Pre-Thesis Week06 – Progress Overview

2018.10.22

Progress Overview

It’s been seven weeks since I started brainstorming for my thesis project. I went through initial brainstorming of my interests, the first round of article searching, asking questions in three methods, problem statement and user list, the second round of article reading and making dialogic journals. During this process, I have managed to dig deeper into my thesis topic and find out what I have never think about before. 

Originally, my thought was to find a way to enhance people’s understanding of Dissociative Identity Disorder and use technological way to help people with DID to feel better when transferring through different identities. My original intention was to create a deliverable(which has not been decided yet, it can be a game, or a virtual reality experience, or a live performance…) to help normal people know more about DID, how do they feel when there are several people try to host your body and there is nothing you can do but freak out when waking up two days from your latest memory. I also want to help people with DID to calm down or at least release their pain when changing identity. 

From these weeks readings, I noticed that usually people with DID would also be diagnosed as other mental diseases like Post-traumatic Stress Disorder(PTSD), Dissociative Disorder(DD), Major Depressive Disorder(MDD), etc. According to scientific research, there have been many types of research about these related mental diseases but the cause of each of them, how they are connected with each other, and how they can affect each other are still remain unsolved. From this point, it would be not professional to think DID as a separate and self-governed disease.

Hence, I adjusted my topic in accordance with the theories of articles I have read these weeks. I will still be aiming to help people with Dissociative Identity Disorder, but I want to do it from another aspect. In the reading, I noticed that scientists have invented some questionnaires for people with DID and their therapists, in order to effectively diagnose patients in an early stage of disorder diseases and track their progress of treatments. There are also some researches focusing on the changes in physiological functions after people with DID switch between alters. It is possible to identify the alters by measuring their physiology functions and track their changes.

Based on these facts, I started to think about what if we can visualize the changes in their physiological functions? It can not only help to track their condition, but it can also help their therapists to know better about how to adjust the treatment in time. Additionally, the visualized version of their changes can also help normal people understand about the disease and what they are going through.

Next Step

For the next step, I will continue with my research, try to find more case reports and valid evidence of the treatment of people with DID. I will also continue refining my statement and user list, start to prepare interview scripts and reach out my target users.