Week Two - Session One

At the beginning of class we had a lecture in The Pit, where we found out about a few different methods such as the S.L.I.P method, as well as the Empathy Map method. These are more effective means of critical thinking and diving deeper into the project.

Once returning up to the Studio, we began working on the empathy map method first, which we used 'Sean Morris' as our person we were investigating. I had interviewed him over the weekend and found out a lot of useful information. Sean is a footballer who currently plays for Wellington Olympic AFC, although has previously moved country to country to play in Holland, Armenia, as well as travelling from the USA to New Zealand. He was a perfect example to use as he had moved both city to city and country to country, and had described some differences to me, as well as saying how each country's culture had a huge impact on whether or not it was an enjoyable experience.

We then moved onto creating S.L.I.P technique, where we sorted all of the different aspects into lists, integrated them into less but larger groups, and then prioritised each group.

Both of these techniques helped us view it from a whole different angle, and we came up with a few ideas along the way. When moving to play for a football team, you're already given a chance to get along with minimum 20 players from your team who share at least one major common interest, so it is an easy way to avoid awkward situations. This could be an interesting idea to look at for the project, trying to find some sort of way for people moving cities or countries (not necessarily for sport) to be put in some sort of group when they arrive where it saves them physically going out of their way to try and meet people.

I have attached some photos below from our processes.

By Friday, we will continue to brainstorm around this topic and see what else we can come up with. We will look to further use these critical thinking methods to explore the idea further.