Reflection on Methods

The shorthanded and resource-limited situation led to the inapplicability of some methods.

At the very first, a questionnaire aiming for users' personal information and the details of their social activities was handed out. Yet only 7 valid replies were received. So literature review and observation and counting replaced the planned survey to find out about the general patterns of users' activities.

Besides, conducting fieldwork home with a foreign student identity did not help build trust much here in SMV. Neither individuals nor recognized organizations tended to show trust or be helpful. All efforts to organize a focus group were in vain in the end. What's more, the COVID-19 pandemic had a bad effect on getting in touch with people. So individual interview ended up to be the most common method through the whole fieldwork in SMV to gather relevant information and necessary feedbacks. It did not always work well, because the levels of difficulty of different topics and the personal characteristics of interviewees changed over periods. Interviewers' personal abilities to advance discussion, switch topics and create trust had influences on the effectiveness and efficiency of these individual interviews, too. It should also be noticed that there were doubts about whether we played a leading role in all individual interviews and how much our subjectivity exist.

In addition, there was not much direct user inclusion in the stage of making proposals. The lacks of money, hands, time and venue did not allow a map drawing workshop or a model making activity. Finally, it had to be conducted through making proposals first and then implementing adjustments based on the feedbacks got on individual interview.

Still, the ideas of user inclusion and participatory learning and action ran through the whole work. The basic aims of finding out about the potential threats, users' real needs and making practical proposals in the local context have been achieved through these methods.