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.
