Today we went down to Lambton Quay and tested whether people in the CBD (primarily business people) would interact through a high-five. We did two types of tests; offering high-fives to people walking the opposite direct that we were down the sidewalk and high-fiving people waiting at traffic lights. We found that it was harder to interact with people waiting at the traffic lights as they have a tendency to wait right on the edge of the sidewalk so you had to approach them from the side which often startled people as they couldn't see you coming and also felt more awkward. But because Hi-Five Cam would be picking two people already waiting side-by-side at the traffic lights this wouldn't happen for our actual experience. Also, we observed that people seemed to expect more out of your interaction at the traffic lights (further conversation) than people you were walking past, maybe because they were already paused in their journey so you wouldn't be interrupting them. It was great to see how high-fiving made people smile, break out of their bubble, or even laugh, which confirms our opinion that high-fives can improve people's wellbeing. One downside was that it was quite a cold day so people often had their hands in their pockets or also people were often carrying phones, coffees, purses, food etc which made us feel like we couldn't ask them for a high-five without inconveniencing them. We observed that people seemed to be even more willing to high five us when they had seen us high-fiving others before them, perhaps because they saw that it was harmless and we were't going to ask anything else of them - or maybe they just didn't want to be seen not getting involved. The bad thing for our project that we noticed was that because of the lack of traffic on Lambton Quay lots of people jaywalked - would people be waiting at the traffic lights for long enough to be involved in Hi-Five Cam?
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