Talk:Louise Vongphrachanh
The author used a couple interesting outside sources in her article to help anchor her reflection. The first was the reference to Harry Potter and how he was best known in the series for his scar on his forehead. This helped push the point that some people are most recognized by their physical imperfections and that the Evolver software is lacking the capability to include these scars, scratches, or other defects. The other example that she used was the Nintendo Wii and the 3D avatar representations that users can create. She used this example to illustrate how the Nintendo algorithm always make the users avatars to be "cute," further proving her point that people prefer not to describe their non-attractive traits when portraying themselves, even if it is in the virtual world.
The author did a great job in describing her avatar creation process. With her self-portrait avatar, she let us into her life a bit by telling us how she would've liked to include her scar in the avatar since it is part of her true identity. She also described how difficult it was to pick the correct skin tone, hair style, and shape of her nose. She lets us know that these seemingly simple aspects of a person are actually very challenging to illustrate correctly, and that they each have many sub-aspects that many people often overlook. With her fantasy avatar, her thought process was very clear, and it was obvious that she created an avatar of Nicki Minaj because she admired her carefree choice in fashion. She also stated that she chose to make this specific fantasy avatar because Nicki Minaj can act in ways that she cannot, allowing her to act in such a manner in the fantasy world since she cannot in the real world.
- C. Bender
I found it interesting that Louise seems to have come into this assignment with the stereotype that all Asians look alike, but that she herself is Asian. Psychology would suggest that this is the opposite of what one might expect, because people tend to find the dissimilarities within their own race, while identifying only the similarities in outgroups. She seems to have learned this lesson, though, through interacting with evolver. Indeed, she came to the correct conclusion that evolver is only narrowly representative of individual races and fails to adequately capture the myriad complexities found within each.
Her use of Harry Potter as an example of someone with a feature that cannot be represented is on-point, but shallow at best. On the other hand, her description of her scar and of her father were much more effective. These are observations that could only be made by a person close to the source. Specifically, it hadn't crossed my mind that it is simply not possible to represent someone who has lost a limb, or is in a wheelchair, since these are not features that were salient during my own avatar creation process.
She concludes that systems, like the Nintendo Wii, only allow for perfect or "cute" simulations of people. Even still, she argues, if presented with the option for accurately representing one's self, most people would instead opt to downplay their imperfections. I would retort that, based on her own earlier argument, there may be several caveats to this proposition. In her case, she said that she identifies strongly with the scar on her neck, and was disappointed by not being able to include it, because people would miss a large part of her identity. I would ask her, then, if given the ability to add the scar, would she? If she would, then this would suggest that one's avatar may actually be more representative of and insightful to how that person truly identifies herself. Thus, it would be more like the person clearly marking their identity for us, rather than forcing people to deduce it for themselves (which eliminates the chance that they would make these assumption incorrectly).
-Katty Allen
