OneSelf.
Haowen Liu
We spend our whole life to know ourselves, but we often find that self is usually the one we know the best and the least. In recent years, mental illness incidence is increasing, and personality disorder is also on the rise. What makes people lose themselves? Is the establishment of self-knowledge a completely self-benefiting process? How can communication design help to build self-knowledge? OneSelf. is a communication design approach that builds a bridge between psychological knowledge and audiences. To provide the audience a direct understanding and a more profound impression of self-knowledge concepts, Oneself transforms ideas of self-knowledge into visual languages to lead the audience to explore and share their self-knowledge more systematically.
What is the self?
When I want to answer this question, my first thought is that I have thick lips and curly hair. Everyone has a different understanding of the self, which also complicates the "self." So, I want to explore how to help people understand the "self."
Contextual Framework
The starting point of my thesis was a book that talked about the technology crisis. After checking the history of self-design technologies and reading some articles about self-psychology, I began to focus on exploring how to help people build their self-knowledge through communication design.Design Experiment 1: A Narrative of Self
I created six stories for transforming them into a visual language. During the project A Narrative of Self, I used some reflection phenomena to map some internal changes and created some 3d animation to tell narratives.Design Experiment 2: The Journey in Mind
To find some evidence. I tracked changes in inner emotions, personality, and self-perception over some time. So I made a "one-week" note to record these changes. I created a mental roller coaster based on the" one-week notes," which was aimed to create an experience of "The Journey In Mind."Experiment 3: Touching Self
To build an experience to touch self-image, I coded a self-particle for people to interact with. The coding aims to show that the inner self's instability and self-exploration is a process of breaking and rebuilding. To interact with this experiment/project, go to: https://one-self.me/Touching-Self.
Capstone Project: OneSelf
I interviewed some participants about their understanding and narratives about self. After the interview, I transformed ideas of self-knowledge into visual languages and built a system of self-concepts.
OneSelf Related Visuals
Based on some insights from the interview. I found that self-exploration is not entirely beneficial for everyone, and I also translated these insights into visual language.
OneSelf Card Design
To present the concepts of self-knowledge more interactively, I designed a card game as a vehicle for conceptual visualization and activity for people to explore and share the self.
OneSelf Online Platform
For players who can't get together, I also created this online platform.