The Heritage ProjectI543 Researh methodsShaowen BardzellGopinath Kannabiran

Jeremy White

Minqi LuoSubhrajit Das

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Problem SpaceExamplarsTarget GroupResearchInsightsConceptsReference

Problem SpaceHeritage refers to something inherited from the past. The word has several different senses, including:

Natural heritage, Cultural heritage, Inheritance, He-redity, Birthright, Kinship.[1]

1

Knowledge of heritage is important, as it gives us a sense of identity and enables us to hand on what we value to future generations [2]

We consider personal experience is a kind of heritage regarding culture. Personal heritage is what each one of us individually or collectively wish to preserve and pass on to the next gen-eration [3].

2

Exemplar one

It’s a private family site to build your family tree. You can research, upload and store your family history to share it with the ones you love. You can receive smart matches between your ancestors and millions of other family trees around the world as well.

You can discover your family history and find out how it shaped the present. Also, you can stay in touch with your relatives. Your family members can upload and share pictures and videos. You can re-member, organize and celebrate birthdays, anniversaries and other events.[6]

family tree

3

It’s hard for users to immerse in the stories of their parents just by images and texts.

http://www.myheritage.com/family-tree-builder

http://www.ancestry.com/

4

Exemplar Twovirtual museum

Virtual museum is also known as an online museum, electronic museum, hypermuseum, digital museum, cybermuseum or Web museum. The term used depends upon the backgrounds of the practitioners and researchers working in this field.[7]

5

PROS

• They offer almost comphrensive information about a specific topic.• The users can get access to the information they offer wherever they are and whenever they are.• The users can simultaneously visit more than one musuem at one time.

CONS

• Only images and texts are not good enough to make people fully engaged.• The websites usually can not cre-ate a cultural environment for the users to get a sense of the context.

6

Target group

7

We want to explore ways for parents to share their “personal experiences”, as a means for children to know about their heritage. The challenge is to explore ways to recreate the personal experience as a physi-cal or digital artifact of heritage that can be used to educate children about their heritage.

Asian immigrant familyin America

8

Research

In order to understand the problem and our target group better, we conduct-ed both primary and secondary research.

9

Parents who have immigrated want their children to recognize, appre-ciate, conserve and pass on the heritage of their home country.[3]

Immigrant children lack a connection to their parents’ ‘old world’ as they grow up in an environment that is different than their parents.[4]

They are unwilling to consider a foreign country as a point of reference to evaluate themselves.[3]

The study of heritage for children of immigrant parents becomes rel-evant and interesting when it can be narrated through personal experi-ences [5].

“It’s quite sad to loose part of original culture over time.” - Wen-ling Liu

“I think it’s natural. We are just being who we actually are.” - Wen-ling Liu

“We become more curious about our heritage as we grow older.” - Leo “People judge Asian Amerians according to their steretype which is very frustrating! .” - Leo

10

Insights

1st Generation

1 Preserve

Misunderstand5

There is a need for 1s generation to keep their original heritage.

“It’s quite sad to loose part of original culure over time.” -Wen-ling Liu

There is a need for 1st generation to pass their original heritage to their kids. And it comes naturally to them as they are just being who they are.

“I think it’s natural. We are just being who we actually are.” -Wen-ling Liu

There is a need for both 1st and 2nd generation to bridge the gap between Asian American and external environment.

“People judge Asian Americans according to their stereotype.” -Leo11

2nd Generation

Pass on

communicate

External Environment

2 Know/Understand

3

4

There is a need for 2nd generation to know and get a better under-standing of their original heritage.

“We become more curious about our heritage as we grow older.” -Leo

There is loss of translation between parents and children by language and different culture so there is a need for 2nd generation to com-municate with their parents in terms of cultural heritage.

Parents want to be understood by their children somehow. -Observation 12

CONCEPTS

13

We got three design concepts according to what we drew out from our research. We hope to help both Asian American parents and children to fulfil their needs.

14

ConceptLearning heritage through multiplayer role playing game. The players can choose the scenarios they want to play. The scenarios will be based on different locations of a city. In our example in the next page we are show-ing a typical street in Japan. The progress of the user in the game is dependant on his/her knowledge of the heritge related experiences in the game.

InspirationOur research showed that American born Asian kids are interested in playing video games together. They share a common ground and express it through the games. This video game will encourage the knowledge of culture and heritage as a means of progressing in the game.15

Scenario baSed MMoG 1

ConceptLearning heritage through multiplayer role playing game. The players can choose the scenarios they want to play. The scenarios will be based on different locations of a city. In our example in the next page we are show-ing a typical street in Japan. The progress of the user in the game is dependant on his/her knowledge of the heritge related experiences in the game.

InspirationOur research showed that American born Asian kids are interested in playing video games together. They share a common ground and express it through the games. This video game will encourage the knowledge of culture and heritage as a means of progressing in the game. 16

Online avatars

Virtual StorytellinG 2

17

ConceptThrough personal storytelling, parents can narrate compelling experiences to their children. Virtual storytelling is a tangible surface where parents can create their own stories by choosing from a set of landmarks. The children can navigate through it in form of a 3D virtual avatar.

InspirationThis game allows parents to narrate personal experi-ences virtually. Our research showed that the chil-dren are more interested in learning about heritage through personal experiences.

18

19

Storytelling probes

Virtual StorytellinG 2

20

HeritaGe tiMeline 3

21

ConceptHeritage timelines allows parents and close relatives to share their personal experiences with their chil-dren. It is a way to share rich personal experiences with the children.

InspirationTimelines play a critical role in genealogical re-search. [8] It is an interactive way of learning about history of periods, families, individuals, etc. The popu-larity of facebook timeline indicates widespread use of this technique to communicate digital heritage.

22

23

Sliding timeline

HeritaGe tiMeline 3

24

Screen for Viewing digital experiences

[1] Heritage, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritage[2] Deborah Mattinson, The value of heritage – what does the public think?, p.86-90, Proceedings of London confer-ence, 25–26 January 2006, http://www.helm.org.uk/up-load/pdf/Public-Value.pdf, accessed on 2/12/2012 [3] François LeBlanc, Is everthing heritage? http://www.icomos.org/~fleblanc/publications/pub_is_everything_heri-tage.html, accessed on 2/12/2012[4] Min Zhou, Growing Up American: The Challenge Con-fronting Immigrant Children and Children of Immigrants, http://www.sociology.ohio-state.edu/classes/soc367/payne/Immigrant%20Children.pdf, accessed on 2/12/2012[5] Nick Barratt, From memory to digital record: Personal heritage and archive use in the twenty-first century, p. 10, Records Management Journal,Vol. 19 No. 1, 2009, pp. 8-15, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 0956-5698, DOI 10.1108/09565690910937209[6] www.myheritage.com[7] Virtual museum, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_museum[8] https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/baugrud/www/helpfiles/timelines.html, accessed on 3/5/2012

referenceS

25

26