Embarking on a project that is primarily research based was a challenge in itself because of the reliance on suitable participants. When initially considering the direction of my project, I felt that design should be a large component of how I approach the research. This is because of my interest in design but also to make an effort to be innovative in my methods. Hopefully by incorporating creative ways of observing and studying anxiety and fear I have produced a rich collection of material that reflects the feelings of the participants. I tried to use a broad spectrum of participants so that the outcome reflected the feelings of a cross section of society. However this proved more difficult than I had predicted and in the end most of the participants were students and people that I know.

The first month of the project was slow in terms of physical outcomes. I took more time than expected on exploring the process of research through other peoples writing. I think this was definitely time well spent as it gave me far broader knowledge of what exactly is involved in the process, and acceptable methods of research. My project plan did not account for such extensive research but was easily amended because I felt it was important. At this early point in the process I found it hard to follow a plan of my time because I had no set tasks or deliverables to achieve.

I continued by designing probes and other methods of engaging with participants. I found this process interesting because I myself have fears and anxieties and so I understood how people would feel when taking part. For example, when asking questions I did not want to be too intrusive. In fact as the project progressed I began to notice a light-hearted element to the information I was given. This could have been a negative response but I found some of the less serious participants had appealing material.

At the beginning stages of approaching people to take part I was tempted to ask for lots of in-depth information. This would have pushed the project forward a lot but wouldn’t necessarily have been beneficial in the long run because I was unsure of exactly what information I required. Instead I kept the investigations simple and tried to generate as many ideas as possible to experiment with. This approach was successful because it revealed what methods were most effective at allowing people to reveal their fears. This was the main reason for trying so many different methods of questioning the public; the actual information given was secondary at this point.

After receiving response from the cultural probes and carrying out two focus groups the direction of my enquiry evolved. I had discovered what fears were common and how people react to these but the root of this anxiety was still unclear. To try and explore this further I wanted to look at the environments that people become anxious in to determine if this is a factor in provoking anxiety. I had already questioned this through the cultural probes and so knew that there was a relationship.

On reflection I think that this interest strayed from my original intention. Initially I wanted an overview of common fears and anxieties that affect day-to-day living. Investigating on a deeper level gave me more information and allowed me to test more methods of interacting with the participants. However it did not add to the final representation of research.

I used several methods to explore different public environments. I felt that I should participate further and so recorded a journey through different areas of Dundee taking note of the people around and how this affected anxious feelings. This was quite difficult because I didn’t feel particularly anxious but tried to consider what factors around me might change this. I put up posters and an object to investigate how the public feel in different spaces and also to find out their reaction to researching in this way. These were successful and gave me an insight into specific areas and how people feel in them. This was also an opportunity to experiment with how the public interact with these methods of enquiry. Allowing people to reveal their thoughts was a good way of researching because it let participants be expressive. It didn’t give me specific answers but a range of opinions to interpret.

The most interesting discoveries that I made were how each method encouraged revealing personal information. There were varying levels of participation and I would have liked to develop an interactive device that would explore this further. In theory this would collect and share information (feelings of anxiety). Ideally my research would have built towards this end goal of encouraging social interaction in a public place.

Documenting my process proved to be difficult. I kept a blog from the onset, which was a good way of recording my mental notes. It also describes my thought process through the initial research period; a useful resource for the future. I think it would have been valuable to record documentary type footage of how I was progressing on a weekly basis in addition to the blog. This might have been a clearer way of describing to other people my intentions and findings. I think keeping better documentation of participants would also have been advantageous.