugees who have settled in Australia. Inspired by audio storytelling forms such as ‘This American Life’ or ‘The Moth’, it is an oral archive of audio pieces which reveal their unique and personal experiences, their life in Australia, their thoughts and aspirations. Stories could be shocking, funny, intimate, dark or optimistic – it is entirely up to the storyteller. A photo of the storyteller and a small bio, caption of audio piece would accompany these stories. These recordings can vary in length: from 30 second snippets to 5 minutes and above. The stories can be filtered by categories, such as the person’s country of origin. Users have the ability to favourite and share stories they like through social media platforms, thereby giving these personal stories more prominence. This could also be extended into an interactive website. The main aim of the project would be creating a platform for former refugees and their experiences/opinions to reach the general public, foster a more empathic and positive discussion.

Alternatively, all of these audio recordings can be in response/answer the singular question: “Why are you here?”

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Reference

Doherty, B. 2015, ‘Call me illegal: The semantic struggle over seeking asylum in Australia’, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford, viewed 6 August 2016, <http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/publication/call-me-illegal-0 >.

 

POST 10: Reflection and Proposition

by Jessica Avelina Horo

Reflection

I didn’t even have any solid idea of the proposition during the last class’ meeting that in results making me anxious for days. I have these problem statements all over my head but I couldn’t specify them and focus on one thing. I tried to solve the big problem first and couldn’t give any design solution to it. So what I did was that I tried to talk over this issue to one of my colleague that is in pursue of her Ph.D in food science in UNSW. With her high level of education, I figured that it is easier to talk over this issue and discussed about it. It is a complicated issue with many causes and backgrounds so that not many people will get to understand this issue in a short time. While I explained the issue to her, I began to read all my maps and researches again then started to reflect on them. My friend helps me a lot in this process as she is quite used to make a report that needs critical thinking. I wrote again what I want to achieve in this proposition and it helps me identifying the issue. By clarifying my problem statement, I was able to gather all of my thoughts on the issue into a concise brief that I can address in the Task 3.

Design Proposition – Hello Neighbours 

This proposition is in result of my research about refugees’ experiences in the detention centre. Just like what I mentioned in my #8th blogpost, I want to see what I can do to prepare refugees and the community to live together harmoniously after such traumatic experiences.

The previous draft proposition is called “Emphathy”.  It was intended to show how sorry we are to the refugees, who have repeatedly received such traumatic experiences. The will be an annual event that will be held in parks and places like Darling Harbour as it is spaces that people from all age come together and enjoy the scenery. As we all know, there are a lot of rejection and negative attitude given to the refugees in result of misconceptions in the media. However, we want to bring the positive people out there with the refugees together in an cultural event. The event is called “Hello Neighbours”, referring the neighbours to the refugees that come from different countries in Middle East. By substituting the word ‘refugee’ in the name with ‘neighbours’, the event will raise awareness to not identify the refugees as ‘refugees’ or outsider anymore.

Celebrate our new neighbours by giving them a chance to show their art skills and blend together with the Australia’s community. It is not unfamiliar for the Aussies’ people to have street art and dance in the streets. In this event, we want to encourage the refugees to show their skills and culture by adopting Australian’s culture. There will also a traditional food market cooked by the refugees and showcase of refugees’ artworks. Most importantly, there will be a testimony too brought by refugees that has succeed in their new life so that they could inspire other refugees and show general people what they actually could do. Art is a universal language, it is unique in each culture and country yet I believe it could unite people. This concept could result with people embracing refugees and changed their perceptions about them. Refugees would also feel appreciated and welcomed by the events that celebrates their presence in the community.

REVISED

I decided to change my design proposition to be in local context instead of such a big event held in public places. Based on the feedbacks that I received today, I made changes:

TITLE: Hello Neighbours

PRACTICE TYPE: Service Design

THE ISSUE: People should embrace refugees and changed their perceptions about them after such traumatic experience in the journey and in detention centre. Even after the resettlement, a lot of people still address the refugees as ‘refugees’ and in result they received harassment and bullying in the school or workplace. Even though a lot of people are blinded by the misconceptions but there are still a lot of people who wants to say sorry to refugees. For people who wants to give sympathy to the refugees, they could stay together in this event to contribute something positive to the refugees or the refugees themselves could show their true side directly to the Australians.

THE POSSIBLE CHANGE: The design would aim to get people identify refugees as the ‘new neighbours in town’ instead of as an outsider or refugees anymore. This also could results with people embracing refugees and changed their perceptions about them. Refugees would also feel appreciated and welcomed by the events that celebrates their presence in the community.

ACTION TO SUPPORT THE CHANGE: Create a campaign with voluntary based resources and have an event to spend a day or have lunch with refugees every 3 months. The event will be divided into each council so that each council would be aware of the arrival of new ‘neighbours’ in their areas. In the event, the refugees and the people who supports them could make an intimate conversation to share their values and stories. By doing so, refugees feel welcomed in the community and appreciated. General people in the range of 18-24 years old also have the experience to know the refugees directly and show their support for them. After the events, they could share the campaign and the events to social media using the hashtag #helloneigbours. Posting photo with the hashtag would also help for other people to see the other side of refugees. Thus, creating an awareness to accept refugees as part of the community and live together harmoniously.

Connect the dots

Blog 10

Reflection

Presenting initial concept proposition to others was a good way to measure and analyse how clear is my design. The proposition I share was very rough and there is no connection between the problem statement and design proposal. Whilst I was proposing to raise awareness and educate people, my design could only cover one function; to evoke a sympathetic response.

Question like how to create engagement with the target audience for the first time and ask them to participate in the design is one of the aspect that I haven’t thought before. The design should be accessible to the target audience while at the same time has to have unique feature that will attract them. Location is another good point that my peer mention since it will also determine how often the design will be seen by people.

My peer’s opinion was really helpful to provide a fresh perspective and arise critical question to improve my design proposal. There are few points that I’ve taken notes:

• Reframe my position and identify the target audience: More brainstorming session maybe?
• Don’t force old ideas to fit with the problem statement: Leave it for a night and comeback with a blank slate and new ideas.
• Be specific: Asylum seekers and Refugees is a very broad topic and I don’t have power to solve this big issue. Design something that will be useful for intended audience.
• Revisit you research: As Jacquie said, we already have the material. Just connect it.

 

Revisiting old blog posts

To overcome the confusion after the feedback session, I decided to reframe my position by doing the IDEO’s 5W again. This exercise is based on my previous old statement: How to raise awareness and challenge people’s perspective toward refugees in our community? The statement was vague since I haven’t narrowed down the scope of the target audience.

 

Refined version

 

During the exercise, I picked up several elements that I didn’t considered before. Whilst the aim of the design has become very specific, I feel that I can move forward with more refined design that will answer all the new 5Ws. Here is my new problem statement: How to foster positive support and treatment toward refugees to help them feel accepted in the community. My target audience is specifically aimed toward people (age 18-25) on their workplace.

 

Proposal

Keywords: Acceptance, Self-worth, Support, Hope, Motivation.

Project Title: I ________ refugees. (TBC)

Design Practice Type: Generative System (and service design).

Form: A poll stand accompanied with a site and shirt giveaway design.

Issue: Many refugees and people with migrant background are struggling to find jobs and fit into the society, leaving them feel lonely and unaccepted in this country. Many factors such as limited English skill, different cultural way of thinking, and strong discrimination hinder them to use their potential skill and are unable to contribute to the society. Secondly, the willingness to help refugees are often

Problem statement: How to foster positive support and treatment toward refugees to help them feel accepted in the community?

Possible Change:  Looking at service purpose, the design will in the end, be able to educate and challenge the participants’ perspective towards the myth of refugee,  creating meaningful and beneficial social change.

Process: 

The process and the  possible people’s respond to the design.

How it works:

 

Empowering Refugees through public’s poll.

The design will be specifically aimed to young people who is working in a multicultural environment as well as an empowerment action to support refugees. The stand (with a touch screen) will display a selection of refugee’s story and their experience on adapting Australian culture. By end of the story, the audience is asked to choose 2 buttons, whether support the refugee or ignore the story. The result of the ‘support’ pressed button will be presented on the website and sent to the individual whose story is displayed that day. The person will receive an email that notify them how many people supported their story. The audience who chose support button will receive the giveaway shirt with ‘I SUPPORT REFUGEE’ design in it. There will be rotation on the stories displayed, providing an ongoing campaign for this design.

The small gesture can make a huge difference on someone’s psychological state. The fact that people are giving their time to listen to their story and support them is an intervention to break prejudice in the community. The website, which can be accessed by public, also aimed to inspire other people with similar struggle.

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Mind block

Blog 9

Brainstorming again and again for a hundred times. After researching asylum seeker and refugees topic for weeks, it’s time to present the sub issues in a group of four. This time we are developing the specific problem statement and possible design response to the issue. As the previous map undertaken in week 4 was too broad, it limits the chance to come up with design solution and insight.

Weaknesses

We found this exercise is quite difficult, primarily because we’re not sure whether our idea can be said as an issue for this topic. The issues we cam up with seems too broad and we couldn’t think of possible ideas to help asylum seekers. We realised that even though we have been digging in hidden aspects about refugees, we still categorised into ‘indifferent people’ as the actual issue is not affecting us.

I feel that I was more ready brainstorm and jotted more ideas in my own issue than other’s idea input since the issue wasn’t familiar enough. We started to lag on our third map as our minds are occupied with our design issue and solution. I feel like I could have been more effective if I came up with not too many ideas in mind. This is something to take on for the next brainstorm opportunity.

Strengths

Even though, we could only finish 3 maps by end of the class, the exercise has exposed me to potential sub issue. Amanda told us about overburdening developing countries by sending them asylum seekers. We tried to focus on one keyword and brainstorm new ideas from it and this surprisingly inspires me to look at a specific issue in-depth and potential design solutions. From this insights, I tried to apply the method on my own findings. Helping others to come up with ideas also allow me to look into different issue from our board topic.

Through this process, I gained greater detail on the issue and things I’d already concluded. People’s critic and opinion has helped me to uncover different aspects from each issue presented in our group and bring a new perspective that overlooked and undermined.

Post 10: A Data Visualisation-The Fallen Tears

By: Jannie Mach

I began to research for data poetics and data visualisation as a starting point. I was inspired by ‘Dear Data’ by Stepanie Posavec and Giorgia Lupi. The use of hand-generated sets of codes brings unique quality, which informs a change of experience or the environment.

I collected a series of monotone watercolours to get a sense of the abstract shape and form due to the idea of adding an extra layer of information on top. However, I thought of an interactive data that allows the user experience to understand and learn the back-story of Asylum Seekers on Mental Health to help donate and upgrade clinical facilities.

Feedback:

• The target audience and the location of the interactive data?
• The engagement can be an art installation due to the open spaces towards specific audiences such as organisations, groups, community, and individuals.
• The emergent practices- is it either data practices or service design?
• The need to research on the aspect of government finance and the assistance/benefits towards Asylum Seekers and Refugees.

I had further taken the critical feedback and look for another engagement aspect rather than an interactive screen. I want to be able to capture an emotional response immediately from the public in a clever and effective way. I believe that researching in a new topic area such as Government Finance will be on a very tight schedule.

Design Proposition

I like the idea of using design as a sensitive tool—applying with a touch of emotion. The Fallen Tears is a visualisation data to help raise awareness about mental health problems towards Asylum Seekers and Refugees in Australian Detention Centres, which studies found a large number of individuals involve high levels of emotional distress.

The use of generating an advertisement/campaign to show and provoke the public attitudes and perceptions by inflicting various emotions such as empathy, sadness, anger, shock, appalled and more. The target audience ranges from 18 and above due to the placement of the advertisements will be distributed into open spaces.

The data will be poetic and delicate. The use of ink blots or water ink to determine the visual style. I’m intrigued on the free-form of the shape meaning the way it spreads and projecting is very quite captivating. Why? To symbolise the ‘human tears’ and the significant of water due to them of arriving by boats. Plus, the ink blots are used for psychological interpretations. Moreover, to create a powerful meaning and making a sentimental statement saying, “it’s inhumane” and “they’re humans too.”

The Fallen Tears will display facts, statistics, narrative and storytelling from the Asylum Seekers and Refugees with Mental Health issues. For example, it will suggest an insight for the audience with arrays of moving stories to motivate and prevent from this tragic happening in the detention centres. The advertisement will contain information on:

• How many Asylum Seekers/Refugees in detention centres
• The amount of Asylum Seekers/Refugees is affected by Mental Health including all age groups like children
• The death rates: looking for suicides happening in the detention centres
• The facilities/clinicians
• The professionals like doctors and nurses

The source of the data focuses on the platform such as websites, newspapers, journal articles, videos as well as social media like Facebook and Twitter. I’m gathering and collecting data from 2000-2016 the latest.

Overall, to give an emotional response and provide/project a voice for the Asylum Seekers and Refugees—who’s suffering from Mental Illness with a beautiful visualisation data.

Notes: At the moment, I am struggling to find a mass of resources and trying to reveal some aspect of the relationship between human and non-human actors. I need to experiment with the water inks due to the shape will control the data.

The feedback from tutorial says, that I need to embrace data visualisation and the use of water inks touches on the journey of Asylum Seekers and Refugees, which is a very nice way to aim for data poetry. I have to try and look for something more specific rather than a campaign/advertisement to create an edge or more proactiveness. Also going deeper and further pushed the proposal—to take emotional resonance—to tug with someone.

I agree, and it’s essential for me to design something more unexpected within the timeframe.

References:

Gormely, A. 2011, BODV XII, Tumblr, viewed 18 September 2016, <berndwuersching.tumblr.com/post/112876525292/parsqonestdesfraisheurs-antony-gormley-bodv>.

Dachary, C. 2012, Cecile Dachary, Erin Louise, viewed 18 September 2016, <http://erinlouise.com/2012/06/cecile-dachary/&gt;.