Changes of sense of presence in Art History

As shown in Fig. 4.1, the level of sense of presence in the history of modern art draws a curve similar to a sine wave, changing according to the situation and context of the time. It changes dynamically according to the era, from low presence to high presence, and from high presence to low.

[여기는 MWC 2016]갤럭시S7 vs G5 비교분석

Sensual Thread

The sensual thread of experience is concerned with what we sense through our sensory organs. Many factors affect the sensual experience of humans. Personality and current mental states of an individual, as well as his/her talents and behavioral characteristics, can all influence it. However, these are the factors that we cannot control by adjusting the design of products or services. With what aspects can we then strategically manage a user's sensual experience through design? The answer is 'a sense of presence.'

A sense of presence in virtual environments is a hot topic of interests in recent years. A virtual environment is an artificially constructed space through some medium. People these days are mostly stimulated through some medium and feel its presence.

Presence can be largely divided into three types - physical presence, social presence, and self-presence - depending on the subject that is present (Lee, 2004). 

Physical presence means that objects are being felt.

Social presence is about feeling others that are connected to a system or network.

Self-presence is about being able to feel oneself in the moment. 

Users can indeed feel a high sense of presence when they can feel a high physical presence, social presence, and self-presence. If I felt a great sense of presence through the online game, it means that what I saw on the screen felt like reality, that I felt close to the other gamers, and that I felt like I was actually there fighting off enemies.

Examples of High Sence of Presence

Klive concert hologram

Examples of Low Sence of Presence

GPS devices

What is Human Experience and How to Describe it ?

2.3 Threads of Experience: An Essential Compromise

As mentioned in Chapter 1, an experience is characterized by its holistic nature. In other words, an experience is a blend of diverse elements that cannot be easily broken down.

Driving to the countryside, picking berries, having a breakfast with my parents, and talking to the neighbors all together build up my Sunday morning experience. Each part of the experience is too closely related to be separable. One part leads to another, and the whole experience cannot be fully understood if we were to try to explain only a single part of it. For instance, the two hours of driving every Sunday morning doesn’t sound too pleasant was it not for the fact that the purpose of that drive was to be able to have a lovely breakfast with my 80-year old parents. Without the singing birds and sweet morning air, lifting heavy tree trunks would not make me eager to want to experience that again. All these details, as a whole, created this meaningful Sunday morning experience.

However, the story is different when trying to understand a person’s experience during the process of designing a product or service that can provide a better experience. Although it is difficult to divide experience into distinct parts, it is feasible to try to understand what elements constitute an experience without overlooking the overall context or circumstances that surround it. Of course, it is impossible to draw clear boundaries between the elements because of the holistic nature of experience. What we can do is to group the pieces that are more closely related to each other and regard them as elements and analyze the relationship between the ones who are less closely related. This approach allows us to interpret human experience in a more systematic way and to provide better overall experience for users.

Among them, there are three threads that are especially important and help us understand our experiences: the sensual thread, the judgmental thread, and the compositional thread.


The sensual thread of experience is concerned with what we sense through our sensory organs. The cheerful sounds of morning birds, the spectacular sunset over
the countryside, the sweet and sour taste of luscious berries, and the soft walk on the
garden path are all important sensory elements of the experience.

How we judge or evaluate our experience through our thoughts and feelings is
referred to as the judgmental thread of experience. Pruning the branches and helping
the trees to grow better by relocating them makes me feel proud of myself. I feel
happy and healthy doing hard physical work out in the fresh air. My Sunday morning
experience wouldn’t be fully understood without these values that I appreciate.

The compositional thread of experience is the aspect concerned with relationships
and interaction of oneself with others, people or things. The relationship between
me and my parents and the interaction between the neighbors and me affect
the harmonious experience at the farm. Also, being able to dine with the family and
share the handpicked fruits and vegetables at home enriches my Sunday morning
experience.

Each thread of experience—the sensual thread, the judgmental thread, and the compositional thread—can be woven (crisscrossed with each other) into different patterns.

In order to look at the relationships between the threads, their external environments, and their specific experiences, the three threads need to be seen in a single integrated frame. Therefore, I want to present a three-dimensional model of experience that can help explain the integrated threads of experience.


There are a number of merits in expressing our experiences of using a product or
service as a point in the three-dimensional space as shown in Fig. 3.1.

Firstly, experience does not exist as three different parts based on the three threads but rather exists as a single integrated point. The three dimensions must combine as a single point in order to fully and properly express the holistic nature of experience.

Secondly, the three-dimensional space provides a simple way of describing human experience in using a specific product or service. Figure 3.2 shows the results of a survey on the executives of LG Electronics, a Korean electronics company.

They were asked what kind of experiences consumers who had bought UHD (ultra high-definition) TVs from LG would go through. In terms of the sensual thread of experience, the results indicated that users would feel a high degree of sense of presence due to the quick reflection of a minute screen for setting changes and high resolution that would make them think the characters in the TV were almost real.
As for the judgmental thread, the popular opinion was that users would feel a slight internal locus of causality for their experiences since the content of what they enjoy watching on the TV screens such as dramas and sports cannot be controlled. In the perspective of the compositional thread of experience, both the lack of connections between TVs and the use of a TV to communicate with other people would lead to users feeling a relatively low level of cohesiveness.

Figure 3.2 also shows the results of a survey on the employees of a portal site (NAVER) on what they think people’s experiences would be while using their mobile internet messenger (MIM) In terms of the sensual thread of experience, the limited screen size and difficulty in interacting on that small screen would seem to lead to a fairly low degree of a sense of presence. They also think that the distinctive user interface of the messenger would provide a greater degree of a sense of presence compared to competitors’ mobile messengers. In the perspective of the judgmental thread of experience, the enjoyment users feel while exchanging messages with other users and the direct interaction they conduct to send a message was expected to stem from internal locus of causality. The employees said that mobile messengers provide a means to communicate with other users and enable intimate interaction between close people. Therefore, the level of cohesiveness that the compositional thread of experience provides would be very high.

Finally, a three-dimensional model provides the advantage of an easy and quick method for gathering opinions within a company regarding how to provide a better experience to users. By understanding the position of the current experience and the direction a future experience should shift towards, a point for the future experience can be created. In other words, the three-dimensional model can be used as a tool for deciding the strategic goals of a user’s next great experience.

Schedule for 2nd, 3rd Term

2nd Term Schedule for ART7008 Thesis Development and Tutor

AIMS

To help students to get through UX-based product/service development process in their chosen domain area (with their own topic).

STRUCTURE

There will be two tracks on this course:

For those of whom already decided what to do for the final projects, this course will provide guidelines, procedures, methodologies and perspectives to follow, encouraging the students to develop ever interesting projects in the chosen field.

For those of who have not yet decided what to do for the final, this course will ask students to conduct a 10 weeks-long project with the theme of "Healthcare and Food Experience", "Wearable Technology with Sensors"

Through a series of readings, group discussions, sharing information, and tutoring, the students will get a sense of what it means by 'experience design approaches.' The core structure of the course can be simply described by the following diagram.

Week One:

Course Description / Course Structure / Course Schedule
Workshop (Areas of Interest) :
1st Term project review and theme exploration brainstorming

Week Two: 

Sketching Thesis Structure
Elements of Good Thesis Projects
Aims of your Study (Read through 'How to write a better thesis p.62~p.66)

Week Three: 

Proposal Review (Tutoring)
Title (Domain) Selection
Brainstorming for picking the Best Three Aims.

Week Four:

Aim & Scope of the Project
Writing Introduction:
"Earlier I described a standard structure for a thesis. Perhaps surprisingly, you could
devise this structure at a very early stage of the work. To do this, first write a draft
of your introductory chapter—the problem statement, the aim and scope, and the
steps you think you might take to achieve the aim. You may not feel too confident
about writing this introduction, because you suspect that it will have to be modified
later, as you get into your work. In this you are almost certainly correct, but that
should not prevent you from writing a draft or sketch introduction. What you are
trying to do is get started."

Week Five:

Developing proper research questions
Understanding target users and their patterns.

PERSONA DEVELOPMENT
(Iterative Interviewing & SNS Observation)

Get Ready for the Proposal Presentation (Tutoring)

Week Six:

Problem Statement Session (Hypothesis):
"In many disciplines, especially those based in quantitative approaches to research, there is an expectation that the problem statement expresses the relationship between two or more measurable properties and thus can be empirically tested. The problem can then be written in the form of a hypothesis, or be stated as a single question such as ‘To what extent do HEPA filters in ventilation systems reduce food contamination?’" (p. 63)

Week Seven:

Review of three threads of experience (Reading)
Product Review & Analysis based on the experience model

Week Eight:

Concept Story Building

(Messages - ways to deliver the message to the target users)

Week Nine:

Messages to (CMF, Interaction & Services)

Metaphor Image Board

Week Ten:

Interaction Storyboard

Menu Structure / Main Screen Design (Wire frame Design)

Final Presentation (Tutor & Discussion)

Week Eleven:

Final Presentation (Tutor & Discussion)

Week Twelve:

Summary & PDP Review

Seminar Schedule for 2nd Term

February Program

17th (Wednesday 17:00 ~ 19:00): Steve Won - Microsoft UX
Aim of seminar: Things to remember (not to forget) as a designer when you are working at a big company like Samsung.


24th (Wednesday 17:00 ~ 19:00): Prof. Adam Chung - Kookmin Univ.
Introduction / Process / Project Development
INNO Design / Google job experience

March Program

2nd (Wednesday 17:00 ~ 19:00): Prof. Adam Chung - Kookmin Univ.
Design Process / Case Studies / Design Edge / Human-Centered Design Process

9th (Wednesday 17:00 ~ 19:00): Prof. Adam Chung - Kookmin Univ.
Students Work / What am I going to do as a Student?

16th (Wednesday 17:00 ~ 19:00): NamMyung Woo - Samsung Electronics
Introduction to Sound UX

23rd (Wednesday 17:00 ~ 19:00): NamMyung Woo - Samsung Electronics
Application of Sound for designing UX in Mobile Phone

30th(Wednesday 10:00 ~ 12:00): Byun Hyejin - Samsung Electronics
Service Design (Food Service Design Cases)

April Program

6th (Wednesday 10:00 ~ 12:00): Byun Hyejin - Samsung Electronics
Service Design

13th (Wednesday 10:00 ~ 12:00) Byun Hyejin - Samsung Electronics
Service Design

20th (Wednesday 17:00 ~ 19:00): TBD

Schedule for Thesis Development (By MyungJin Kim)

February

1st Session (17th Wednesday 13:00 ~ 16:00) : Thesis Proposal / Kim Myungjin -sadi

Thesis proposal Writing from Kim, MyungJin

March

2nd Session (2nd Wednesday 13:00 ~ 16:00) : Thesis Time Schedule / Kim Myungjin -sadi

Design Mindset from JongHo Lee

3rd Session (9th Wednesday 13:00 ~ 16:00) : Research Direction

14th of March ~ 19th of March : Thesis Proposal Presentation Week

By the 21st of March, primary thesis adviser has to be assigned.

April

4th Session (13th Wednesday 13:00 ~ 16:00) : Research Data Collection

5th Session (27th Wednesday 13:00 ~ 16:00) : Data Feedback

Project with parsons

I and deren, who is running the parsons school of design program were discussing about ways of running a project collaboratively between two institutions. Today I received a letter from deren and the following is the things that she has sent to me.


Hi, sorry for the delay! I also wanted to finish my plan for the course before responding. 

I think this would fit in nicely with some projects for the end of the semester in April. We will be focusing on crowd-sourced futures and looking at how human values and systems have changed with IoT and data. 

What is the form of the project for your students- will they be writing a research paper or creating objects or website? I will think about ways that the students could work together and form a dialogue based on the final output of the project. 

Thanks!

Thesis Proposal

Thesis development is all about exploring various ways to strengthen research questions and topics through iterative inquiries and explorations. 

The thing that you should all understand is the approach for this inquiry should be different from the undergraduate one. 

The thesis development should be structured in a way that it could encourage design researchers to focus more on questioning rather than proposing solutions. 

The way that traditional thesis writing advised us was to start with developing the right research question through iterative literature reviews. 

When you are writing up your research proposal, you probably end up with several research questions rather than solutions or ideas.

This is natural. 

You do not want to solve typical design problems right away in the grad level, instead you will generate several unique and interesting questions over and over again through various inquiries until you feel that you have a proper and interesting question that you can answer through your thesis development work. 

UX thesis Lecture Note is designed to help you to generate a beautiful research questions by providing a guideline for questioning and inquiring. It will start with big questions and you will end up with a series of questions, too.