Thesis outline

Designing long-distance language

Introduction

The ideal pattern of family has changed, people who lived in the large family became minority in recent years. It is the result of change of people’s value and the increasing of mobile society. By virtue of popularization of the Internet, people have got tools to communicate with each other regardless of the sense of time and distance. It is possibly said locations where people live are not important for them staying away geographically from their families any longer.
People belong to where they live physically, but also who used to live with emotionally. The goal of this thesis is to explore how design can support emotional connection between people living apart through the sense of belonging.

Thesis outline-2

Transition (history) of communication tools

There are numerous ways in which people have changed the way they communicate in the last 50 years; email is most certainly one of them. Traditionally, social interaction in the local community was the basis for communication face-to-face. Yet, today it is no longer the primary way to communicate as one can use a landline telephone or any number of the computer mediated communications such as Skype and Email. The decrease of the number of letter use at last few years is proved by a lot of objective macro data.

Thesis outline-3

People research

Make interviews to some people who live apart from their family.
and involve people to share and discuss my design suggestion in order to make my idea strong.

I made a question to several people that can they indicate the direction of their home(country),
then suprisingly no one could tell exactly.

Thesis outline-4

Cultural research in terms of direction

When you sleep, putting your head towards north is regarded ominous

Japanese flower arrangement has to be set to be seen from the direction of front

Buddhist altar
They offer some fruit and flower to their ancestor

Bowing is the ritual that express respect for someone and also used for nomal greeting in some Asia includes Japan.

Muslim people do pray toward the Mecca five times a day. Most of them have so-called Muslim watch, and the exact direction of the Mecca can be indicated wherever they are.

Thesis outline

Visual research

Collecting and analysis into some examples which are possibly relevant to my design outcome.
All the objects indicates certain direction

Contemporary Muslim watch

Muslim watch

Japanese compass

Magnet

weathercock

Thesis outline

Conclusion

If it is the bond which is the most essential thing between family that people can reach when they try to identify themselves, it would have significance to design something for supporting them. By exploring into rituals people do, objects enable people to feel constantly connected even though they may be physically apart.