ten Minutes Observation

For my ten minutes observation, I decided to observe my father watching television. After being assigned to do this assignment I requested if he would like to be the subject for my ten minutes observation. At first he didn’t believe as to what I had just said and denied my request. After explaining what it is about my father finally agreed to be my subject. Then he filled out the consent form, which was to be given to my teacher the next day.

I observed my father for exactly ten minutes starting from 12:40 and ending at12: 50.  When I got started with the observation, my father was seated in the most comfortable way possible; he was watching a show called “Counting cars” on History Tv.  Since he was staring blankly at the television and I was staring at him he gave me a quick glance and laughed. For about 2 to 3 minutes he watched it then as soon as the advertisement came up he started switching channels and weirdly shaking his foot .He switched from Star sports to Espn still shaking his foot. After a few minutes of fiddling trough channels he settled for Man of Steel. I could see his interest level rising and he stopped shaking his foot. What is weird and interesting is that after a few more minutes into the observation I realized that he starts shaking his foot every time he has to change channels or when his concentration is low and then stops it once he finds a channel interesting. Then our helper comes up and offers if she should heat the lunch for us, my father with no movement of his body and eyes; still staring at the television responds by saying “Yes sure”. He switches channels for the last time and ends up watching “The Devil’s Double”, he then adds a comment whilst watching it saying “This movie is interesting, its about Saddam Hussein’s son.”

Now that I am done with my ten minutes observation I can say that it felt like a bit of a challenge the first time I heard of it. Also since I had never done this before. But after discussing about it with my peers and getting a clear understanding of what I had to do this challenge got more interesting. It was a new experience for my subject and myself. I chose to write down the minute detail of what was going on because I was simple observing a person staring at a box. If I had to observe a person again I would definitely choose the person doing a different activity and I think I would try to discover more information.

I asked my father how he felt being observed and he said, “creepy”. That reaction was definitely because this is an activity he does almost every day and now all of a sudden I am sitting besides him and observing him. I shared my data with him and he was rather surprised by the movements of his foot. He laughed at it when I told him and then was eager to know more minutes details about himself.