知人知面不知心

Hank H. Huang 畫虎畫皮難畫骨
Dec. 2009 知人知面不知心

The site project:
State Street
parking lot.

The assignment:
an open question with a specific outcome

For this two-week studio project you are requested to
reflect on standards, and the deviation from standards,
in a way that develops the visuality and autonomy of
your design work. The actual question is open, but the
outcome (deliverable) has to be visual and physically
developed and present at the final crit.

As designers we are all responsible for, and compliant
with, standards. And our professional duties and
personal passions are all inbetween the intuitive ‘yes’
and the critical ‘maybe,’ or ‘no.’

There is more to design than ‘don’t make me think’ but
let’s not forget intuition.

Daniel van der Velden
10.17.2009

The Standard:
One object that I saw in a parking attendant's booth was
a Jesus clock. I was curious about how I, without a shadow of doubt, immediately assumed the image of the bearded man sitting in the middle was Jesus. I then questioned: how do we know when "that person" is the son of God? Is it because of what we were told, or simply because he fits the standard of what Jesus is "supposed to" look like?

The identity of a person became my theme for Daniel's Standard assignment challenge. The Jesus clock was hung next to a Koran verse. This unusual juxtaposition gave me the idea of exploring identity and affiliation through online dating services, such as Match or eHarmony.com.

Being friends with someone in cyber-space makes the fabrication of an unreal personality possible. When people enter their information into a dating website, visitors must go through the process of creating a profile to find the so called "Perfect Match." The online participants submit answers to 18 or more questions that supposedly categorizes your personality. You answers then become your identity for meeting others online. The questions are similar to DMV driver license application, where people are described by physical appearance (height, eye color, etc.) rather than by the "qualities" of a person. We are inevitably influenced by these standard comparisons.

open link

Common questions for personal profile:

what is your gender
what is your height
what is your bodytype
what is your eye color
what is your hair color
what is your ethnicity
what is your education
what is your occupation
how often do you smoke
do you have children
do you drink alcohol
what is your religion
what is your marital status
where are you from
what is your date of birth
what is your name
are you seeking male or female

By answering these questions, a personal profile is created. Your answers will be used to generate "you", regardless of how truthfully you answer these crucial questions–never mind the questions we often care about when it comes to knowing somebody.

In essence, we become a product. Subsequently, in order to increase market popularity, an accompanying attractive description is a necessary.

Is there a different way to look at these questions?
Are standard questions [refer to 1] even relevant in getting to know a person? Rearranging the sentence structure and grammar of the English language forces us to re-construct the sentence and to re-evaluate the meaning of the questions. What if you can compose your own question using the existing structure:

and perhaps pick the answers:

open link

What if questions are generated by users:

>>>

Are there alternative ways to redesign these questions?
Could a color-blind test be one of the options? When it comes to being friends with someone, shouldn't we all be color blind? In a way, it is better to fail the color-blind test then to pass it in this context.

Can an intelligence quotient test be one of the ways to replace the existing questions, where one's "intellect" is the measurable quality?

Raven's Progressive Matrices are multiole choice tests of obstract reasoning. For each test item, a candidate is asked to identify the missing segment required to complete a lager patterm. (text source from wikipedia)

reset

What if a profile is created using simple geometric shapes? User can use shapes to puzzle together a character of their own.

reset

open link

Bitmap images made out of pixels.

open link

open link

open link

open link

Bitmap images made out of circles.
Try dragging images on top of other images.

reset

Perhaps the real question is how much can we trust pictures that are uploaded by unknown users and, hence, "matches" that, using generic standard questions, are generated by computer software. In the digital environment, using standardized formats as a vehicle for human activity has limited the idea of getting to know someone. Default questions and digital images fail miserably in representing unique qualities of a person, let alone his or her personality. What else could we do to improve or even make changes to the existng problem?

>>>

>>>