Design Thinking in Digital Preservation of Mak Yong’s Facial Expression Performance

Abstract

Throughout many years, Mak Yong's performance has been performed live. Mak Yong is the only performance in Malaysia that has been recognised by UNESCO and awarded the title "Masterpiece of Humanity's Oral and Intangible Heritage" in 2005. Undoubtedly, this type of performance has faced numerous challenges, particularly as a result of modernisation. As part of the digitisation phases, the Design Thinking process was proposed as a model for preserving Mak Yong's performance using digital technology. Design Thinking has been chosen for its non-linear and user-centered approach. Five stages comprise the Design Thinking model: Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. The digitisation process in this study is still at nascent stages, thus it only focused on the facial expressions of Pak Yong character in Dewa Muda repertoire. The digitisation of Mak Yong ‘s 3D character prototype using the Design Thinking offers a practical solution, which can also be applied into other areas such as animation and digital games.