As I began to think about my thesis idea I started with the word "wall." This thought process was initiated by a movie I went to see at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. At this event, they projected a movie on a wall. While I watched the movie, I kept thinking about how we use walls as devices, objects, tools or dividers for space. Every second of my life, I am surrounded by walls, which are segments of building structures used to create environments. One idea of the wall, in my native country of Korea, is that an invisible, yet critical wall divides the south from the north. My cultural background made me realize that the idea of the wall exists as a physical boundary and has created communication problems. The word "communication," is one of the key concepts that initiated my ASOTYPE project. Another key word is "media," which has always been on my mind since I got accepted into the media design program at Art Center. My first visualization of an idea was that the wall could be a metaphor about the origin of communication. Some Chinese letters are based on form in nature and maintain their original pictographic quality so that people can relate to the origin of the letters. From this exploration, I found that many people could read Chinese with the help of visuals. This experiment allowed me to narrow down the idea of communicating without using language. I began to look into sign systems, environments, and what they communicate. Visual information is a big part of public sign systems both at the airport and in the traffic signs on the roads. However, when they are not formatted to the environment well they can lead to miscommunication, which relates to how we visualize information. I initiated my ASOTYPE project due to my personal frustrations with the public toilet signs. While I developed the ASOTYPE I had many reactions to the public toilets ASOTYPE. One of the reactions was why do we need to change the public toilet sign since it seems to work so well. I know that the public toilet ASOTYPE has a different idea than other ASOTYPE examples in terms of the need of changing an already widely accepted form and function of sign. Although, the sensors that provided information on availability might have initially confused the audience, I believe that the message was an attempt at changing the existent perceptions of female stereotypes. I would hope this public toilette ASOTYPE challenges people to think differently and openly about why we distinguish some things based on our gender.
The existing sign system works well in our society and I do not necessarily believe that every sign should be in animation form. I think that there exists the need to improve the usability of tools, how information could be clearly conveyed and understood as well as how information is visualized in physical and virtual environments. Organizing information can facilitate our communication with people and things around us. I believe that design can make our lives richer and easier. I hope that ASOTYPE will allow for more of these possibilities.