For our videos, my group chose to start at the front of Evans library and find a specific book by title and then check out that book. The only information given to each participant was the book author and title. This vague prompt allowed for room for interpretation that resulted in some interesting differences. Some of the interesting, non-obvious differences are: What path did the participant take? Did they use the stairs or take the elevator? Did they use a computer to look up the book, or did they ask a librarian for help? How did they react to attention of others? These are some of the questions that I will attempt to investigate in this blog entry.
When reviewing the paths taken by each individual participant, it is interesting to see if they will take the stairs or take the elevator. Unfortunately, more than one explanation for choosing one over the other exists, so I will attempt to mention the more probable possibilities. First, a viewer could consider physical fitness level. The book we decided to hunt for ended up being on the fourth floor of the library, so those participants who are not in great shape may have chosen to take the elevator. Another possibility could be that a participant decided that the stairs or the elevator would be faster, failing to even notice the physical exertion level for either activity. In order to evaluate the videos and try to correctly identify each participant, I would most likely use a combination of these two explanations.
While the path taken is interesting, it cannot tell us everything about the participant. The next difference to evaluate is how each participant actually finds the book. It seems like the main two options are to A) login to a library computer and search in the online catalog or B) a librarian for help. In order to attempt to match videos to participants based on this difference, it helps to know the participants and their personalities. Without previously knowing the participants, it would be much harder to guess which way they might find the book. One participant ended up doing something funny, complicating the guessing process, by looking up the book call number, but not looking for a map of its location. They took off right away, apparently hoping that the call number would be logically designed with floor number integrated into the code. That person ended up having to check the second and third floors before finding the book on the fourth floor.
Now that path and resourcefulness have been considered, it is interesting to comment on the reaction of bystanders. Anytime that a person does something out of the cultural norms, people tend to take notice. Apparently, strapping a camera to your head and walking through a library qualifies as out of the norm. The most subtle of cues was flat out staring at participants. The other extreme included people dancing in front of the camera. While this may be interesting, and seems like it might provide a good set of clues to the participant’s identity, I was not able to correctly identify any of our groups identities based off of the reaction of bystanders.
More than anything, this project seemed to be an exercise in being weird and an experiment to see what we (the students) will do when told so. Just kidding, kind of. Either way, it is really interesting to see the subtle differences between people and how they interact with people, objects, and obstacles.
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