WELCOME TO RULES
In this part, the methodology will help you to find out how I was running this project.
Summary
When you want to understand what a group thinks, the best way is to fit in with them. Luckily, the group I studied matched my own cultural background. This has given me great convenience, so over the past year I have brought this topic I have been researching into all aspects of my life.
I used observational research to gain insights into the performance of young Chinese girls in terms of social networks/family relationships/personal pursuits. I had unstructured interviews and in-depth discussions with them. Then, I created the prototype to test out the deep thoughts of this group. After that, I conducted workshops and observed them thinking deeply and debating over related topics.
Finally, I compiled everything I observed and put them on the website to share with all.
Phase 1
What did I do?
Ethnomethodology Observational Research & Unstructured Interviews
Why did I do it?
As a result of the literature study, there is a lack of research related to authenticity from the perspective of young Chinese girls. Therefore, at the beginning of the project, I need extensive information, the more the better!
Immersive observational research is certainly the best way to do it. In fact, It helped me to gather a large and comprehensive amount of information. After that, the information I collected helped me lay out a more specific direction for the next Unstructured Interviews. The above two steps helped me to clear my mind from the chaos and see plenty of content which worth looking into.
How did I do it?
1. Ethnomethodology Observational Research
I searched a series of keywords such as "authentic", "all-too-real" and "trust" on the most popular social media (Little Red Book/Chinese version of Tik Tok), observing lots of posts and comments related to Chinese gen-z girls, and then I analyzed the content samples that the group trusted/considered authentic.
As the result, I found that young Chinese girls seem to share their feelings and experience from daily life and discuss their own thoughts with young strangers online. In addition, the Distrust of their elders' views seems to be a popular topic.
2. Based on the findings in 1, I interviewed eight Chinese generation-z girls in an Unstructured way. I deliberately selected girls from different industries/cities as interviewees to minimize limitations. Due to the restrictions of Covid-19, interviews were running online. Although the interview format was not face-to-face, interviewees all said that they were in a relaxed state, and eventually I got some in-depth and interesting views. Eight interviews were recorded and used for analysis.
Interviewees：
Jingyi Zhao: Female. 23 years old. English Teacher in primary school. From Tianjin city, China
Kunyue Wang: Female. 24 years old. Postgraduate student. From Beijing, China
Cici: Female. 20 years old. Undergraduate student in Kingston University London. From Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China
Zixuan Tang: Female. 22 years old. Working in the financial industry. From Handan city, Hebei Province, China
Yan Yue: Female. 24 years old. Working in public broadcasting. From Cangzhou, Hebei Province, China
Haozhe Sun: Female. 25 years old. Post-graduate student in University of the Arts London. From Zibo, Shandong Province, China
Angela: Female. 21 years old. Undergraduate student in Hebei University. From Baoding, Hebei Province, China
Claire: Female. 22 years old. Undergraduate student in Central Academy of Fine Arts. From Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, China
What did I get from it?
Participants were invited to write about the keywords (things or people) that they think related to authenticity. As the result, different participants gave different answers.
After all of these surveys, I got a very weird finding：
In China, elders used to be opinion leaders, but nowadays,
it seems thatyoung girls think younger people are more authentic.
Basically, the younger generation seems to be trusting their elders less and less. For example, one of the interviewees made a debatable point that if she had children in the future, she was reluctant to let her parents help to take care of them (in China, it was normal and popular for grandparents to help with childcare), because this interviewee did not trust her parents' educational theories and values. Also, I found that Chinese generation-z girls prefer to ask young people’s（friends/ social media） opinions about life choices more, rather than asking elders, and most participants felt their thoughts and behaviors were more influenced by the views of young people online than by their elders.
In this context, what do young people trust, and think is authentic?
By analyzing their ideas related to authenticity, it seems that authenticity is not only related to sincerity/goodwill/familiarity, but also to the empathy of values. Elders seem to represent some traditional Chinese moral qualities, but young Chinese girls do not see them as authentic —— does this mean that, to some extent, the values of this group are no longer consistent with traditional Chinese culture?
What makes the former opinion leaders no longer authentic in the eyes of Chinese gen-z girls? Figuring out the reason for all this must be of great significance to my subject, so I decided to design the subsequent phases based on this discovery.
Phase 2
What did I do？
Prototype
Based on the information obtained in the first phase, I decided to investigate the relationship between "age" and authenticity in the eyes of Chinese generation-z girls, seeking the deep reason behind "age”. Therefore, I chose Little Red Book, a social website where young people often share/discuss their feelings, and then I created an age filter for it.
By using this prototype, users can choose the age range of bloggers for the content they watch on Little Red Book, according to their preferences. The age of the bloggers would be shown in all content titles. In addition, the list of bloggers followed by users will also be sorted by age, to fully test out users' inherent impressions of bloggers at different ages and their true feelings about posts created by Different aged bloggers in the next phase.
Why did I do it?
1. Three reasons for choosing Little Red Book as the basis of the prototype:
（1） I found that Little Red Book is the main social software for Chinese generation-z girls to share and communicate their daily life and ideas. From the view of eight participants, I learned that most of them thought their parents' views are sometimes not authentic, so their values/code of conduct might be more susceptible to the content of young bloggers on Little Red Book.
（2） The age of Bloggers is widely distributed on Little Red Book, meeting my research requirements on age. Therefore, to get a deeper understanding of this group's insights about authenticity and age, I chose Little Red Book as the basis of my prototype.
（3） The posts on Little Red Book cover a wide range of content. I need to know exactly what kind of content Chinese generation-z girls think is authentic, so this huge amount of content helps me get more information.
The design of the age filter may be "immoral" because the label of age may amplify users’ feelings about age bias. However, that's exactly what we must do—it is a good way that can help us understand the relationship between authenticity and age from Chinese generation-z girls’ perspective and the deep reasons behind it.
Phase 3
What did I do?
Creative Workshop
I invited eight Chinese girls from Phase 1 to run creative studios with them, by using the prototype and a series of problem settings.
Why did I do it?
After designing the prototype in phase 2, I couldn’t wait to use it to test participants and get more data. In addition, I hoped this prototype could inspire a broader range of topics/inspiration, such as participants’ own experiences, and reasons for their opinion formation, etc. I wanted to see views that they all resonate with, so I invited them together, enabling them to inspire more discussion and inspiration with each other. The creative workshop came from this context.
How did I do it?
（1） Prototype testing: I showed the age filter design of the Little Red Book to participants and discussed them around some questions: 1. In which situation will they use the age filter? 2. How do they feel about the content posted by different aged people? 3. Let them watch a list of following bloggers and answer questions—which age range of their bloggers are more authentic? why?
（2） More in-depth discussion: workshop group moved conversations about prototype testing to deeper conversions. I raised the topic about "The true state of the relationship between elders and them” and got more views and related deep reasons.
Phase 4
I analyzed all the above processes, and summarized four important findings, publishing them on the website to share with everyone.
Restrictions and Adaptations:
1. The number/diversity of respondents is limited. I have tried my best to choose Participants according to different industries/cities, but due to the limited number of them, there are still some limitations. For example, all participants have university degrees or more. However, studying authenticity from the specific consumer group’s perspectives is unprecedented, therefore, this may open a new door for future research.
2. This project discusses authenticity based on the finding around “Chinese generation-z girls seem not to trust views of traditional opinion leaders—elders anymore”, but because of different educational experiences in different families, the views are not suitable for all Chinese generation-z girls. In the future, deeper research of their educational experience from families could help researchers to get more insights.
If you are curious about what interesting or weird things I find, I will guide you there.
