As my project evolved, the direction of my research changed. After probing the nature of fears I wanted to explore the root cause in order to try and relate different fears and therefore people to each other. Through focus groups I learned that environment and the factors that contribute to this space affect many peoples fears and anxieties. This information was used as a starting point for exploring further what factors in a space can affect how comfortable people feel in it.

I made an object that could be placed in different areas of public activity to try and determine the feelings of people using particular spaces. The results were of course affected by the design of the object and how successful it would be at attracting attention and intrigue. I wanted it to have the qualities of a game to try and encourage people to become involved. I thought of creating an actual game based on a pinball machine or a similar physical interaction. However, I decided that my time could be spent better and so made a simple base with lanes. Each was to represent a contrasting emotion- anxiety or content. This acted as a prototype for what could have been a digital input system with the same qualitites.

The object was to determine whether passers by felt comfortable or anxious in their environment. It asked to place a ball in the corresponding path so that it was then visible to everyone how many people felt each of the two emotions. This method was useful to me as I could judge how people felt in particular spaces and try and determine why. There was another level of interaction in that it acted as an anonymous communicator, allowing a collective feeling to build and be shared among the people using it.

It was hard to establish concrete facts from this approach. It was clear to see the number of people who felt each emotion but why this was the case remained a mystery. My way of interpreting this was to look at factors that affected the space. For example the flow of people through the space, how many people used it, the size of the area and lighting. Examining the evidence in relation to these factors did give me conclusions but this was speculation and so I felt in a way that they were unfounded.

I made links between higher levels of anxiety and quieter, narrower corridors. It seemed that these areas posed more of a threat than busy thoroughfares where there was constant activity. This surprised me because I expected that anxious feelings would be present around many people. From my previous investigations it seemed that the most common anxieties are to do with being self-conscious in certain situations. However this only added more depth to my collected material and opened up more potential for a vast representation of fear for my final presentation of material. 

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