web portfolio/ design experiment/ personal space research


	Design Research: Cultural Proxemics
	Automation system: merry-go-round rides

	project name	Study of Personal Proxemics on Space in relation to culture & gender
	project date	Winter, 2003
	group involvement	A group of 4 people Role: Analyze the collected data & make a written document
	description	This is a study to understand the different perceptions of personal spaces across culture and gender. The purpose of this study is to see if a person of certain culture and gender would have a larger or smaller personal space. A total number of 40 subjects were observed in this experiment.

We are conducting a study to identify the comfortable personal distances in different cultural groups, as well as different genders. The different cultural groups are American and Asian.

There are 4 different proxemics one person has:
           1. Intimate Distance : Couples
           2. Personal Distance : Family / very good friend
           3. Social Distance : Acquaintance
           4. Public Distance : A stranger

The study is performed in two ways. 1) One is an obtrusive research. Studying a survey on general differences that the two groups have toward the other group. 2) The other is unobtrusive research performed without being noticed by the people participating in survey. The unobtrusive aspect is studied by measuring the distances from the interviewer’s chair to interviewee’s chair.

The sample was 40 people who were equally distributed by culture and gender:
           10 Asian Female / 10 Asian Male
           10 American Female / 10 American Male


1.Interview + chair test
2.Make Tool experiment		interviewer hands two tools with adjective and ask to place in their distance (Intimate/ Personal/ Social/ Public)
3.Interview + chair test