Brushing up on our fieldwork skills
This video from Gabe and Kirsty at the IIT Institute of Design, Chicago is an excellent guide to interviewing and ethnographic field work techniques.
They take a look at street and indepth contextual interviews and also highlight the dos and dont’s of ethnographic interviews, from when to switch your video camera on to how to avoid asking leading questions.
One to watch again and again and again!
Missing in Action
Hi there!
We have been letting the blogging side of things go lately due to the flurry of fieldwork and conference activity that we have been engaged in.
We have been visiting the folks at the Balgay bowling club, attending bingo games, playing dominoes and observing Wii sessions at Boomerang and generally having a great time hanging out with older adults.
We are also going to be attending the 39th British Society of Gerontology Conference in Brunel University next week. Read More »
Architecture learning: Turning Microsoft Word into a game
The how, why and implications of turning Microsoft Word into a game, is an interesting presentation made by Danc.
The part that excited me was the exploratory learning model, below, I thought it was really relevant to our project
Creating the architecture for exploratory learning is an aspect that may be a key area of exploration with our participants. This put us in a new trajectory, away from understanding what content older adults want to play which is an area that has appeared in a lot of our desk research.
Check out the whole presentation below, a very interesting read!
Read More »
Prototypes & the Design Ethnographer
I could write a book about all that I learned during the conference!
However I will force myself to narrow it down to my 3 main takeaways :
“Prototypes can help you find the thing you weren’t looking at”
As ethnographers we are trained to observe and look at everything from every angle – but there is always something you can’t or don’t see.
Prototyping is another tool or approach which can help you look at a problem or research area from a new perspective.
“Prototypes can bridge boundaries”
One of the biggest issues facing design ethnographers is how to bridge the gap between research and design.
As an ethnographer the last thing you want is your insights and research to just sit on a shelf – you want it to be used in the creation of something tangible – having prototyping as part of the design ethnographer’s toolkit is one way to do this?
“Prototypes can open up the research and the design space”
I had previously thought of prototypes as a way of beginning to close down the exploratory phase of a project – moving on to the concept phase. As a result of the conference I have seen that they can be a great tool for opening up the space and can be used at the very front end of the project as a conversation starter and method of engaging with your participants.
Starstruck
We also got to the chance to speak with experts in their field such as Liz Sanders, Colin Burns and Michael Schrage who were extremely friendly and generous with their advice – Liz Sanders even gave us one of her ‘Velcro toolkit’ prototypes to keep in our studio!
And they say you should never meet your heroes……!
In conclusion:
The event was fantastic and very relevant to my practice. It shattered the preconceptions I had about the role of prototyping in research. The range of speakers all had very different ways of using prototypes which resulted in some lively discussion and debate.
If the symposium were to be held again (please, please hold it next year!) I would have just one request – that we have a prototyping workshop during the event itself!
Play paradox – you are not being serious unless you play.
Talking on the first day of PROTOtype 2010 we had Michaels Schrage, Crafting interactions: The purpose(s) of ‘serious play’. When talking about prototypes as playgrounds, he qoutes Freud: “The opposite of play is not what is serious but what is real”, the link between real life and play is interwoven and a shift in one affects the other. This reflection on play as a balance not an additional factor could influence the design of our observation and interview question guides. It is pivotal that we reflect and observe how people play in their daily life, in work, home and daily routines. He states that ‘play is inherently unpredictable, if its predictable its not play’. So the question is how do we recognise play in others, and take it as an intangible thing and mould it to our needs and that of our participants?
Schrage also introduced the idea of the the play paradox :
You are not being serious unless you play
So its time to get serious about the project, and get playing.
PROTOtype Symposium Day 1: The power of ..
Credit: NASA 1968
During the first talk of the day Constance Adams stood in front of this photo and told us – “there’s no barriers – its all one planet”. For me, this set the tone for the first day of the Prototype Symposium ,which provided the audience with a heady mixture of craft, design, architecture, business, art, science, and engineering.
People Power
A common thread running through all the talks was ‘openness’, a willingness to share information and ideas, collaborate and participate. Constance also informed us that the current space programme is made up of many countries working together – something which would have been unimaginable in the past. If former ‘sparring partners’, the US and Russia, can collaborate to achieve a common goal then why not business, the creative arts and science?
There was a feeling of grass roots activism afoot, a desire to work from the ground up, for people and with people – as Michael Schrage put it – “it’s no longer DIY it’s DIW – Design it With who?”.
A different world has begun to emerge during the last few years. People no longer want to depend on the ‘Cathedrals’ that Leonardo Bonnani spoke of but are looking to the ‘Bazaars’ for ideas, inspiration, innovation, community and authenticity. This was also a theme in Faythe Levine’s fantastic film ‘Handmade Nation’ (which was screened as part of the Symposium at the DCA on Wednesday night).
Hazel White mentioned the special role that craftspeople and makers have – a deep understanding of the raw material they work with and the resonance and meaning that these materials have with people. This was evident in her ‘Hamefarer’s Kist’ which utilised familiar materials – wood and wool – to create a piece which would engage even the most diehard technophobe.
Here is a video of the Kist in action:
Discovery 2: Prototypes can spark interaction
This is the second of my discoveries from the foyer of the Prototype Symposium 2010.
Prototypes can spark interaction: The work of Roy Shearer, uses Niftymitter to look at the possibility of using open source practice with physical objects. Niftymitter: an open thing is a device that transmits from an audio source to any FM radio. It is designed to be taken by the new owner and hacked, tampered, improved and can even be profited from. The only constraint is that you must release it under the same parameters, as there are no patents or copyright attached. This wild card factor allows for the strangers to work collaboratively in a way that though not new, is more predominant in today’s society.
This practice is noticeable in areas such as software development, we had a great talk by Leonardo Bonani, ‘Tools and tool makers of the Bazaar, new paradigms in computer aided craft’ in which he discussed nature of Cathedrals and the Bazaar. The practice of making the tool that makes the object and making them both available, allowing innovators to flourish and remake products in new ways.
Discovery 1: Prototypes can spark conversations
The Prototype Symposium 2010, brought together a varied group of practitioners exploring theory, practice and recounting experiences. Yet before the speakers even began I was taken on a journey with the prototype exhibition in the foyer, these projects lead me to two new discoveries.
Prototypes can spark conversations: The work of Sarah Kettely was exhibited in the foyer of the Dalhousie building, Aeolia takes the form of stretch sensors embedded in clothing collecting data such as movement, light and or sound, a textile led enquiry designed for a cellist. It is stated that the ‘final application is kept deliberately vague’, for its purpose was to explore how materials, form and weight would interact in reality. Its existence as a prototype creates a conversation piece, how would you use the data created? Who would you put the garment piece on? Instead of a cellist what if it was used by a person with limited mobility, could it offer an inside look at their daily movements? It could be used alongside qualitative methods such as interviews and observations to gain another level of insight into obstacles they face when interacting with objects, spaces and games.
The physical form of prototypes and its connection to sparking conversations was commented on by Constance Adams, Space Architect in the first panel session of the day. Constance talked about her push to take the prototype from screen to physical model ‘as soon as it’s physical, you can see what is wrong, 2d simulations on computers are hard to critique’.
Prototype Symposium: Craft in the Future Tense
The next few days are going to be very exciting in Dundee as the Prototype Symposium gets underway! Prototype: Craft in the Future Tense has been co-convened by the V&A and Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design.The event is part of Craft Fest Scotland and ‘will explore the radical and multiple ways that creative people are experimenting with ideas’. Speakers include Liz Sanders, Norman Klein and Chicks on Speed to name but a few and attendees will come from backgrounds as diverse as biomedical engineering, design, business theory and studio craft.
Kate and I will be attending the conference and blogging on what we see and hear and how it will influence our work in the field of design ethnography! So watch this space!
You can also get conference updates and news via the Craft Research blog and the live Twitter Feed on the Prototype Symposium website.
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