Title

Carlotta Neri - Università di Bologna

the brief that have been assigned to you 

Design a modern-stylized wireless Traditional South Korean lantern works with rechargeable batteries. This lantern is used for celebrating South Korea’s lighting lantern festival which holds on in every month of May. The material should be used in Wood, Traditional Korean paper made of the bark of the paper mulberry tree. The lamp is for Single household who’s worried about utility fees and living in the City of Seoul, South Korea. The lantern should be light weight, portable to carry-on, self-standable, it also has handle made out of wood.

Persona profile v1

Nome: Soo-yeon Lee 

Età: 35 anni 

Professione: Domestica 

Stato civile: Single 

Reddito: Basso

Soo-yeon è una donna single che lavora come domestica per diverse famiglie nella città di Seoul. Il suo reddito è piuttosto basso e deve fare attenzione alle spese per mantenere il proprio tenore di vita. Infatti, cerca sempre di trovare modi per risparmiare sull'energia elettrica e sulle bollette in generale.  Soo-yeon trascorre la maggior parte del suo tempo lavorando nelle case delle famiglie che la assumono come domestica per guadagnare più soldi e metterli da parte. Quando ha un po' di tempo libero, cerca di rilassarsi e fare attività che le permettano di prendersi cura della sua persona come fare sport, leggere un libro o ascoltare musica. È molto appassionata di letteratura giapponese, soprattutto degli scrittori Murakami e Tanizaki

Passioni

Paure

Obiettivi

Feedbacks

When I first looked at the image, personas outfit looks like traditional Japanese Kimono in my opinion. It doesn't really look like Korean-styled clothing to me. Also, she looks very younger than her age, which described as 35 years old. Also I wish the Soo-yeon's (persona) hobby was more-Korean related hobbies not about "Japanese Literature,especially the writers Murakami and Tanizaki(you've created on Chatgpt)" Other than that, I really like the background image(Dark room with less light) and depression on her face looks what I've expected which is totally makes sense! Maybe I will play around with more background image and the persona's outfit. Also, maybe if the persona is holding traditional Korean lamp might be interesting? Nice work overall!

Persona profile v2

Nome: Soo-yeon Lee 

Età: 35 anni 

Professione: Domestica 

Stato civile: Single 

Reddito: Basso

Soo-yeon è una donna single che lavora come domestica per diverse famiglie nella città di Seoul. Il suo reddito è piuttosto basso e deve fare attenzione alle spese per mantenere il proprio tenore di vita. Infatti, cerca sempre di trovare modi per risparmiare sull'energia elettrica e sulle bollette in generale. Soo-yeon trascorre la maggior parte del suo tempo lavorando nelle case delle famiglie che la assumono come domestica per guadagnare più soldi e metterli da parte. Quando ha un po' di tempo libero, cerca di rilassarsi e fare attività che le permettano di prendersi cura della sua persona come fare sport, leggere un libro o ascoltare musica. Le piace sia la letteratura giapponese che quella coreana, in particolare la scrittrice Kyung-Sook Shin, mentre come gusti musicali le piace sia la musica tradizionale coreana come il pansori o la musica daegum che le novità più moderne come il K-pop 

Concept 1

Il design della lanterna sarà caratterizzato da un mix tra elementi tradizionali coreani e uno stile moderno e minimalista,con linee pulite e forme semplici.             Sarà realizzata con legno per la struttura, mentre per la parte illuminante verrà utilizzata la carta tradizionale coreana ricavata dalla corteccia dell'albero di gelso di carta. Per rendere la lanterna wireless e portatile, verrà utilizzata una lampada LED alimentata da una batteria ricaricabile. La batteria sarà posizionata all'interno della lanterna, in modo da non essere visibile dall'esterno. Questo renderà la lanterna più estetica e non rovinerà il design. La lanterna sarà autoportante, così da poter essere posizionata su qualsiasi superficie, come un tavolo o un ripiano. Inoltre, per renderla facile da trasportare, avrà una maniglia in legno posizionata nella parte superiore della struttura. La maniglia sarà progettata in modo da essere confortevole e resistente, garantendo un trasporto sicuro ed agevole.                     Grazie alla sua alimentazione wireless, la lanterna non richiederà alcuna spesa aggiuntiva per l'energia elettrica. Durante il festival delle lanterne luminose della Corea del Sud, è possibile accenderla e portarla in giro per le strade della città di Seoul per celebrare l'evento. Grazie alla batteria ricaricabile, è anche possibile utilizzarla per illuminare la propria casa senza preoccuparsi delle spese di utenza.

Questa lanterna è progettata per famiglie single che sono preoccupate per le spese di utenza e che vivono nella città di Seoul, in Corea del Sud. Grazie alla sua alimentazione wireless, la lanterna non richiederà alcuna spesa aggiuntiva per l'energia elettrica. Inoltre, la lanterna sarà leggera e portatile, così da poter essere trasportata facilmente in qualsiasi ambiente della casa.

Concept 2

Confrontandoci era emerso che alla lampada mancava qualche elemento che richiamasse la tradizione. Ho quindi riprogettato il design della lampada inserendo nel prompt di midjourney: lanterna tradizionale coreana, stile minimalista con elementi tradizionali, fatta in legno di gelso, lampada a led, alimentazione wireless, maniglia in legno nella parte superiore 

Feedbacks

Looking good overall! But I still think that the persona is still wearing Japanese-Kimono outfit to me. I guess the AI tool doesn't really recognize the modern Korean's outfit? We don't really wear those traditional outfit in modern days. But the context makes sense, I wish I could see some cultural aspects of living life-style in South Korea too. Not just only the product itself. The lamp you created seems like modern stylized design, but I don't see any Korean aspects of it, but the medium makes sense to me. Good job in general!

Notes and reflections

The brief for my partner: I thought about something typical of Italy and very close to Emilia-Romagna tradition: I wanted to explore how much stereotyped is ChatGPT and Midjourney about Italian tradition. So my brief was about a food souvenir, because Italy is known worldwide for its food. I wanted my brief to be generic because the goal was testing Chat GPT and understanding how deep it could go with notions. The result was that ChatGPT generated a very generic concept, which could be a culinary souvenir in any region of the World:

"It could be a customized cooking kit that includes ingredients and tools needed to cook authentic Emilia-Romagna dishes. For example, it could include a recipe and the tools needed to prepare the dish. This way, Italian tourists could take home some American food culture and reproduce the authentic dish in their own country. Alternatively, it could be a kit for a guided tour of major Emilia-Romagna food industries, such as craft producers, cheese makers, bakers, etc."

The persona that my project partner generated came out in a very stereotyped way: the name and the surname are the most stereotyped name and surname in Italy, this means that you can find someone called Maria Rossi, but actually it's very unprobable. Also her dress and the location reminds me of a farmer or the typical image you see in American films when they are set in Italy.

The concept that my project partner generated had some points similiar to the one generated from me, so this is interesting, but it was based on the most famous products from Emilia Romagna such as pasta, parmiggiano reggiano and aceto balsamico. Then, the problem was also Midjourney because it generated an image of this concept not similar to reality: I could not see the products described in the concept so it is a 100% mistake with something else.


Regarding my part: First, I translated Dong Yoon Shin's brief directly in Italian and then asked to ChatGPT to translate for comparison. The second step was to generate the user profile by entering the brief and the result was a 35-year-old housekeeper working for rich families in Seoul. While i was working with ChatGPT, i noticed that the AI used to reapeat the words in the brief, it didn't go much deeper than the information already given and and if I asked to go deeper, for example, what music my person listened to, he gave me feedback strongly linked to the most popular and mainstream music now in the place where the person lives. In my case, being a Korean girl, ChatGPT gave back to me that she listened to K-pop, which are the most popular Korean artists in the World now. And if I asked for other information about the person that wasn't already implicitly contained in the brief concept, chatGPT always replied "yes it can be but it can also not be". Then I tried to generate the photo of my Persona with Midjouney and it was not easy. Some mistakes and biases have come up: The images were either without context behind the person or if they had context it was very stereotyped with the person in the kitchen and traditionally dressed. Also thanks to the feedback from my project partner, it emerged that today the housekeepers no longer wear traditional clothes to work, and above all, Midjourney has generated a traditional Japanese and non-Korean dress, although I had specified well that the girl was Korean, lived in Korea and worked in Seoul. Furthermore, the image represented a much younger girl than 35 years old, even though the age had also been well specified, and I think this too is a bias linked to a hypersexualization of the female body.

As for the concept, I always asked ChatGpt to generate it and it had to be a "revisited" traditional Korean lantern in a modern style. However, the result of the image generated with Midjourney did not bring out particular elements linked to tradition.


Overall, I would say that the workshop turned out to be a key-step to make visible biases about working with AI tools. Both ChatGPT and Midjourney won't be able to generate well-defined elements such as cities, food and people, in fact they were based on general information and clichés especially. Starting from the fact that we are going to use them increasingly in our everyday working life we have to keep in mind that they reproduce bias that are embedded in our cultures, so if we use them we must also be careful not to contribute in spreading these biases. I think that the biggest lesson I can take from this workshop is that we must learn to use them correctly, in a fair way.