Month: February 2024

This week, we focused on detail layer of scenario and problem definition. The most fruitful thing is that we did primary research by one-on-one interview and questionnaire (of course with ethic consent).

This week’s lecture focuses more on personal agency and social rights, care and vulnerability, accessibility. I was really impressed by Sasha’s lecture about agency, identity and social rights, and feel sorry and pity that care, disability and accessibility part cannot be delivered due to tutor’s sickness. This lecture not only inspired the project, but also inspired my life. Sasha’s lecture showed a great personality and brought great value to me because I gained a new aspect to see myself, when I wrote down my own definition, I was inspired that I want to be more than a stand-up comedian, a comedy script writer, a woman, a Disney lover, a changemaker, I also want to be an artist (even though my friend already see me as one). From this lecture, I knew the definition of agency, and I was impressed that a man in his 60’s can still have so many ways to life, still have enthusiasm to explore life in different new ways such as dancing and singing, life did not get any worse because of age, it can become better and it depends on one’s own attitude towards life.

My idea of Emopia is a past tense now, we decided to focus on the speculation of people in their 20s, I interviewed people one on one and sent questionnaire to 5 of my friends. The one on one interview gave me a deeper understanding and the questionnaire gave me more general ideas. Until 8pm Sunday, we got 8 people filled in the questionnaire. From the questionnaire, I can see that people tend to link teacher and lawyer to traditional career path, and link artist and freelancer to untraditional career path. For the future place of work, they all focus more on wellbeing. From my speculation, I think the issue causing the problem is the people we chose to fill the questionnaire are too similar, 7 out of 8 are from China, and most of them are based in London having education, so they may share a same social background. So, we continued research activities and tried to find more people with diversity. By 10pm Sunday, we got more people from other part of the world engaged in our research and the number is still growing.

Other than the content of the project, this week, Elizabeth created a timetable for us to fill in, and during our conversation, I learnt that this is a way to introspect ourselves, which I think is very brilliant. And I have to say it worked on me. During the process of filling the form, I found that even I feel exhausted all the time, sometimes I actually did not put my time into the project, with the self-reflection, I tend to put more time to contribute to the project.

This week, we attached subject layer with scenario and problem definition to our program. Also, we learnt about the definition, histories and traditions of work. I learned this through research, group reading and lecture. And those two articles about tea and coffee showed a very interesting and understandable way of different hierarchy, needless to say we are also given a lecture about it. This gave me a new concept of histories and traditions of labour, leisure and creativity.

We made a mind map as I attached below, reached to the topic of emotional labour and each of us were given different roles to contribute to it on weekend. I did some research and found some references of how to measure emotions and feelings to share with my teammates on the shared document, generated the idea of Emopia, helped to give some details of the visual part.

During the thinking process, I had some new ideas on the social, economic and cultural aspects. For social aspect, we think people will consider emotional labour as something they are not doing and don’t want to do, even if their job is actually related to emotional devotion. That leads to a question: Does emotional labour recognize themselves as emotional labour? And emotional labour sometimes tends to be more invisible to the society. That leads to a question: How can we arouse the awareness to let people focus more on emotional labour? For economic aspect, some of my teammates suggested that we can create another currency to replace money so we can make amends to emotional labor, and wanted to find a way to measure emotional devotion by using some kind of machine attached to one’s body, which i think it’s a interesting idea as a fundamental idea, but from the cultural aspect, if we attach something to people and supervise them every day, people won’t feel comfortable with it, and this way is more passive. I want to make it more active. It reminds me that Haidilao hotpot is known for very good service, and the waiter/waitress actually are also treated with good service when they come back to their accommodation, such as someone is in charge of the laundry, so they don’t have to do it themselves, by this positive circle, everyone is willing to give better service actively instead of passively. That gives me a lot of inspiration, we can create space that people will willing to go instead of extra things they have to do, we can create a space that emotional labor can be served with emotional values to make amend to their emotional devotion, and people will change their idea of unwilling to be an emotional labor into wants to be or enjoys to be an emotional labor because they all wants to enter this space. At this point, I came up with an idea of Emopia, which is the name of the future utopia of emotional labour.

For this week’s collaboration, the huge obstacle happened on the communication, which is a result of different personality, different cultural background and language barrier. I had a mental breakdown because of that. And I am quite sure I am not the only one. But things are working out within one day like a miracle. We reached to an agreement on how to communicate with each other and the role in the teamwork. Thanks to all of the effort that our course leader, tutor, friends, my teammates and I put in to make things better. Frankly speaking, for this week, I consider the communication part is more difficult than the project itself. So I am really proud of myself and thankful to others because we did an amazing start for the collaboration unit. Everyone is putting effort to create a more positive space for each other to express themselves.

This reading of the week helped me with the speculated future. Actually, this is the first time for me to be in a reading group sharing readings with others. I found that I am more interested in visual things, so for this week, what impressed me most is a short video named The Mailbox. I think the structure of this video is very clear. I had new inspirations not only from the story of the time travel aspect, but also a way to form a story. So I think for the speculated future, my thinking process should also have a very clear structure.

Meanwhile, we also discussed the general idea and the place for sightseeing. The general idea is still developing. My teammates raised the topic of HOME, which is interesting, and we also discussed about working happily, which I am more interested into. But either way I am happy to discover. And for the place for sightseeing, everyone is looking into it by primary research and secondary research. As for now it is an individual research phrase, I visited the google building as it is very near to our campus. On the internet, it is said that Google’s new London headquarters in King’s Cross is set to be completed in 2024. This is the first, wholly owned and designed Google building outside the US. As I am a fresher to London, I do not know if it is very newly opened. But from my own experience, I noticed that on the second floor (maybe) of the building, there is a gym in which some employees are exercising. Personally, I would prefer a company that give me space to do exercise, it makes more energetic. And inside of the building, I can see some very colorful paintings, it makes feel dynamic. And I attached some pictures to make it more visual for you to understand.

All in all, this week is a fresh start towards many new things, new unit, new teammates, new timetable, new reading group, new experience towards conflict, etc. I think I already learned a valuable lesson of collaboration.