Design Research Methodology — Task 1 : Proposal

6/4/2023 — 14/7/2023
Rachel Madeline Purwanto / 0356994
Design Research Methodology / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Proposal

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❥TASKS 

Week 2

Fig 1.1 First draft of Research Proposal 

According to the feedback received, changes were made for research topic, problem and rationale.

Revising the research topic : Production of the expression of the emotions correlated with trauma to engage with the audience through animation.

Revising the research problem : The role of animation in evoking a sense of connection and empathy for the character’s experiences and negative emotions between the viewers and animated character through its visual attributes. 

Revised Rationale Summary : Focuses on the potential of animation to bring out negative emotions thus creating the ability for them to connect with the audience using visual attributes such as facial expressions, lighting, body language. The chosen character is Luz from The Owl House as it manages to express complex emotions and dark themes that are rarely covered in nowadays children’s cartoons.

Week 3

Fig 1.2 Revised Draft of Research Proposal

Redefined research topic : Effectiveness of the expression of the emotions correlated to negative experiences to engage with the audience through animation.

Redefined research problem : Effectiveness on how to see the role of animation in evoking a sense of connection and empathy between the viewers and animated character through its visual attributes showing the character’s experiences and negative emotions. I then cited references using APA and changed some of the references to articles instead of websites. Further refinements were also made for the research objectives as well. Refined Research Objectives :

• To identify the visual attributes that are effective to be used in animation to convey negative emotions.
• To study the effectiveness in animation in evoking a sense of connection and empathy between viewers and animated character demonstrated through its visual attributes, which depict the character's negative emotions.

Refined Research Questions :

• What is the role of visual attributes being portrayed through the character itself in evoking emotional connections between the animated character and the audience?
• How effective are the use of environmental visual attributes such as colour, lighting, setting and sensory elements to create emotional tone and enhance the animated character’s negative emotions?
• To what extent do the visual attributes in animation affect the audience’s emotional engagement and emotional connection with an animated character that's experiencing negative emotions?
• How effective are the visual attributes in terms of techniques used by the animator such as camera angles and composition impact the audience's perception towards the character in a way that elicits a sense of empathy and emotional connection between the audience and the animated character?

Fig 1.3 Final Research Proposal

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❥FEEDBACK 

WEEK 2
Specific feedback : 

• Narrow down the topic and research problem since the scope is too wide and choose specific emotions to analyze on as well as a specific character from a cartoon.

• Revise the rationale based on the redefined research topic and research problem.

General feedback :  Ensure that your research topic and problem are within the scope of your specialization.

WEEK 3

Specific feedback : 

• Redefine the research topic and the research problem since the wording is confusing

• Cite references using APA 

General feedback : 

Make sure to cite references accurately using the APA format and ensure that you are using an article written by a scholar, not a random website that isn’t viable to be used as secondary data.

WEEK 4

Specific feedback : 

• Redefine the problem statement since there are statements without supporting cited references to support that statement

• Redefine the research questions and objectives to correlate with one another and make sure to work on the problem statement first following the lecture notes step by step on how to write the problem statement, then only work on the RO and RQ surrounding the problem statement.

General Feedback : 

It is important to pay attention to the MIB as well as the rubric and refer back to the lecture notes in order to have a clear understanding of how the proposal is supposed to be structured.

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❥REFLECTION 

Week 2 Reflection : Choosing a specific character for this research wasn’t easy since there were many animated characters that are well written correlating to the topic of negative emotions and trauma and characters that I’m fond of, thus I was torn between choosing Luz from The Owl House and Jinx from Arcane.

Week 3 Reflection : It was a bit confusing for me to word out the research topic as well as the research problem since both of them seem to be difficult to understand, but it was helpful that Ms Hayati gave me a rough idea and a suggestion on how to word it better.

Week 4 Reflection : I was a bit lost with my problem statement as well as my research questions and objectives, and having the consultation with Ms Hayati guided me on how to structure them and reminded me to follow the steps according to the lecture notes. I had doubts on my problem statement as I wasn’t sure if it was strong enough or relevant enough but I did further research and found more references to support my problem statement.