Author: Jessica Liu

Asian Americans are often indirect communicators and topics like mental health are extremely difficult to discuss within our households.  WhAAt’s on your mind? is a project that focuses on visualizing the mental health of Asian American college students through art. A survey was sent out collecting responses from 12 Asian American students from UMD. Each student was asked to describe one strong memory they have of a positive or negative experience with mental health. These responses were visualized using oil pastels and charcoal pencil. This project aims to bring understanding through visual art to a hidden and broken topic within the Asian American community.

For the Alpha iteration, I continued drawing and began to compile the descriptions I will be using as captions onto one document. Some changes that I made for this iteration include adding words to my drawings and incorporating other media. Before this iteration, I made an active decision to not incorporate words with the mindset of having the visual speak for itself. However, as I was reading the descriptions being provided I realized how some key words were more powerful on their own. After coming to this decision, I added words to the next two drawings I finished (7&8) and adding words to drawing 6. I also added sharpie to one of them, drawing 7, since it was hard to do lettering with oil pastel. Another decision I made was to cut short the number of drawings I was doing to 12 for the next iteration due to time constraints and for a more impact triptych display.

Over the semester, my project has made slow, but steady progress. Starting from just words on paper, my project has made progress through tangible checkpoints such as making a survey, receiving responses, and starting to illustrate these responses.

Going back to the beginning of the semester, I revised my project proposal by narrowing down the number of drawings I was aiming to complete to a range of 15-20. I finalized the media I am going to be using to oil pastel, which is a media I have wanted to improve my skill in. Additionally, I specified how big the drawings were going to be which ended up being 9 x 5.5 in. In terms of the content of the project itself, I decided to incorporate both positive and negative experiences in regards to the topic of mental health. Moreover, I thought more about what exactly I was looking for to include in these drawings based on responses to the survey I am sending out.

Moving on to the first iteration of the project, I made a sample drawing and created a first draft of the survey. Components that I decided to include in the survey include demographic based questions, perspective on mental health, and a personal narrative of a mental health experience. Within the survey, I included a background regarding the premise of my project and a few disclaimers regarding the survey itself and what the responses would be used for. For the second iteration, I drew on actual drawing paper that I would use for my final project and I made adjustments to some questions of the survey based on the feedback I received from the user testing and documentation check point.

As for the future and remainder of this project, I plan to gather more responses, as of now I have 10. In addition, I also plan to continue finishing more drawings and start printing out the captions for each of them. For the drawing portion, I bought a wider color range set of oil pastels, since I encountered some difficulty blending and creating custom colors for the pieces I have worked on so far. Currently, I am working on the second drawing and I hope to have them finished at a rate of around one per week starting after spring break. For the project display portion, I plan to buy the necessary materials such as the boards as well.

In regards to feedback from other people about my project either from the user feedback assignment or class discussions, people have provided several suggestions in improving my  survey as well as the content of the drawings. One of the first suggestions people made in regards to adjusting the survey was incorporating definitions of key terms in the background to help people get familiarized with them. The two terms that people asked me to define clearly were Asian American and mental health. Another aspect of the survey people had several thoughts about was the question asking people to visually describe their mental health. Originally for the first draft of the survey I only provided the question which was in need of more clarification. Based on people’s advice, I defined mental health again and specified that the person should visual one experience of mental health that can either be positive or negative. Additionally, I provided examples of what a positive or negative experience could include to give the person taking the survey a better gauge of what I am looking for in terms of how the responses should be recorded.

One critique some people had was that I only asked about how being Asian American has affected one’s mental health without asking if the person thought mental health was important as a whole. As a result,  I added a question asking whether the person taking the survey thought mental health was an important topic in general. Another portion of the user feedback that I got pertains to the effectiveness of the way I present my project’s content. For the layout of the presentation of the drawings, some people advised that I shouldn’t categorize them specifically while others suggested grouping the drawings together by topics such as color or positive vs negative experience. As for the effectiveness of the medium I am presenting the topic of Asian American mental health in, a majority of people agreed that art is a powerful media and is a good way of portraying a sensitive and emotionally driven topic.

In terms of the timeline I first created for my proposal, I am relatively on schedule. Presently, I am in the stage of gathering more responses and slowly working on the drawings for the responses I have gathered so far. As of this week, I have around one and a half months to finish up the drawings.

I refined the survey as well as changed the title of the project. First, I added a more detailed background and defined certain terms such as mental health and Asian American so that the user is familiarized with them as they are mentioned later on in the survey. I also added the question of whether mental health was important to the person and refined the mental health visualization to one strong experience. I modified the first question to make a not of whether or not the user cared about mental health in general since my topic is a subtopic beneath it. Additionally. I changed the question in order to make it more clear for the user and for me as the artist. I changed the title to “WhAAt’s on your mind?” with the AA standing for Asian American to make the project as a whole seem more upbeat and meaningful.

Another change I made to the first iteration was redrawing the sample picture on the actual paper I will be using and making the drawing a little more refined to get a better gauge of the drawing style I will be doing. I also mapped out a blueprint of the boards I will be assembling at the end. I decided on four 2′ x 2′ boards since it would be more practical to carry and lay out for display. Also if I happen to do more drawings than anticipated, I can easily add another board. In addition, I also provided examples of answers to each question which were answered by an anonymous person. I included that in order to see how someone would answer them as they are currently.

1. My first iteration or prototype includes a rough draft of the survey I will be using and a sample drawing of my own visualization of mental health. The drawing uses the medium, pencil and oil pastel, I will be planning on using for the actual final product. The drawing is also the same size I will be drawing on for later iterations.
   1. Survey link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1VKF0xv1rL-mO3PO9V5BB1Q4OKJd2FmJ99jd9Zp-T55Q/edit
2. Five questions: not good or bad, but how can they add to the project
   1. What are your thoughts on art as a medium of expression for the topic of this project?
      1. Overall, art is an interpretative and is very open ended which allows the viewer to each have a unique interpretation of the piece. Especially since mental health is a very personal experience, it makes sense for art which is in itself is subjective to portray these experiences. Art is also one of the ways to accurately capture feeling and experiences for someone who struggles with mental health issues. Moreover, it is powerful in expressing things that words often cannot. Words often lack the scope or intensity to describe experiences especially related to mental health and art does not have any of these restrictions.
   2. Are there things I can add to the background of the survey to help the person taking it?
      1. The background definitely gives a good scope of what the project is about for the person taking the survey, however, it would be helpful to define terms used later in the survey. Define terms such as mental health and Asian American. It would also be helpful to provide the survey taker an example of the survey response so they can better understand what you are asking. You could possibly add your motivation behind this project and explain a little further as to why it is important. Adding these modifications may give more clarification to the person taking it.
   3. What additional suggestions or thoughts do you have in terms of the questions asked in the survey?
      1. Being more clear about the question regarding visually describing mental health. Narrowing it down to one strong experience or memory would be more clear and leave it less open ended to the survey taker. Also add whether the person’s heritage as an Asian American has impacted the way they view mental health then ask how versus just asking how it has impacted their story since it could be unrelated. It would also be important to ask whether they think mental health is an important topic in general. If the person taking it doesn’t see it as important, it would affect the results and the person may choose to answer. Lastly, emphasize the visual aspect of the question, since that is the main aspect of your project.
   4. How do you think the drawings should be organized on the board and why?
      1. There could be a couple of ways to organize depending on the types of responses you get. Responses that cover a lot of mental illness experiences could be categorized or you could make a spread of both negative and positive experiences since mental health is not defined but a range. You could also sort them based on a color scheme. On the other hand, not categorizing them may add to the project display as a whole. Since the goal of your project is to simply draw attention to the topic of mental health and not finding differences between groups of people, having people see your display as a whole may have a much bigger impact rather than if they were categorized. In addition, having all of these different narratives mixed up could further emphasize the problem of lack of awareness in the Asian American community and that Asian Americans as a whole should be active about it.
   5. How effective do you think my first drawing is in terms of conveying a story?
      1. The drawing definitely conveys a lot of emotion which is really powerful in sending a message. It is really artful and captures a certain feeling and aura. Moreover, it conveys a story even without any words or description provided.  As a viewer, there is definitely room for empathy and a level of understanding to the story behind the piece. Additionally, through this piece there is a transition of space and emotions.
3. Some changes I will be making for the next iteration is to have clearer wording for some of the survey questions. I will be asking specifically for one strong experience with mental health, either positively or negatively. I will also be adding the question simply asking the survey taker about whether they think mental health is important or not. Additionally, I will be providing examples for both of these experiences to give a clearer idea to the participant of what I am asking as well as a sample of responses. As for the background, I will be elaborating about the motivation behind the project and its importance to me as the creator as well as why it is important in general. I will be creating a plan for the way the art pieces will be displayed on the board. I won’t necessarily have labeled categorizations but simply placements of pieces and their respective descriptions to see how big the board will be. I will also be refining the first drawing I created by putting on the actual paper I plan to use versus the printer paper I opted for in the first iteration.