Wednesday 7th October, 2015
20 Questions Seminar
In this Wednesday seminar session, as a group we touched on the topic of different approaches to research. The exercise, to me anyway, was a way for us to conjure up some questions about any object - it could be something in the seminar room or just any object that my partner may have been acquainted with or have knowledge of the said object. The exercise was done to test our ability to question the person on the subject and your ability to pre-plan some questions without knowing what the topic or object even was.
After finding my partner we kicked off with the questions, when I had thought of something he had to ask questions as to find out what that something was. To keep it quite simple I chose an object within the room, the fire alarm bell. When I had found it I told my partner and they began to as questions such as; Is it something in this room? Is it someone in this room? Is it something quite abstract and different to the rest of the rooms colour? And so on and so forth. All questions being kept within the aspect that the answers can only be yes or no and not a full sentence.
Once I was tasked with having to asked the questions, I had prepared the following questions:
- Is it in this room?
- Is it something that someone is using?
- Could the object be used by hand?
- Is the object considered quite large?
- Does it have a primary function within this room?
- Does everyone in the room have one?
- Is it something that is used regularly within the room?
- Is it a part of the furniture?
- Is it a chair?
And I had achieved the final answer, being that it was an office chair. After being concise and using trial and error for my 20 questions, I managed to get to the topic on my partners mind in just 7 questions.
This idea of being able to craft up questions to find out something, anything, is what I can take and apply to many aspects of my work. For instance, if I were to look for an influence in a certain media, an influence from a specific designer or artist or even ponder if I have used the correct research by asking myself (or others) questions about the above areas. This can be a way to narrow down what I should and shouldn't apply to my work, keeping it concise to the fact that I only use the useful information that is related to my project/brief.
