We started Phase One with an exercise looking at possible bad/good starts for ideas; we did this by listing things that makes us cry, make us laugh, make us angry, stimulate us intellectually, interest us and get us excited. This allowed us to come from many angles when choosing places to start our research rather than just looking at things we like. We considered which of these starting points would be good and which would be bad and decided a good start comes from a topic that is broad enough to have multiple directions for the research to go, but narrow enough that it is still focused.

What makes you laugh?
- Puns
- Inside jokes
- Throw-back jokes
What makes you angry?
- People who can’t compromise
- Ignorance
- Forcing beliefs on others
- Unyielding arogance
What makes you cry?
- Loss
- Loneliness
- Nostalgia
- Break-ups
- Emotional music in movies
What stimulates you intellectually?
- Games design
- Mechanics
- Art
- Maths
- Numbers
- Puzzles
- Objectivism
- Space
- Sci-Fi
- Fictional Lore
- World building
What excites you?
- Competition
- Organisation
- Creativity
- The future
- Progression
- Levelling up
- Achievements
- Fishing Mini games
- New things
- Change
- Technology
What interests you?
- Self care
- Movies
- Film making
- Art
- Vikings
- Norse mythology
- Architecture
- Food
- Nature
- Forests
- Being outdoors
- Seasons
- Night time
- Contrast
- Nature vs technology
- Old vs New
- Lights in the dark
- Medieval Era
- Castles
I found this task challenging at first as I struggled with thinking of answers that went with each question; I didn’t want to be too specific because I thought that doing so would limit where I could go with research. The ‘What makes you laugh?’ question was difficult as most things that make me laugh are either very specific or in-the-moment scenarios rather than broader topics. Equally, I had few responses to the ‘What makes you cry?’ and ‘What makes you angry?’ questions as I generally am not one to dwell on negative emotions such as these, henceforth I have little interest in pursuing any of these topics further. I had greater success exploring the other three questions as they are inherently more positive and inclusive. We were told to choose four themes to take forward into further research so I tried to list a variety of topics ranging from physical things to philosophical ideas; this should provide many interesting avenues to pursue.
From here I need to choose some good starting points for research and ask questions about each choice that will allow me to thoroughly explore them.