@daisydo1229
Life recorder, story teller, UXdesigner
siyud.com/
This is my first informant. She is a graduate student in Human-Computer Interaction. She came to London in September 2016 after spending one year in Stockholm.
Below is her Instagram account. Photos are in the same order as in Instagram.
Have a look and click the arrow on the right to view all her posts:
01
(It may take some time before Instagram feed appears. It’s slightly faster with Safari)
02
In the interview, I asked her about her living experience in London because I want to know if her posts reflect most aspects of her life. Basically everything she said could be found associated with her posts. It seems her account is a relatively authentic reproduction of life offline. Interestingly, when being asked to describe her “relationship with London” or “how she thinks of her life”, she thought a while and said two words: disconnected and exploring.
“Disconnected” was because she didn’t go out very often and mostly either have classes at school or stay at home. She told me London is a busy and big city. There were so many things happening everyday and people were living so many different kinds of lives in one city. Central London and the place she lived were like two different worlds. Despite all the information available on the Internet, she felt quite distanced and didn’t fit in. Besides, she told me it’s not about being lonely because she had a few good friends here. The disconnected feeling mainly came from her impression of this landscape. Nevertheless, she was trying to change the status and get more engaged, hence “exploring”.
We talked about her Instagram account and its contents. I suggested her to pick some posts that she believed are the “most representative” epitome for her life in London. The approach I took here was purposefully chosen to draw out how she used instagram to present her life, rather than contents of the pictures. Click the square button to hear her explanation.
03
Participant observation
On Wednesday 15th March，I spent five hours with my informant covering a typical weekday of her. I did participant observation when she was at school and on her way commuting between home and school. I’ll summarise my observations into three parts.
(1)
I met her at 1pm outside the place she lives. Then we went to bus station, where is 5mins away. She was carrying a big backpack with her computer and some books inside. Her schedule of the day was to participate an interview for her classmates’ research and meet some other classmates to prepare for the group presentation in two days. She walked quite fast because she worried about she would be late for the appointment. When the bus came, she got in and went to the second deck. We sat together but we didn’t talk much because she seemed a bit distracted by arrangements of the day.
(2)
She arrived at her classmates’ house at about 2pm. Her classmates are three Chinese and they knew each other one year ago in Stockholm. They started to interview her with questions about how she kept in touch with her boyfriend in China. She was relaxed and looked more like she was chatting rather than being interviewed.
When they finished it, she left and went to a school building to meet her group mates. There were supposed to be 6calssemates but only 3 shown up, including her. They sat around a small table in a kind of busy bar. When other two classmates chatted from time to time, she didn’t look very engaged and looked at me a few times. And she said the work delegation wasn’t clear and she wasn’t sure what she should do. After asking a boy in the group, she was told what she needed to do. But the environment wasn’t ideal for her. So after one hour stay she decided to leave and do her work at home.
(3)
On her way back she walked quite slowly. When we walked to bus station she said, “it’s a long and busy day. Sometimes I have to show up at some appointment even I don’t have any classes at school. When I finish a day I’m already too tired to do other things. But I really want to manage things better. Maybe on holiday I will be more free to explore this city”.