In Methods of Design, when I came across Collage, I immediately thought about the time when I was working in fashion. Collage was the most natural and most common way to express ideas, and it felt more like an intuitive action. Putting fabric swatches, samples, photos, textures, and colors together without much planning, many ideas slowly surfaced through these fragments. When I worked on collage, my attention was rarely on the “finished result,” but on the friction between different materials. Often my hands would move first and my mind would catch up later, and in the process of cutting and arranging, something I never meant to highlight would suddenly become important. Collage wasn’t about expressing a clear idea; it was more like exploring something I couldn’t fully articulate at that moment.

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The approach of Cultural Probes interests me a lot, especially because it allows participants to record their lives at their own pace instead of being guided by the researcher. I’m curious what kind of fragments people would bring back if they actually carried these small tasks into their daily routines: photos, short notes, routes, or some tiny detail that appears for only a second. Compared to asking questions directly, I would rather see these naturally emerging traces, since they often feel more honest than answers. As I was reading, I could picture myself enjoying the process of organizing these fragments.

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When reading The Promise of Empathy, my attention stayed on the tension between designers and users—designers trying to get closer, but sometimes in ways that drift off in the wrong direction. Those brief simulated experiences can easily become superficial, even more dramatic than the real situations they try to represent. While reading, I kept thinking about those practices that seem caring on the surface but still create distance, and how they often lack a long-term, steady form of involvement led by the people themselves.