Design and practice of re-constructing a familiarized environment: The DATA HANDAI Project

Abstract

In order to reconstruct the social representations of a community, we designed and conducted a project at Osaka University as a research field. In order to reconstruct the social representations (Moscovici, 1984) of the familiarized environment, we made use of a technique called "ex-formation" (Hara, 2005) which informed people of the fact that they did not know what they thought they knew. We designed the DATA HANDAI project (DHP) as an example of ex-formation: HANDAI is an abbreviation for Osaka University in Japanese. The project focused on information which students, teachers and office staff of the university were familiar with. The project made them realize how much they were not aware of regarding the different parts of the campus. It also demonstrated how they were uninformed about the uniqueness of their campus. The participants of the DHP were observed to have changed their remarks.