Fifth Experience

Blindness Survey
I wanted to expand on my topic so i decided to ask people 2 simple questions, one of them is about their point of view about blindness. I found some very interesting answers and from there I gathered some ideas and connections.

The Questions:
1. If you could live without one of your senses, which one would it be?
2. What does blindness mean to you?

Best Responses:


Connection:
I guess, the biggest connection I made was with certain responses-especially to those people I'm close with. It was almost as if we share the same point of view. Overall, I liked seeing everyone's unique response; some copied others and it reminded me how society is at times; some people are afraid to be wrong or open their minds because they might be the only ones; others that I couldn't understand or felt disappointed because it was a definition more than their thought. And then there are those who aren't afraid to make an opinion and stand by it.

PROCESS


FINAL SPREADS

What is Blindness?

1. I started my expansion by researching and interviewing people with and without impaired vision. I'm not quite sure where it's taking me yet but I'm gathering a lot of ideas and images from what people experience and what I think...

2. So going away from researching blindness even more, I was looking through all my experiences and connections and realized that they each relate to one another and have some sort of blindness characteristic.
ex: challenges, alone, boundaries

Not only did they relate to "blindness", my experiences also relate to my personal experiences or memories. And so from all this i am developing a web of connections and I will see where this will take me.

I want to show people what they don't see everyday (of me) and how that is my blindness. my private life.

still in progress...

Expansion

I choose to expand my first exploration [blindness] from the 4 explorations. I think the reason why I chose this is because it's the most personal experience I can connect with and understand. When I first came across this experience the first thing that came into my mind was my older sister. And I thought that through her experience I could find something that can lead me to my expansion.

My Process Outline:


What is Keratoconus?


What do they see?

Normal Vision

Keratoconus (Mild)

Keratoconus (High)

"the way light bounces in your eye doesn't get bounced back normally, instead it refracts all over"

How could I relate this to design?
Something my sister said that got my brain thinking:
"I'm still analyzing and dealing with it, a lot of disabilities are induced with denial because you went from normal to not and society is very cut and dry about being normal. People with disabilities get pushed away and forgotten."

How could we (designers/everyone) help?
_Provide enlarged handouts (A3 from A4)
_Use black markers on whiteboards, rather than red or green.
_Write large and legibly on boards.
_Provide sight of hard copy of OHP slides during session, e.g. the originals.
_Ensure that student has good lighting. A small reading lamp may be helpful. Glare from sunlight can be problematic.
_Accept homework/assignments word-processed. (This allows a large font to be used and then reduced.)
_Enlarge exam papers.
_Ensure that the edges of stairs have a contrasting colour, otherwise they may look like a long ramp!
_Allow more time, where necessary, for moving around the building. Crowds can be disconcerting.

P.S I'm still exploring more...

FINAL SPREADS

Fourth Experience

Exploration #8 Cracks
Map out pavement cracks in your neighborhood.

So I walked around my "neighborhood" for not even a minute until I noticed my first crack on the sidewalk.
I was interesting to see and also boring at the same time. The whole time I was thinking "what connection am I going to get out of this?" So I started asking myself questions like, where does it begin and end? How do cracks even happen? And I took it from there..



So I first documented what it looked like overall, and the I documented where I thought it started and where it ended. And lastly, I documented in detail what it looked like. I guess from this exploration I learned to trust myself in questioning and it's okay not to know all the answers right away. But to remind myself how important questions are for any process.

FINAL SPREAD

Third Experience

Since I been sick for almost 2 weeks I have some restriants on exploring whats outside my room. So i decided to explore where i been sitting mostly for the past two weeks, my bed. I'm suppose to be on bed rest for a week but each day gets harder because I'm tired of resting and I just want to get better now!

I will document this experience in my sketchbook, I'll probably be doing a lot more writing than documenting in pictures.









Making the connection was pretty obvious for me. Well first I haven't left my room to experience other "adventures" that I planned before, I had to rearrange and work with what I had. My room has been "my place" for quite some time after being in my room for a week straight recovering from my sickness I got so sick and tired of it. I can't stand to be there all day! So as much as I love my room, I did hate it for some time.



FINAL SPREADS