#bodily skill

[aleenasingh]

M1 Reflections

The most important insights from this module:

Fake it til you make it

although we didn’t know what the assignment was about until like halfway through the module, some parts of the project were tangible such as the concrete material of the joystick. Starting with that first allowed us to eventually move forward with the tasks of the module

Be careful in getting focused on defining things. Just because it means one thing to us, doesn’t mean it translates to everyone else. We have been working on this project for weeks, not them

We were really focused on this idea of ‘pushing’ and ‘moving’ the joystick which didn’t seem to convey the same message to the coaches during show ‘n’ tell that it had for us during our module. we focused more on the feeling of the word than its meaning

focus more on the analysis

every iteration should have a purpose and an outcome. Doesn’t have to be successful, but it’s important to focus on this because it makes us better at finding things to change, finding why we changed it and what happened when we did. Changing small things is good, but what comes of that change is the important part.

Well that’s the end of this module. Definitely an interesting start to the course. it was quite a daunting one since I’m not used to working with such abstract concepts but I’m hoping that these will get me to open my mind a bit more and bring forward a new way of design thinking.

[aleenasingh]

Module 1: Sept 11th

After some working and experimenting further, things took a turn for the confusing after a coaching session.

We presented our idea of looking at cursive writing but learned that we aren’t really supposed to be focusing on the specific skill itself, but skill as a phenomenon (what that means, I have no clue at the moment).

Some questions to ponder

How is it that we get better at something?

What is changing?

How does the world change when developing a new skill?

After stewing in these thoughts for a while, we decided on taking a different approach. We wanted to look at the pedagogical aspect of cursive writing (or in general how one teaches a skill), looking at the teaching aids usually provided. For example, when we started learning how to write we progressed from large 3-lined pages, slowly to smaller and more difficult ones as our motor skills started learning and improving.

So, another look at the project Josefine and I wanted to look at how we could teach cursive writing as a skill, and what sorts of aids would help in that. We thought of the same lined pages, connecting the dots, tracing etc. Then we also needed to account for what is needed to acquire a skill. For example, the pencil isn’t held in an intuitive way, we learned how to use it to be able to do the skill of writing. Similarly, how can we teach someone to use a joystick to be able to do the same? Or even, how can we manipulate the artifact so that it’s easier for us to be able to do the skill?

All of these sound good but we are still having trouble with where to start since we don’t want to go down a stray path again. We aren’t supposed to create the exercises or present a new way to create the skill....so what are our options? Confusion seems to be a theme in this module but I’m hoping that in the next few days this will start to clear up!

[aleenasingh]

Module 1 September 6th Day 3-5

Josefine and I met today and started tinkering with the concept (bodily skill) and the material (analog joystick). When we started brainstorming, we started by feeling out the material itself and tried to see what feeling it envoked and the real-world connections we could make with the movement of the joystick.

The tilting/balancing movement of a joystick around reminds us of:

Segways

hoverboards

unicycles

cursive writing

regular writing

surfing etc

After some pondering, Josefine and I were both really interested in the cursive writing example. How the movements of the joystick felt like fluid movements often found in calligraphy and handwriting.

With high hopes, we set out to use the joystick with processing (after we finally figured out how to make it draw using the mouse function), and started seeing what cursive writing felt like.

**After this video was taken, we tinkered more with the response delay and it actually started looking like a drawing function rather than a bunch of connect the dots.

[aleenasingh]

September 4, Day 2

A new reading and concept about bodily skilled has me even more confused than last time. Dreyfus & Dreyfus’ findings about skill are fairly easy to understand; there are 5 steps from novice to expert and in these 5 steps you not only get better at the skill, your motivations behind why you’re doing the skill, intuitions, and decisions also change. Using this for our first module with a joystick, Josefine and I came up with many ideas on how they can be potentially related. We were mainly looking at the distinction between competence and expertise and how Dreyfus indicates that the difference is about how much time we spend thinking about our decision. The proficient still has to think and make a conscious decision, although it may be quick, the expert relies on nature and what decisions have worked in the past to make decisions in the present/future.

With this, we were interested in the thinking process of skill. Where the mind controls the body. At some point, this is no longer necessary but can, in fact, interfere with the skill. For example, we can look at walking and breathing: two very normal things that do all the time in our lives. When consciously breathing, and thinking of breathing we interrupt our body’s nature to breathe normally, and when walking we start to walk differently as well. This thinking can often interrupt the skill, and we thought this could be a cool concept to explore as well.

Along with this, the difference between all of these levels of skill are motivation. We wanted to look at how motivation affects each skill level and at what point the motivation no longer has to exist, making someone an expert. Experts also have to have some motivation to do a skill, what is it?