(Written by Ruchi, 01172020) 

The Project

The Other side is looking to turn The Askwith Kenner Global Languages and Cultures Room into an experience that promotes cultural understanding and reflect the intercultural community of the CMU residents.

The Askwith Kenner Global Languages and Cultures Room provides an immersive space for members of the campus community and visitors to interact with each other locally and with people and places around the world.

Using immersive technology, including VR stations, an interactive screen and projector room, visitors can explore innovative, student-led projects that showcase the importance of language learning, cultural awareness, and the global presence of Carnegie Mellon University. 

The room operates as a flexible learning space, a research lab and a meeting place. Through our projects, courses, events and interactions, The Global Languages and Cultures Room seeks to engage audiences through storytelling. 

Our aim out of this project is:

1. Create a user-friendly environment and experience.
2. Creates a space which is all about accepting other cultures while feeling like one’s own culture is being accepted.
3. The experience doesn’t just make you learn, it also makes you feel.
4. Keep the content alive and fresh so that people would want to come back again.
5. The room is a relaxing, comfortable space which is fun for people.

We will be documenting this project throughout the semester, and keep posting the latest developments in this weekly blog.

Why “the Other Side”?

(by Annie)

While deciding on the name, we held a quick survey around. Keeping in mind our purpose, we’re attracting people to this “best-kept” location. We want a name that has the attractiveness, as well as reflecting the identity of the room. We quickly drafted this map, and asked the students, “Imagine this is a map for a building on campus. And you can see the legend here, which place would you wanna go check it out? And why?“

“The Other Side” stood out significantly to our interviewee. 
It is a name that speaks to them easily, yet mysterious at the same time. 
Some expected to see something of a reflection to themselves, some simply drawn by the mysterious simplicity.

The survey gathered very different interpretations to all the names we had, we appreciate the voices that helped us learn more about how differently everyone feels.

It is our hope to keep exploring and listening to all the other sides, and bring in our audience to experience the other side as well.

This is how we got the name, we hope you’ll like it as much as we do!

The Work This Week

This week mainly consisted of logistics, with the team setting up our project room, setting up roles for the semester, and organizing an initial research plan for the first few weeks.

We decided to name our project “The Other Side”. After conducting a short survey with fellow ETC students we zeroed in on this name. Most picked it as their first choice, when asked to pick a place/room they would like to go to amongst the given list of names. Our hope is that everyone who comes across this name feels like they will experience a different perspective, another side or are just plain curious about what is on the other side!

We had our first meeting with our client Stephen Caspar, Professor, Carnegie Mellon Modern Languages this week. We discussed the goals of the project, the purpose of the room, technology in the room, target users and scope of the project. This has definitely given our research efforts a direction.

In terms of theming our room and a design theme for the print materials(logo, poster), we thought about a possible color scheme and design style that is in sync with the goals of the project.

Next Week

Next week, we will continue research on different cultures, stories and languages. All four of us will try to come up with possible ideas for creating an experience. Our research will encompass documentaries, past projects, languages, cultures and much more.