Thursday, August 11, 2011

TAO Journal - 3rd Entry

1. A trend I noticed this week came from the card-sorting assignment (posted below). The trend was that people in my class with the same assignment emailed the class list-serve with a link to their web-sort test with the assumption that people with the same assignment would probably do their test in exchange for others doing their own test. A sort of trade off. I wasn't so lucky in this respect as is detailed in my post on the assignment, but the trend of people reaching out to people in the same situation is apparent. The reason for the trend are obvious too in that no one wanted to put their friends and family out more than they had to when they could get people in the same class going through the same thing to participate in exchange for participation in the others' respective tests. At least 10 members of our class emailed out their links which makes the anomaly in this trend those who did not email out their links. Certainly a few people chose the alternate assignment and had no need for doing so, but this was not the case for at least one person I know of in the class. It is possible that the individual started the assignment late and could not get a link out in time.  The observation I made in this trend was that at least two of the ten people who emailed out looking for help with their test forgot to include a link to the test. I think this could have been because they were considerably more focused on asking the favor than they were the execution of what they were asking, although certainly it could have just been forgetfulness.

2. On Tuesday I went into the theater at the Creative Circus where student work in contention for student awards are presented. I went when there was a high volume of students at the Circus and quite a few already in the theater looking at the work. As I watched about 15 people come into the theater to look at the work, I noticed a trend that most were starting nearest the theater entrance and then working their way around the room to view the different categories. All but three. The other three went directly to other sections more in the middle of the room, making them an anomaly. I believe this anomaly may have happened for a couple reasons. They may have wanted to avoid the slight bottle-necking at the theater entrance or they may have wanted to see a particular category in which perhaps they had entered work of their own and wanted to see the display or competition. A random observation from this experience was that most people gravitated towards the right-most wall in their perusal of the works. This is strange because it is counter-clockwise, but I found myself doing it as well.

3. The third TAO set, I had to get a little nutty. I simply walked around the Circus, pretending to sneeze. As you might expect, most people said something along the lines of "Bless you." Of the ten I tested, there were three anomalies that said nothing and walked on by. My observation from this assignment is that people are more likely to say 'Bless you" if they know you. Two of the three who did not respond to my sneeze did not know me.

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