Design Context

GROUP 4

➟ COMMUNICATION SKILLS
↳symbolism
↳social networking
↳struggling with social situations (disabilities, autism, etc)
↳mute, deaf, blind
    ↪will affect communication skills
↳languages
↳expressions and gestures
↳body language
↳signage
    ↪universal language
↳info-graphics
↳branding

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My Theme Within Communication:
Expressions, Gestures & Body Language

Dictionary Definition of Expression:
1. The process of making known one's thoughts or feelings.
2. The conveying of opinions publicly without interference by the government: "freedom of expression".

Dictionary Definition of Gesture:
noun: A movement of part of the body, especially a hand or the head, to express an idea or meaning: "so much is conveyed by gesture".
verb: make a gesture: "she gestured meaningfully with the pistol".

Dictionary Definition of Body Language:
noun: The process of communicating non-verbally through conscious or unconscious gestures and movements.

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Different Body Language Can Be Perceived As:
- confidence
- awkwardness
- shyness
- comfortability
- relationships
- confrontational
- joyfulness
- embarrassed
- knackered/tired
- stressed
- superiority
- intoxication
- boredom
- attentiveness
- pleasure
- relaxed state
- guilt
- relief

Body Language Consists Of:
- body posture
- gestures
- facial expressions
- eye movements


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What Defines An Expression:
- mouth
- eyes
- forehead
- voice
- nose
- creases/wrinkles
- eyebrows
- cheeks
- eye contact

Forms Of (Facial) Expressions:
- happy
- sad
- angry
- confused
- worried
- shy
- gormless
- scared
- overjoyed
- embarrassed
- tired
- arrogance
- confidence
- relaxed


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Forms Of Gestures:
- friendly (handshakes, greetings, smiling, etc)
- loving (hugs, kisses, embracing, etc)
- caring (hugs, gifts, holding, mothering, etc)
- mean/uncaring (shoving, hurting, ignoring, etc)
- angry (shouting, grabbing, biting, etc)
- hand/body gestures
- movement
- eye contact

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James Borg states that human communication consists of 93% body language and paralinguistic cues, while only 7% of communication consists of the words themselves.

Ray Birdwhistell (anthropologist) pioneered the original study of non-verbal communication - what he called kinesics. He estimated that we can make and recognise around 250,000 facial expressions.

Paralanguage
Paralanguage refers to the non-verbal elements of communication used to modify meaning and convey emotion. Paralanguage may be expressed consciously or unconsciously, and it includes the pitch, volume, and, in some cases, intonation (the variation of pitch while speaking which is not used to distinguish words) of speech. Sometimes the definition is restricted to vocally-produced sounds. The study is known as paralinguistics.

Kinesics
Kinesics is the interpretation of body language, such as facial expressions and gestures - or more formally, non-verbal behaviour related to movement, either of any part of the body or the body as a whole.

Non-verbal communication strengthens a first impression in common situations, like attracting a partner or in a business interview. "You have less than 10 seconds and realistically close to 4 seconds to make a good first impression on those whom you come in contact" - Hogan, K & Stubbs, R (2003) 'Can't Get Through 8 Barriers to Communication'.

The first scientific study of non-verbal communication was Charles Darwin's book 'The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals'. He argued that all mammals reliably show emotion in their faces.

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I created a questionnaire and gave it out amongst fellow students to gain some results on how easily people distinguish the difference between various emotions, through the use of the whole face, and then I concentrated just on the eyes to see if people found this more difficult or not.

My results are as follows:

Sadness 12/12
Happiness 10/12
Confusion 2/12
Anger 12/12
Confidence 3/12
Shyness 4/12
Happiness 6/12
Worried 2/12
Anger 12/12
Sadness 11/12
Confusion 4/12
Awkwardness 0/12
Scared 2/12

The easiest emotions to distinguish were:
- sadness (average score of: 11.5/12)
- happiness (average score of: 8/12)
- anger (average score of: 12/12)

I think that these are the most recognisable emotions, because the way the faces are used to form each emotion is extremely expressive and you tend to look at the way the eyebrows change, the nose creases, and the mouth moves.

The most difficult emotions to distinguish were:
- awkwardness (average score of: 0/12)
- confusion (average score of: 3/12)
- worried (average score of: 1/12)
- scared (average score of: 1/12)
- confidence (average score of: 1.5/12)
- shyness (average score of: 2/12)

I think that it's harder to distinguish the other emotions, because faces and expressions that aren't as frequently used as happiness, sadness and anger are less recognisable to read into as everyone would have had different personal experiences with each expression.
It is quite hard to determine someone's feelings just by how they use the muscles in their face, especially if they don't tend to show a stereotypical form of the emotion.

I think to make the results fairer and more reliable, I would need to gather more results from males rather than only gathering 3/10 males to take part (in comparison the the 9/10 females that engaged in the questionnaire), as males and females tend to judge expressions and body language differently.

With the information that I gathered, I produced a bar chart to help convey it easily for in my crit...



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After the group crit on Friday, we were given a new brief to work on in a group or on our own. Our topic was: How to get people to communicate via talking.