Serious Play

Eleonore's post about the Lego Serious Play Research Project peaked my interest in the subject. I know it was a recommended reading, but there is A LOT of reading as everyone knows.

I grew up with an artist mother and went to art camp all through my youth, so I understand that some things are often easier to represent through art or visualization, especially when it comes to personal thoughts or feelings. It sounds like a "touchy, feely", super subjective method, and certainly not a quantifiable one, and it is. However, it's a method that may be able to tap into a person's psyche in a way that other methods don't have the power to. It's a method that allows for revisiting and revising as well. I like David Guantlett's personal work regarding the individual's identity, I think that I could use it to inform my own research choice.

For my research question, I'm playing with the idea of online and offline identities and how users feel about themselves in those different spheres. Are they different spheres? Or just extensions of one sphere? Do they require different identities? Why? I think that having a person build a representation for their identity in both their online and offline lives would be really interesting and revealing. Seeing the similarities and differences in the two representations would be very telling about a person's true feelings towards their contemporary identity (ies).

I was also thinking about having online and offline focus groups with the same sample and comparing the results...but perhaps that's for a different post.

Thank you Eleonore and Jennette for being so enthusiastic about such an interesting method, good luck on the workshop!