GR1: Analysis
Observations & Interviews
The Architect
- An architecture student doing graduate-level training for professional architecture work
- She feels that one of her biggest challenges as an arts student is the subjective nature of feedback
- Hard to determine which feedback to listen to
- Some art is MEANT to invoke a negative response -- how do you consider such feedback?
- Most of the feedback she gets comes from gallery critiques, shows or critique sessions
- Galleries are short and often more social than feedback-oriented
- Critique sessions involve getting a number of people into a room where they may make comments, or take a pen and leave annotations/sketches on copies of the art in question
- All of these sessions have time limits, so it's hard to get sufficient feedback
- Success/feedback in such sessions often depends on how well you sell/present the work
[ArtBark group] This is very interesting, since it indicates that traditional feedback methods are frequently inefficient, and feedback from these sessions is typically hard to organize/interpret.
- She normally receives a wide variety of feedback** Type of feedback depends on reviewer
- Emotional reactions are common
- It's often very useful to hear simply whether people like/dislike your work
- Structure/technique
- Sometimes people like to sketch to illustrate a point
- Such feedback often results in professors arguing/discussing with each other
- A lot of people like giving references e.g. your work reminds me of..., your work should be more like...
- Not a lot of students may utilize feedback since they're often on a tight schedule and don't have time for many iterations** More frequent feedback would be helpful
- Online feedback would be helpful
- Undergrad students may want to be able to keep variations/previous versions of their work for use in portfolios
- Wants review audiences to have limited visibility of each other (e.g professors shouldn't be able to see what her friends think of her art)
- Most feedback comes from gallery critiques or mentor meetings
- Galleries are short and often more social
- Mentor meetings give a limited perspective
- The artistic process is very personal and some artists are hesitant to over-share
- The artist wants to gauge the emotional response, but it's hard to measure
- Varieties of sources are useful, but you your review audiences to be organized meaningfully (i.e. professor's do not see your friends reviews, etc.)
- The process involves many drafts and versions, and you sometimes want to show all of the stages in case you lost something along the way
- Feedback is directed at many different categories: Conceptual (What is the intention?), Contextual (How does this fit in with what we have seen before?), Technical (The actual skill).
- The artist often wants to know which work relates to yours or what your work brings to your audience's mind in a semantic sense
- Sometimes the artist wants their work to reflect a sense of collaboration of viewer input
- Hard to direct feedback to specific visual aspects
- Sometimes the work is more phenomenological, so visual feedback can be difficult
User Classes
- Roles
- Arts professors
- Arts students
- Professional artists
- Non-artists
- Types
- Host
- wants feedback
- roles: arts professors, arts students, pro artists
- Commenters
- givers of feedback
- all roles
- Host
Needs & Goals
- Efficient feedback
- Artists don't want to spend a lot of time getting feedback (e.g. at gallery critiques)
- Artists would like to get feedback online
- Artists would like to get feedback frequently
- Constructive feedback
- Commenters should be able to include references (e.g. this work reminds me of..., try to make this work more like...)
- Commenters should be able to provide graphical examples (e.g. sketches) and annotations (similar to pen/paper or sticky notes in traditional critique sessions)
- Variety of feedback
- Artists would like to reach a wide variety of commenters (e.g. friends, professors, professionals)
- Artists may be interested in collaborating with others
- Organized feedback
- Artists would like to organize feedback by type (e.g. emotional, like/dislike, technical)
- Artists would like to set privacy/viewing settings between groups (e.g. professors should not be able to see comments from artist's friends)