I love planning :)
What I did this week
Wrote out most of my research plan
Created my personal thesis timeline
Mapped out my stakeholders
Started writing my autoethnography
Planned out some illustrations for my autoethnography
Started reading Boxers by Gene Luen Yang
Research Plan
To say that I love planning is the understatement of a century. I LOOOVVVEE planning and organizing. Planning my week out in my planner is the best part of my week. I research weeks in advance that I should pack in my suitcase for when I fly home in December. I actually have a day-by-day itinerary of any trip I’ve ever planned. So to finally get to the point where we can write out our research plan was like me finally getting off on ecstasy at the end of a long day.
Here is a rough draft of my research plan so far. Most of the writing came pretty naturally to me and I didn’t have to struggle very much. This is definitely because after struggling for weeks on what the hell I wanna do, I finally have a much clearer picture now and know how to get there. To quickly summarize my plan so far:
Will be conducting primary research with young adult Chinese diaspora community members about their memories and views on Chinese New Years celebrations
Methodologies I plan using include autoethnography, ethnography, and user-centered design. I might also consider a short stint into anthropology and archaeology to round out my understanding of the topic.
Research methods I’m proposing for usage in my research include self-reporting methods (surveys, diary studies, and cultural probes), interrogative methods to gain secondary understanding if needed (interviews and contextual inquiry) and generative and evaluative methods once I am at the design stage (thinking-out-loud protocols, design games, creative toolkits)
Expected deliverables: illustrated autoethnography that I plan on printing out as a zine on the risograph, primary research presented in a digestible and aesthetic format, a design of some sort of tool that will be used to aid how my users might celebrated Chinese New Years in the future
I definitely found attending Professor Henaff’s session was super useful in coming up with more methodologies that I didn’t think about. For example, I never thought about the archeological side of things, and that really helped spark the museum idea that I mentioned earlier.
I will say the part that I found most difficult at this moment is the literature review. Mostly because I haven’t read that much literature, or at least in the academic sense. Thus, I don’t really know what to put in it or what to say about it. Luckily, I will be meeting with Professor Ansari on Monday. Hopefully he can tell me what to do about my literature review and if he had any feedback on my research plan so far.
Personal Timeline
As part of this week’s work, I also created my personal timeline to keep myself on track (Did I mention I love planning and organizing?). It was definitely very overwhelming the first time Professor Ansari showed it in class and said that these were the timelines we were supposed to follow. It made my heart sink as I felt like the entire time he was saying that I was behind (which, I probably am). I really wished they had sent it out earlier (also a template/example of what the dissertation is supposed to look like, that would also be soooo helpful).
But anyways, I took a closer look at the document and created a timeline going forward that works best of me. It definitely helps that I know what kind of project I am doing and what kind of deliverables I am expecting to make. That made the process of going forward much easier, Too bad it took me ⅔ of the semester to figure it out, lol. A picture of the timeline I made for myself is below.
Stakeholder Mapping
As part of writing out my research plan, I also mapped out my stakeholders. At first I was going to use a template, but none that I saw really met my needs. So, I just looked at the examples Professor Ansari showed and made my own version from those. I think it turned out nicely, definitely came up with new groups of people to talk to that I didn’t think about.
Autoethnography Writing
So far I’ve written a couple paragraphs and it’s already taken quite a bit out of me to do it. I feel like I’m in a very deep therapy session as I write it. I definitely didn’t think I had too much to say about it before going in, but as I get the words down so many more thoughts come to me about the topic. I think I’ll only be able to write down a couple paragraphs or pages at a time before I need a break.
Autoethnography Illustrating
For the more fun bit, I’ve also been working on what elements I want to illustrate in my autoethnography. I have a running list that I put into my autoethnography. I find this method the easiest because as I write, I also think of what I want to illustrate at the same time. By having it in the same place, I also know where I want to put the illustration to best illustrate what I am talking about.
Secondly, I have also been thinking about how I want to arrange the illustration. I’ve been looking into books about ecosystems and I like how different diagrams showcase different things with either numbers or arrows. I think that will definitely help when I want to showcase what a typical table setting or what the timeline of celebration preparations looks like. I also did some research into different illustration layouts and I was really inspired by the history and ecosystems books written and illustrated by Rachel Ignotofsky. I like how there’s a big illustration on one side and mini illustrations strewed around the edges. I have even made a mockup of what I think a page will look like below.
Boxers by Gene Luen Yang
Lastly, I started reading the graphic novel, Boxers. It’s a fictional story about a boy named Bao during the Boxer Rebellion in China. While it’s fictitious, I think it does a really good job illustrating the culture of 19th century China and combining the lighter elements with criticism of Western influence in China. I also really liked how the author/illustrator used illustrations to illustrate thoughts and emotions each character has. While I don’t think I will go the full graphic novel route, I will be definitely using elements of how he created the book in my autoethnography.