WEEKLY UPDATES - WEEK 2

WEEKLY UPDATES - WEEK 1

Tuesday 6th of April the KICK-OFF.

During the kick-off we recieved an introduction of the assignment and where explained the timeline of the term.

During the Kick-Off we also recieved our kick-off exercise, existing of creating a Hotglue page and doing a exercise creating Tagclouds and creating a visual mapping of the collection.

SO! welcome to the page,
and here are the links:

We where also asked to make a filter of interest of the usergroups and the collection and discuss

1 NATURE ROUTES for EXPATS
2 ART IN THE PUBLIC SPACE for CREATURES OF THE NIGHT
3 WEB ARCHIVE for GAMERS

This is how are top 3 chooses looked in the end of the day
the usergroup and collection of the Nature routes for expats where most interesting to our group.

A Couple of reasons where:
- The term expats was fairly new to us, so it made it a interesting topic
- Expats is not specificly limited to one usergroup there plenty of diversion within.
- The lack of interest if web archive for gamers gave us a quick top two.

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Thursday 8th of April - Rogerio's class.

Important things to remember from clas:
- Visual metaphors, a visualization to help explain sertain topics that can be hard to grasp.
- differnt types of visualization posibilites to display information
- Example the piramide of Maslow
- Example of donut of Rasworth
- Example of dune and ruby who i also had prior knowlegde of due to speculative everything, a book that came up during the practice weeks.

During class we where asked to create a form of visualization that could explain whats the situation now between the user and the collective.

Some situations our group came up with was:
- Cultural differences such as, Japanese culture compared to dutch culture. Highligting work hours and ethics.
- Differences in accaptence and safety, highlighting the fact that the netherlands was one of the first countries to make gay marriage legal within europe.
- A difference in a countries currencie, Minimum wage of a country i something an expat will surely encounter aswell in the netherlands. An example for this can be found in Bulgaria where the minimum wage is 311,89 EUR where as in the netherlands 1.635 EUR.

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Thursday 9th of April - Marks class.

Prior to marks class he sent us a intro into representation by StuartHall.

We would focus on a basic understanding of the concept of representation by applying theory (semiotics, ‘difference’, type andstereotype) to the design practice (mapping).

During class he touched on certain topics and gave a sort of proxy explaination to explain this Stuarts theory further. To demonstrate his theorys Mark gave us an example of Superman, Batman and the Joker, I heavely challenged him on those subjects as i felt he did misrepresent them a bit.

During class we also made a VENN diagram, used to find how you connect to your user by differences, simularityes and what we clearly have in common.

Monday 12th of April Gabrielle and Noemi's class.

During Class we were informed lots about: Interfaces.
and where introduced to the notion of what an interface is and can be.

After the explaination of systems,

We were given an exercise, to search for 2 different interfaces in your immediate surrounding, document these interfaces, and try to answer questions about them

Theusday 13th of April rogerios class.

This class was a continueations from last weeks class where we would go into more detail about the mapping of the collection.

We went into more detail about the concepts for visualization we had created and talked about the information we found around our subjects expats.

Rogerio found simularitys in one of our works of visualization and compared to the Triadic Ballet by BauHaus (which is a great example of unique visualization of differences)

Some feedback we also recieved that i found inportant:
Obstacles are a good way to look between the user group and collection.
To try finding more connections between the routes and the expats.
Looking more in to the collection maybe through grouping or wishes/needs of the expats.

We also defined our Main user group: Expat students from the WDKA
This usergroup is not only close to home, but we as students share some simularities of the situation the expats are going through.

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Thursday 15th of April Marks class.

Prior to class we where told to watch: Stuart Hall’s Representation Theory Explained!, Introduction to Saussure, the Signifier and Signified, An Introduction to Roland Barthes’s Mythologies and lastly “Always be knolling” by Tom Sachs.

We where also told to collect 50 signs that represent the usergroup each.

During Class we've recieved more information about the method of: KNOLLING
with the examples one of them being an example of Tom Sachs

After a more detailed explaination about the subject we where tasked to Knoll our collection

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Friday 16th of April Maytal and Arjans class.

This class was essentially a introduction to UX Design. During the class we talked about the importance of User experience (UX), and how it can be used to any communicative design.

We where given the visual example of a parking lot, where there was a colour coded system with the colours Red (used), Yellow (reserved) and Green (still open). This sparked a debate about why 3 colours and it way to an explaination of why its hard to design something that works for everyone.

An example was given in the form of trello, and how the addition of many "plugins" caused it to loose audience because it complicated more then it solved.

Lastly we where asked to create a flow chart induvidually as an exercise. We where asked to pick an app we think our target audiance might use and investegate the users journy within.

For this i choose the app DUO Lingo, which is an app i use myself and have seen my expat friends commonly use aswell.

WEEKLY UPDATES - WEEK 3

Monday 19th of April Marks class.

We were asked to read: Stereotyping as a signifying practice, answer a questionaire about stereotyping aswell as to collect 5 visual examples of stereotypes about our user and bring them to class.

Everyone creates stereotypes. We cannot function in the world without them.” (S. Gilman)
- Revisit the first exercise (mapping of you & the other). What are the assumptions you (still) have about the ‘user group’? How were they debunked or confirmed?

During the first week i made a couple of assumptions about the user group, one of them being: No interest in dutch culture (which i think is my biggest miss). I think that after my later research like my users persona, i came to the conclusion that theres a difference between activily seeking out something and passivly enjoying things. I think you can’t make the arguement that theres no interest but i would conclude that most expats that i’ve studied have more of a passive mindset about it rather than active.

Another assumption i had was my assumption about Dutch land beign lackluster to someone coming from a country with for instance mountens. After a deeper dive into the collection and gathering of some interesting data i found out that we host 20 National Parks and 20 National Landscapes. When asking expats about their knowlegde on this information they said they just weren’t awere or diden’t know about them. So i would conclude that my assumption can’t be correct but perhaps they haven’t seen the dutch nature area’s to their full extend yet.

- Write down your personal interest in this group? What are you curious about? How do you relate to this group (positive of negative); do you want to be part of it, do you admire them, are you more negative about them?

Let’s first start of with admiration, i admire the fact that they came cross countries just to study in the netherlands which asks at the least courage. Then from personal expierence i can tell that i admire their work ethics aswell, I’ve befriended some expats who next to their studies make around 20 work hours a week and i think it doesn’t only show motivation but also alot of stamina and willpower. I don’t like to subject myself to negative thoughs about subject in any way generally, since i deem this pretty toxic and a waste of time. So that beign said i don’t think i’ve had generalised negative thoughs about the user group yet, I did find stereotypes other people had written about or created ‘‘memes’’ about online and found them bordering racism and would compare them to ‘‘low hanging fruit’’ arguments. My personal interest in this group i think mainly surrounds their work ethics and their enjoyment of dutch culture, but i also like to lisen to their dislikes about the Netherlands and see if i can agree with their standpoints.

Signifiers that stereotype: Objects and their meaning
- Which existing stereotypes have you found about your group? Describe them.

I go about this in more detail in my 5 found stereotypes but to name a couple, online i found them described to be: Lazy, not interested in anything but money, only having money because of rich parents, snobby because they come from a ‘‘higher cultural place’’, not being interested and not willing to adopt and adept to the culture in the country of their stay. I think most of this generalisations stem from ignorance, and being so far removed from them that you start forming opinions about something you don’t know any details about. I think alot of these generalisations also stem from political alignment and the media certain political party’s in the netherlands put out. If we take lazy for example, most expats i know personally are not just following a full time education but are also working a job on the side while doing freelance work next to that, personally i would never describe that as lazy behaviour. Another fun stereotype we can unravel is the “rich parent’’ stereotype. If you where to do a mimiumwage comparison with all the europian countrys you can see the netherlands be at the top of that, this directly would null and void that argument. Yet i think this stereotype is easily made because people have to move, rent and apply for work pre-living within the country which means they needed a starting fund in order to be able to do all those things which can then be interpeted as a form of riches.

- Fragmentation and Fetishized: Which objects (e.g. food, products, clothes, part of the body) are used to stereotype with? Where did you find them? In which shape, form or media (jokes, sayings, news, tv, politics, shops, history, education,…)

During class a groupmate: Boy found international student starterpack memes. These meme’s where generalised opinions on certain aspect like the hair, wealth and social status of these international students. A common ocurance in these ‘‘starter packs’’ is the financial situation of these students and beign portrayed to be living it large.

The effect of stereotypes: Power and discrimination
- Who spreads these stereotypes about your usergroup? What do you assume their intention is? Did you find examples of discrimination, ongoing conflicts, historic events or other injustices where stereotypes are used to control or overpower your ‘user group’? Which system of oppression is it part of (racism, classism, agism, sexism?

I theorise that alot of these stereotypes are created by the people in their imidiate surrounding in this case beign: other students. Their intentions might not be very defined or marked as just jokes but the negative effect it has on the international students is noticible. Examples of discrimination can be found in the ‘‘memes’’ i provides in the last question but are also very much found in the policital alignment of people. Some dutch policital party’s plead things like: Let the Netherlands become ours again!, which is not only a very vague statement to make scince you cant define who ‘‘ours’’ is but its also very hurtfull for anyone who wasn’t born in the Netherlands originally and might invoke a feeling of unwantedness aswell. I think this also is a good example of how a stereotype is used to overpower our user group. An example of a system of oppression can be found very easily in the Netherlands aswell and you can consider this a ongoing conflict, It can be found in a national holiday called: Sinterklaas. During Sinterklaas children recieve gifts from the man himself Sinterklaas which sounds quite nice and all untill you consider all his helpers are black people, very much mimicin slavery. Aslong as this tradition exist in its current form it will keep doing harm to the black community as it still heavely shine’s light onto the dark past of the Netherlands.

- Have you found examples where your ‘social group’ is reversing the stereotype; using the known stereotypes and appropriating them for their own cause? (see more Hall, 5.1: Reversing the stereotype).

There’s an active group in the Netherlands called:”Kick Out Zwarte Piet”, their trying to fight the system of oppression found in Sinterklaas i’ve touched upon in the last question. The’re very much appropriating ‘‘typical’’ dutch right leaning political statements but just for their narrative instead. Their name is an example of this, political party the PVV has made statemetns in the past like: Kick out all the foreigners, which they have litterly used for the name of the social group. Also a funny slogan is the one made by PVV leader Geert Wilders, he made a slogan where he asked the audience if they wanted: More or less foreigners in the netherlands, Kickout Zwartepiet responded with do we want more or less Zwartepiet?

5 examples of stereo types

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Monday 19th of April Rogerio's class.

We were asked to prepare some user stories before class.



These were meant to explain a direct situation and feeling, later we create them in more dept by use of a persona.

During class Rogerio touched on a couple of points that could be of importance during our research, he asked us question like:
How are the needs of the user and the collection connected
What can the collection do for the users
Find what is missing from the collection

When going over our work with rogerio, we discusses the the collection and what could be the next step to improve upon it. He again touched on looking at the collection from your users POV and seeing whats missing and what the needs are from the user group.

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Extra Research

To get a closer look at our user group we first started out sending a poll to all first years at the WDKA. After reflecting upon the outcome of these polls i created some extra question's that i found usefull during my research. I'm lucky to have two friends who fall into the same user group that i could interview for this part of the research.

With these intervieuws my main goal was to amser the questions the poll diden't for me. During the interview i encouraged long form ansers for this reason.

With these interviews i also tried to define more what the usergroup needs and wants where so i could filter all the services that Staats Bos Beheer delivers and only focus on the services our usergroup is interested in.

With these interviews i took another look at what the collection had to offer and started to ''filter'' the services that where usefull and not to our usergroup and in the end made a points of interest mapping out of it.

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35 interfaces