The following blog post contains a short description of our interviewed users and gives an overview about the results of the interview. Based on this information we will provide our interview findings in the next blog post in more details.
User 1 Amélie:
Amélie is 24 years old, lives in Berlin and is an economic student with focus on marketing. She describes herself as a casual and sport interested person. In her free time she likes to play basketball, hanging out with friends, cooking and loves snowboarding. Because of her semesterticket and the fact that she has a lot of friends around Germany she travels a lot with public transports like bus and train. Therefore she already know what public displays are in generally and also likes the idea of it because of his course of studies (marketing). But right now she sees public displays more as an advertisement and not as an interactive place.
She is not really interested in classic art, but enjoys street art and photography. Galleries are not unknown to her and sometimes she is visiting some with her friends. But often she annoyed of high entrée fees and the artists. “I prefer street art, because the artists are not trying to make money with it and it is art from casual people with no academic background, so they don’t follow any rules or standards”, she says.
Her last “real” picture she draws in school. But she enjoys doodling while telephoning or when she is bored. She doesn’t through her doodling directly away after painting and is not angry if other persons see her sketches. Replay to the question, if she likes the idea of continues painting of other persons, she said yes and told us some stories of her WG, where she and her flat mates draw some funny things on their shared todo and shopping list.
But she doesn’t like the idea of digital art (art that is created with the help of computers) in generally, because for her it is not authentic and she can’t feel the colors and impressions on a digital display. She sees digital art as a creative work, but not as an art itself because a picture must be real handcrafted without any computer impact.
User 2 Doris:
Doris is a 56 years old, got two kids, housewife and an early pensioner. Before she got retired and got her second son, she worked as a language interpreter in Spain. Because of that she has one flat in Germany and Spain. She describes herself as an open-minded and curious person, that like to travel and enjoy culture events. Because of her residence in Spain and her family in Germany she travels a lot by airplane and train. Therefore she also knows what public displays are, after explaining it a little bit more detailed. But she thinks that public displays are very not very useful and cannot see any benefit of them. She often feels disturbed and overcharged with it.
She is really interested in art, especially in classical art (post-impressionism), and goes several times a year to an exhibition. Often she goes alone to a gallery, but would like to go with other persons to it to share thoughts and impressions and just discuss about paintings. As a replay to the question if she likes art that is shown outside of a gallery, she answered yes, because she loves to live in a colorful and dynamic environment.
Doris owns an iphone and knows how to handle a computer. But she has no clue what digital artwork could be. Because of that reason we showed her some desktop wallpapers, but it looks that she was not really interested in it, because she started to talk about his son, who is a good drawer and should make more out of this talent. So we asked her if he inherent this talent from her, but she said no, because she never really painted a picture. Our last question was if she can doodle a small picture for us, to see if she would draw something while other people can see it. But she said no.
User 3 Peter:
Peter is 25 years old, a computer science at the TU Berlin and describes himself as technical guru. Because we know him very well, we know that his hobbies are computer games and technical stuff. He travels everyday with public transports to the university. Peter likes the idea of public displays because he would like to live in the future, but “art is not very cool” he says. His last gallery visit was long time ago (school) and he would never go to a gallery on his own.
But digital art is not unknown to him and we would say that he is interested in it, because he said he changes his wallpaper twice a month and loves high end computer graphic games.
We asked him to draw a picture for us on a piece of paper, to check if he would draw pictures in front of other people. But he just laugh and said:” I hated the art class in school and I would never draw something in front of you” J. Never the less he is interesting in the further development of the project, because he is interested in public displays and a good friend of us. How knows, maybe he will be interested in public displays after the first release.
The notes of our interviews can be found here.
