Reflective Note of Xijin Zhongs Activity written by Young-in Park

At Interaction Prototyping Workshop on 11/10/2012

(Amit is asking Alexandre where the supermarket is with body language.)

Xijin Zhong brought a role-playing set to the workshop. That was Amit and I(Young-in) are travellers visiting Delft. And Alexandre and Samuel are local people in Delft. First Xijin asked me to get help from Samuel and find where the Old church is, supposing that I can neither understand nor speak English. It was even more special situation for Amit. Amit had to ask Alexandre where c1000 is without using any verbal or written language. Amit and I both used body language to communicate with local Dutch people. For example I crossed my arms to describe a church and Amit pretended to drive shopping cart to explain c1000 the supermarket. Samuel and Alexandre got what we were talking about at the end but it took some time to get it exactly. After the role-playing, Samuel and Alexandre recalled their experiences as local Dutch people. They said tourists always push their maps into their faces to ask something. In case of Samuel, he only helps tourists if they ask for help. Tourists sometimes asked Alexandre about meanings and histories of the public statues, buildings, etc. Samuel recommended Xijin to look up a game called Journey on the internet. Its about game only with analogue signal between people. He said it can be a nice starting point of the interaction between strangers. We as participants in the role-playing really enjoyed the part of the workshop which Xijin prepared. And I think Xijin could get some nice insights from it.

My reflection From the workshop, I test some assumptions that may be the barriers of interaction between tourists and locals, such as the distance between two strangers and language. I can see that how to break the ice is crucial to the interaction, especially for a tourist. Since a lot of shy people will have not the courage to start a talk with a wholly stranger, they feel and behave uncomfortable. Besides, language matters a lot. From the role-play, even the actors tries their best to express what they wanted to say, it is still very hard (and funny) to get the real meaning. So how to break the barrier of language is also needed to focus. The advices from the group mates also give me a lot of inspiration. I think I will carry on with my design with what I have learned from this workshop.