Week 11 - Data collection methods

Following the advice given by the Guru's I would like to spend this week exploring a variety of data gathering techniques. This will provide me with more knowledge of sexual harassment in urban areas and give me a greater understanding of the associated behaviours and attitudes towards it.

Data gathering techniques:

• Pinpoint locations

• Visualise stories told

• Diary study - WhatsApp conversation

• Narrate walk home - then visualise

Narration

(How) As they perform a process or execute a specific task, ask participants to describe aloud what they are thinking. (Why) This is a useful way to reach users' motivations, concerns, perceptions, and reasoning. (Learn about how individuals feel and why they act a certain way when walking home).

I asked a couple of people to narrate their journey home and I will visualise the stories told. I would also like to ask a couple of people to keep note of how often they feel scared when walking home over a week.

Narrating walk home

Participant 1

Voice recordings

Rough sketch

Participant 2

Rough sketch

Visualising stories

Journey one

For journey one the participant narrates their walk home along the canal. She describes the walk as quite nerve-wracking as she cannot see much in front of her due to the time of day and lack of lighting. She mentions that they begin to feel scared when they see someone walking towards them but nothing happens. When she enters a tunnel she feels reassured when she sees another female. The tunnel has been improved recently with lighting and CCTV added due to crimes. The participant describes how she can see another female running through the tunnel in gym clothes and praises her as she would be too worried for her safety wearing revealing clothing.

Journey 2

The second participant straight away mentions that she is taking the longer route home due to the lack of lighting on the fastest route. She feels more comfortable walking along the main road as there is more lighting and other people. Within the first 10 seconds of recording the participant experiences shouting and beeping from a vehicle. The rest of the walk home she describes how she feels extremely anxious about the potential of the street harassment she has just experienced escalating further. For the rest of the walk home she keeps alert and focusses on getting home safely.

Pinpoint locations & Diary study

I got my friends to send me their locations whenever they felt unsafe over the course of a couple of days. I also got them to send an emoji that reflected how they were feeling at the time. This gave me an insight into how often women are exposed to street harassment and how much it effects their day to day life.

The use of pinpointing locations allowed me to look at this issue on a wider scale. I was able to see certain problem areas and then look into the reasons behind why these women felt unsafe in these places. Most of the areas pinpointed were side streets and had a lack of public presence. There are a lot of long narrow streets in Dundee and the participants mentioned they felt unsafe in secluded areas as they could not see what was around them.

Key Insights:

• Women adjusting their behaviours to avoid street harassment sends the message that it is normal - simply part of being female - to be sexually addressed, judged and commented on by strangers in the street

• The normalisation of street harassment has resulted in a shift of blame, rather than the perpetrator being held accountable, the victim is persecuted for not taking enough precautions

• Women accepting and tolerating unwanted attention and harassment has resulted in strangers feeling a sense of entitlement to their bodies

Next steps:

• Continue to explore more data collection methods

• Generate insights and pay attention to themes