Reflections

So for this week we were tasked with conducting ethograms. For one, a new word, a new task, a new activity. Although, the execution, well, there was much to be explored and the reflections? All underneath.

Zoomonitor is a very confusing system. First of all, the case that the application 'downloads' to your web browser with no visible impact taking place. Secondly, the lack of ability to actually use the system for the purpose of actually monitoring animals and then the navigation with the website to actually introduce the records, it's extremely confusing. Also setting up the system and the need to use the admin mode as opposed to user mode, makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. But it works and so I started doing the work.

So I was watching a panda. The ethogramic research I was conducting was basically me watching a panda, in a lot of UX job cases the designer needs to perform observations. But performing observations on creatures sleeping does seem like a creepy activity. What if they were humans? I think it's in our nature to feel discomforted by such activity, just because of security, just because of predators whether of our own kind or animal-animal form. Just in this case, the creature - panda, was sleeping on the tree and I saw a lot of similarities and parallels to how humans do this activity too. And many questions have arisen: how many hours do pandas sleep? Did they actually sleep or try to sleep? As it would change positions frequently, I do that too when I'm trying to sleep and I can't. Eventually, the panda would stop doing this and you could sort of see it based on the breathing pattern which seemed slower now. 10-11 seconds. Humans also have different sleeping patterns that I do monitor even with my smartwatch, for instance the light, deep (motionless) and perhaps two others but the research seems to constantly shift in relation to how it really is (like the phases when we dream). I guess pandas dream as well? Although perhaps their phases change. The time it takes them to sleep also may be different. Their reasons to sleep on a tree as well and perhaps their limbs don't get stiff because of being suspended on the branches due to their physique? How could we improve the natural processes perfected by evolution though by designing what? This seems like a challenge and I like challenges.

I have created most of the observations by writing notes adjacently to me watching the panda, which I would turn fullscreen and to a smaller once I noticed some particular behaviour happening. I guess it's quite unfortunate that I would come across an animal to conduct an ethogram while an animal is sleeping but I guess at times there is no helping such situations. The notes I would then condense and upload the behaviour patterns to zoomonitor once I figured out how the portal works all in all.

Continuing

I was a bit surprised to see how slow everything was proceeding, although that radically changed with the introduction of more movements. One those take place it is significantly more difficult to notice every single element of what the animal is doing and instead you have to resort to recurrent or most apparent behaviour. The digital pen on screen method was taking a bit of time as compared to doing everything digitally by simultaneously watching the subject and writing about it whenever needed. Writing on a keyboard takes less time as is less physically demanding. Also, if I were to just purely spend time on doing the ethogram instead of writing the observations, I believe I would have missed a lot of details. Nevertheless, due to time constraints and especially in the field it is not easy to constantly write about what you perceive, therefore keeping strictly to just writing down certain behaviour ought to boost the productivity of the researcher. Ever since it is cold and doing an ethogram when it's cold is quite challenging, as in spending half an hour and annotating, freezing your fingers off as opposed to writing in gloves with human's manual abilities being quite limited I decided to consider humans and animals and while I was at dealing also with time constraints, I decided to write about the behaviour of Parsons students at the UC Building on the cafeteria level. I would do differently by moving the ethogram to warmer days and writing about an animal that is quite different compared to, well, humans, who we do although quite don't really know after all.

Behaviour experts for Pandas: Dr. Gabe Miller (San Diego Zoo, observed Panda lives in San Diego Zoo, expert in the field) & Dr. Jason Park (expert in the field of well-being of animals and behavior monitoring)

Behaviour experts for Humans: Prof. Jeremy Ginges (expert in the field of Psychology) and Prof. Shai Davidai (expert in the field of Social Psychology)