Knowing what you don’t know, is the most essential step to knowing.

In the past five weeks, I’ve been doing explorations on how we receive and read the News. However, the main focus was leaning towards the accessibility of news and journalism, but not on how and what it presents. I was then suggested by my advisor that I should focus more on the way of how we read instead of how we receive. I think what I have been focusing so far, was only scratching on the surface of journalism, which is like in what forms do we access it, or in what forms do we receive it. But the main element that would bring more depth to my work, is actually how it’s been presented, and the contents that we choose to come with it.

This doesn’t mean that I’m trying to redefine what journalism is, or even set down a statement on how we are supposed to do journalism. In the end, I see myself as a designer instead of a journalist. My goal (or my motive) here, is to see how design can facilitate different possibilities to present News in different ways. I am especially interested in how journalism can be presented in multiple perspectives for the readers.

In the past five weeks, I’ve investigated on the ways of access to journalism. One of the explorations that interested me a lot, was the way of how a single article can be physically presented. A news article can become an object, and what it becomes, is more than just “information”. It provides a sense of commodity, but more important, it also gives a sense of it’s existence in the real world.

So here I am, grabbing on the to two elements in my thesis. “News as a physical object, and it’s ability to be show multiple perspectives”. I think one path that I could take, is the three dimensionality of an object, and how that aspect can be played into the multiple perspective idea. However, one of the disadvantage of building objects, is the ability to be updatable in spilt seconds. Although this issue can probably be solved by using cutting edge display technologies. It still needs to somehow be tied into the design.

Lots of issues and questions are waiting in line to be explored, I wonder if any of them can ever be solved. One thing that I’ve always kept in mind, is the attitude I should have towards my thesis project. I try not to see myself as a problem solver, but a problem researcher. I don’t expect myself to be the one to come up with a million dollar idea and save journalism. I just see myself as a design researcher, who is interested in journalism, and wonder what would happen if I try give it a different role in our society.