Media (mis)Interpretations, a Critical Design piece to tackle narratives
A violent clash between the police and protestors occurred in Mong Kok, Hong Kong, after the attempted crackdown at illegal hawkers failed. The police was quick to arrest suspects upon aftermath and trial proceedings progressed quickly. The quality of some media coverage was left to be desired as some editorals have opinions against the suspects, who were undergoing trail proceedings, imposing ‘a risk of prejudice.’
There has been some public outcry at the judge’s decision to grant bail to the arrested, as they believe the arrested are ‘mobs’ or ‘rioters’ that harm the public. Above is a graphic that illustrates how various media outlets is Hong Kong reported the event. As people have a tendency to read from media outlets they agree with, I thought is there an easier way for readers to know both sides of the argument.
I wanted to create an interactive artefact, which forges an experience users may find more thoughtful and memorable. This was how Black Ops: Mong Kok came to fruition, as users should find a board game more enjoyable than a series of graphics.
Initially, the idea was to navigate around a map to collect information which, when culminated, shapes out a narrative of the event. The map of the streets of Mong Kok has been simplified for the board.
I wanted to create an interactive artefact, which forges an experience users may find more thoughtful and memorable. This was how Black Ops: Mong Kok came to fruition, as users should find a board game more enjoyable than a series of graphics.
Initially, the idea was to navigate around a map to collect information which, when culminated, shapes out a narrative of the event. The map of the streets of Mong Kok has been simplified for the board.
The board map is derived from the map of the area of the incident. Only areas where the incident occurred are implemented onto the board, where players can navigate around freely, but in clockwise.
Here is the overall game board, where players have to navigate across the tiles in clockwise to collect cards on various information zones, which is shown on various red circular boundaries
A range of cards are created, which contain information on the back that reveals articles/editorials, witness’ accounts and images of the Mong Kok incident. Each card denotes how many points it’s worth. These cards are collected upon landing on tile shaded in the corresponding colour when navigating around the game board.
The cards are all in A7, and the content are taken from existing news articles from Hong Kong media companies. The cards’ paragraphs are from the lead/first paragraph, which are summaries of the articles.
The main objective is to conquer ‘Billboards’ which can be used to place an info card to gravitate the narrative to either a riot or disturbance, or pro-protestor or pro-police. The game ends either when all the billboards are conquered, or alternatively, time has expired. Maximum of 4 players can play this game, and in pairs manipulate the narrative. The winners are determined by how many billboards are conquered by each pair.
