Reflections on Tutorial with Zuleika:

Refining Participant Demographics, Key Concepts, and Remote Interventions

I’ve reached a number of significant turning points in determining the course of my study and how to carry out my impending research interventions after a very beneficial tutorial with Zuleika.

1. Demographic Scope & Participant Ethics: Changing to 18+
   Because the educational institution I am working with naturally operates within that age range, my project’s initial goal was to include participants who were 16 years of age or older. But our conversation about institutional compliance, ethics, and safeguarding made clear how difficult it is to work with children.

Involving under-18 volunteers necessitates lengthy approval procedures, including written agreement from Central Saint Martins (CSM) ethics committees and parents/guardians. I have formally chosen to change my target participation demographic to individuals 18 years of age and older in order to retain momentum and practical viability while upholding ethical integrity. This change enables me to keep a strong participant base while avoiding procedural bottlenecks and concentrating on the essential study outcomes.

2. Dissecting Fundamental Theoretical Ideas
   We also discussed the basic vocabulary supporting my project during the tutorial. In particular, we pointed out that important concepts like comfort and homesickness need a stronger, more precise academic foundation:

What exactly does homesickness mean? Beyond mere nostalgia, how does it appear in modern diaspora and design contexts?

What does comfort mean? Is it material, psychological, spatial, or sensory?

In the future, I will devote a concentrated literature analysis to providing an academic foundation for these ideas and dissecting the ways in which spatial nostalgia, olfactory triggers, and emotional comfort interact in design research.

3. Organizing the Remote Execution and Interventions
   I need to develop my practical action plan in addition to theoretical framing. Specifically, what is the structure and experience of my interventions?

I am currently unable to return to China as planned in order to conduct on-site fragrance explorations and obtain firsthand contextual references due to health issues. Although this causes a short-term delay in China’s actual field research, it has created an interesting new methodology: remote interventions.

I’m currently developing digital and remote engagement models that let people communicate, think, and share their sensory reactions while they’re far away. In addition to overcoming existing physical limitations, this pivot offers a useful testbed for the activation of emotional comfort and sensory memory across geographical boundaries.