Affinity Diagramming

Assignment 6Andy Hunsucker | Steve Voyk

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Major InsightsAt the end of this process, we were able to discover several insights.

Our subjects process is incredibly important to her. She has clear ideas on how to build costumes and can explain that process with ease.

We also learned a lot about her supplies. Supplies are pragmatic, and necessary, but we can see the subjects need for utility in the tools she uses. Each tool must be used multiple times to justify the cost.

It was clear that the costuming community is incredibly social. For our subject, costuming is a way to help her quickly connect with other people who share her interests which helps her overcome some of her social anxieties.

We found that costuming has a circular progression. Conventions bring people together, attention from convention goers is a motivating factor for cosplayers, people with the best costumes get the most attention, seeing those costumes inspires others, and the desire to be more social drives them to create better costumes for the next convention.

We found that our subject has a heavy preference on creating everything and sourcing everything locally, but we see that the locations she sources from are split almost entirely between local and online.

After learning about Peacebonding, we feel that this idea has impliciations beyond the convention realm

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Major InsightsCostume Progression

Conventions bring people together

Better costumes recieve more attention

Getting attention at conventions is valuable to cosplayers

The best costumes inspire other cosplayers

Cosplayers work harder to create better costumes

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Crafting Multi-ToolDescriptionThrough our insights, we saw that there was an opportunity to create a tool that could perform multiple tasks in crafting. Our subject mentioned needing different tools and having to justify each one separately because of the cost. This also creates storage and organization issues with many tools.

We designed a simple multi-tool with several common devices our subject used. These included a set of scissors, a rivet hammer, and storage for needle and thread, as well as rivets.

Sketch

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Costume CataloguerDescriptionThe Costume Cataloguer came about because of our subjects desire to take inspiration from the costumes other people were wearing.

In this design, cosplayers could program a small device with the details of their costumes stored electronically. This device would be worn along with the costume, either as a visible piece, or under some other clothes. It would be embedded with an RFID tag that could be read by other cosplayers who could then look up the details. These details could include any information the cosplayer chose to share: locations where items were bought, tutorials on how to create items themselves, or even videos showing the entire process.

A cosplayer with the RFID attachment on their shoulder

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Costume CataloguerSketch

The costume cataloguer interface

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Peacebond CaseDescriptionOne particular aspect of cosplaying at conventions that captured our imaginations was ‘peacebonding’. This is a process by which weapons related to the costumes that appear to be dangerous are bound to the cosplayer so that they can’t draw them. This allows other convention goers to feel safe and increases security.

We felt this could be useful in other arenas, so we designed a peacebonded cellphone case. This would be a reminder to the user for situations that cell phone use would not be appropriate, like social gatherings and meetings.

The case could be opened, and then locked closed, unable to be opened for a certain amount of time.

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Peacebond CaseSketch

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Costume RecyclingDescriptionWe learned during this process that tastes change over time. A desire to dress in a Sailor Moon costume eventually changes into a desire to dress in a My Little Pony costume.

We designed a system for users to recycle their costume material when they were no longer useful to the cosplayer. This could invite new people into the hobby and allow for changing tastes. Dr. Who is a very popular costume currently, but someday, that will give way to another character.

This system allows people to list costume pieces related to their area of interest, and also list new areas that the cosplayer is willing to trade for.

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Costume RecyclingSketch

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CritiqueWe had gone through this data thoroughly in the last assignment, and felt like we knew the subject matter too well to come up with fresh insights. However, we were able to pull in some new insights with a fresh look at the data, including a renewed interest in the Peacebonding technique. It was interesting to work through the data in a new way, and confirm some things we had learned, and discover some new things as well.

We also found that the volume of certain observations gives a lot of insights. We made a category out of different locations that she sourced materials from. Seeing that the local and online sources for her materials were essentially equal surprised us, since our subject put such a premium on crafting items herself.

It seemed like there are certain areas where we weren’t able to dig deeper. For example, our subject had expressed cosplaying as a way to help with anxiety issues, but we only saw a small number of notes on this. Seeing an area of interest that didn’t have much depth could lead to us doing more research in that particular area.

We also found it hard to get complicated ideas down through this technique. We were able to find simple ideas easily.

It also appeared that if the item generation isn’t deep enough, it would be easy to feel like you had accomplished a lot, when in fact you had missed tons of information. And because complicated ideas are tough to get to, this process could easily mislead the researcher.