Enabling Codesign

Redrollers live has not been so 'live' of late, there is a serious backlog of thoughts and activities to post. To kick things off check out this paper Penny Hagen & I wrote about codesign late last year.

http://johnnyholland.org/2011/11/enabling-codesign/

Penny & I have worked on several codesign projects and have discovered the planning process is critical. Creating inspiring, playful and stimulating materials to enable participants to connect and communicate their behaviours and needs takes time and ultimately lots of experimentation. People generally don't feel comfortable with a blank sheet of paper yet too much structure e.g. a detailed template can direct and narrow the focus. 

Gamestorming is a great resource to use to get thinking about potential activities - lots of great ideas that can be easily modified to suit your project needs.


Here is a little cheat sheet
http://www.selflearners.net/Notes/Gamestorming

Trends: JWT 100 Things to Watch in 2011

There are some brilliant trends to watch outlined in this presentation. I also recommend the other 4 that are mentioned here by Community Engine: 5 must read social business presentations for 2011.


http://www.communityengine.com/top-5-prediction-2011-presentations

Got to love it when someone handpicks the most compelling presentations :) Thanks Community Engine!

JWT: 100 Things to Watch in 2011

Methods: Social Innovation - SILK Method Deck

Social Innovation Lab Kent (SILK) aims to provide a creative environment for people to work together.  They draw upon best practice from business, design and social science to establish a way of working that places citizens at the very centre of everything they do.

They have put together an awesome deck of methods that cover five categories. Each category includes methods that are likely to be useful as guides, prompts or references at different stages of a project: Plan, Communicate, Insight, Workshop and Design.

You can download the deck here:


http://socialinnovation.typepad.com/silk/silk-method-deck.html

One of my favs are the Conversation Cards, I recently developed a set to use as part of a co-creation session to stimulate conversation and idea generation. NB finding the right images can be rather time consuming ... To get a diverse mix of contemporary images I suggest a combination of stock files, flickr and magazine tears.

Toolkit: Discussion map

I've often thought a visual map would be a more accessible and effective means of creating a conversation guide for interviews or discussion groups - but have not actually created one myself.

The sassy design researchers at Adaptive Path have of course been there done that ... have a look at the full blog post below:

http://www.adaptivepath.com/blog/2008/10/09/research-question-mindmap-experiment/

Method: Mobile Diaries

Check out the article @pennyhagen and I wrote for Johnny Holland Magazine.

Read on: 

http://johnnyholland.org/2010/07/13/mobile-diaries-discovering-daily-life/

Method: Self-documentation

Self-documentation is a method I have been exploring and playing with a few years now.  Most qualitative researchers will have packed up a disposable camera or sent out a diary for participants to record their thoughts, activities and preferences. However with the proliferation of smart phones, small video cameras and online reporting tools the scope for inviting people to report in and capture different elements of their day, week and life have expanded considerably. 


A vital element of successfully deploying this method is the provision of clear, involving and thought provoking questions. Participants need to feel safe and confident that they are capturing 'the right' kind of data. Of course to a curious researcher anything can be interesting ...  That said, I love this photo from IDEO's Human Centered Design Toolkit, available here:
http://www.ideo.com/work/item/human-centered-design-toolkit/

The questions are simple, playful, intimate and revealing, and it will mean the researcher has a wonderful glimpse into the participant's world. When writing the questions get a friend or someone quite different to yourself to have a read - what do they think, anything confusing or alienating?

How to: Getting out into the field

For anyone about to get out into the field for the first time I highly recommend this 20 minute video by Dan Saffer, (who is a founder and principal at the design consultancy Kicker Studio). 'What people are really doing' is from the Design Research Conference 2009.

It's awesome and might help you avoid having to learn 'what not to do' the hard way!

Design Research - UX London

I recently found (via @jacwex) this elegant presentation about design research, with some tips on analysis. Since working with designers I have enjoyed the way they embrace visual tools during the analysis process: post-it notes, butchers paper and index cards moving the ideas and insights around a room or wall - making it a more tactile process.

Design Research For Everyday Projects - UX London

View more documents from leisa reichelt.

LiveFutures2020 - A collaboration

Back in August I found myself involved in an experiment. I was invited to collaborate with a COFA Design student to co-create an installation for the LiveFutures 2020 project.

So during August, Pruni Mahdar and I put together InsideOut - Growing Communities. The project involved a few elements focusing on key themes: Community, Sustainability, Connection & Fun!

http://livefutures2020.com/2009/08/planting-communities-an-art-installation/

We wanted the project to build on existing communities so we asked www.LiveLocal.org.au if they would like to get involved. With their support we immediately had an online space for people who visited the exhibition to post their experiences and support each other.

The installation involved a seedling gift where people chose an organic seedling to take home and nurture. Before leaving they had to commit to care for their seedling on video - we are emailing their videos to them in 3 months for their own review and reflection. We also interviewed local community gardeners and put together a short video exploring what they love about their garden and the role it plays in the community. We located some community gardens on a map and provided opening times for visitors too - as they can be a little tricky to find.

Thanks to the help of Andrew Wills, who designed our logo and Nick Agafonoff, who helped edit a short video - just in time for the event! It was a fabulous experience and working with Pruni was wonderful ... now to wait for our seedlings to produce yummy organic tomatoes, snow peas, broccoli, lettuce and herbs!

Presentations (Research)

Research presentations can be delightfully inspiring or dreadfully dull. While PowerPoint is often seen as evil, it's difficult to avoid.

Here are some useful things to keep in mind for your next presentation (Thanks https://twitter.com/RayPoynter) ...

Key Messages
The key messages from the research are:

• The focus of any presentation should be the audience. However, audiences report that presenters often seem to think the presenter or the data are the focus.
• Since audiences and situations differ, there is no single best way of presenting. Requests from audiences are often contradictory, reminding us that you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
• Audiences expect presenters to be confident, capable, and rehearsed. There is little tolerance these days for a presenter who turns up and simply delivers the content in a clear but unengaged way.
• Conference presentations and research debriefs are different and have different requirements. Conference presentations can be of general interest, but debriefs have to answer specific business needs and should provide useful guidance for decision makers.
• Audiences want presentations to be shorter and to provide deeper insight, while at the same time being enjoyable.
• Themes that have been talked about for the last few years such as storytelling, are important but so are issues such as confidence, ability and a willingness to put forward an argument, not simply a report.

You can also read about the 10 characteristics of a great presentation here:

http://www.research-live.com/features/stage-directions/4000138.article

From my own experience Less is definitely More when it comes to words on a chart: cull cull cull and hunt down a visual where possible.

I love the way Sam Ladner sums this up so succinctly:
- Eliminate Visual Noise
- Accentuate difference
- To clarify add detail
- Maximise 'data ink'
- Minimise 'non-data' ink

http://www.slideshare.net/sladner/ways-to-report-research-presentation

Now to investigate InDesign ...

Brainstorming

Firstly can I just say how much I LOVE Twitter. Not only do I love the way you can follow people you already know and respect ... but the power of Twitter is meeting new people from all around the world who decide to follow you and introduce themselves.

Today I 'met' https://twitter.com/Crinid
Who is based in India and introduced me to a great resource: Crinid

As a researcher I am always interested to read about different brainstorming techniques and processes. It can be hard to find resources that provide handy examples and thoughts on the nitty gritty of running an effective brainstorming session. So I was delighted to come across this site, (which also links you to other relevant posts on the topic):

http://www.crinid.com/ideation/the-essentials-of-effective-brainstorming

Something quite simple and essential is understanding the way ideas 'emerge':

It’s essential to know ideas come to you in waves. Especially within a brainstorm where the real advantage is the ability to get inspired by each other’s ideas. Mix up concepts and contexts and take ideas to new levels. Everyone generates ideas, and everyone can mix and match or add their own interpretations to those ideas to create new concepts. Below is a visual representation of these waves, and incremental creativeness of its 3 participants during a brainstorm session.















So have a look around on this site if this is also an area of interest.

Subject to Change.

As a qualitative researcher interested in User Experience I found Adaptive Path's book, Subject to Change accessible and full of useful examples for future reference. While the book seemed to gloss over the 'how to' when it came to methods it did provide some powerful ways to challenge your thinking.

The chapter 'new ways of understanding people' is not particularly new for a research practitioner. For many years researchers have understood the importance of investigating people in context, finding ways to uncover deeper motivations or drivers (to assist with communications development as well as NPD) and the role of culture - when it comes to understanding meaning and how people interact, behave and adopt new things. Nonetheless it's helpful to be reminded that models where we tend to see people as rational beings performing tasks and goals lacks richness. I like the way the authors mention the need to accept "our inherent messiness" p47 and find ways to incorporate emotion, culture and context when writing an experience strategy: so it's less about tasks, goals and preferences and more about behaviours, motivations and meaning.

Finding ways for research to live in an organisation is where this book really starts to get interesting. Moving away from door stopping reports towards more inspiring ways of enabling research insights to "inspire and indicate a clear direction" p65 is serious food for thought for any researcher who has 'grown up' on PowerPoint. They talk about research outcomes being both actionable and durable. To do so requires getting research insights out of the one department and throughout the whole organisation. It's ultimately a far more iterative process where the organisation adopts a holistic and empathetic view of its customers (or users) - continually learning and adapting as a whole.

To assist this process they talk about translating research insights into Personas using actual quotes from participants to help bring to life their motivations and behaviours. p72. Making prototypes is also suggested as a means of getting people engaged. This is where I'd really like further guidance - how exactly might we do this?

In chapter 4 'stop designing products' the authors introduced some helpful questions and disciplines when it comes to defining and delivering a customer experience. The key questions on p78 will go a long way to helping an organisation deliver an ideal customer experience:
- "What do people want to accomplish? How does this activity fit into their lives? How can I deliver on those desires? ... and in doing so shifts ones focus from standalone products and allows you to start thinking of products simply as elements of a much larger system".

The iPod is used as an example to illustrate an experience strategy in action "all your music, any time, anywhere" (overtime 'music' evolved to 'media'). p79. The authors then go on to explain how the iPod system can be broken down into three segments: Acquire (iTunes Music Store), Manage (iTunes) and Play (iPod) and how they "allow functionality to concentrate where it's most appropriate" p81 e.g. Manage on your PC, where you have a keyboard, mouse and large screen.

Given I have never actually written a book review before, and was planning to simply jot down a few key thoughts for personal reference - I will leave it here.

Another wonderful review of Subject to Change can be found here: Lots of great links and quotes
http://experiencinginformation.wordpress.com/2008/05/12/book-review-subject-to-change/

Threads with Creds

Ross Zietz, Art Director for Threadless was in Sydney in conversation with David Marr. I must confess to not having bought a threadless t-shirt - so far - however I have admired many worn by a good Californian friend of mine: Darren.

http://www.threadless.com/

As you may know Threadless began in 2000 in Chicago with Jake Nickell and Jacob DeHart creating a site that allowed designers and creative people all around the world to submit their artwork, interact, gain exposure and generate a potential income stream. Little did they know it would grow to receive up to 150 submissions a day, a kids range, offers from Target and Urban Outfitters to distribute their gear as well as a retail store in their home town.

Threadless encourages and thrives on audience participation - in fact it depends on it. So they have found ways to encourage activity. If your artwork receives enough votes to get printed then you get up to $2500 + $500 for reprints. One chap managed to make $40K+ a year from submitting his work to Threadless. But it's not all about the fiscals. How would you feel if your design was worn my men, women and children all round the world? Or what about winning the annual bestee award.

Business schools find it all very fascinating, just how have these Threadless people managed to truly blur the lines between producer and consumer? It's quite simple really: give your audience some power - let them vote and determine what happens next. Respect your contributors - let them keep the rights to their artwork. Keep the lines of communication open and direct: blogs posts, emails are read and responded to directly by the founders. Stay true to the original philosophy: broker new relationships carefully - when Target wouldn't allow the artists name to be on the label Threadless knew it was not a good move so opted out. Keep experimenting and moving forward: harness new media such as Twitter to extend the offer - twitter tees where tweets can be submitted for voting and printing.

Russ spoke of an interesting marketing tool they stumbled upon a few years back. When people submitted their artwork they were immediately emailed a 'marketing kit' which enabled them to send out emails to everyone in their inbox to vote for their design. A rather snazzy way to bring new people to the site via a personal invitation.

With such an active online community Threadless are kinda running one big online focus group 247 ...

Now to buy my first tee.

Stories from the Field.

Last night I went along to DE's talk series, to hear Ronan Sharkeys stories from the field. Ronan is a delightful story teller and made some potent points not only for researchers but anyone involved in advocacy and social change. He challenges the myth that young people are apathetic and reveals many instances of engaged young people who have taken the time to write to the ABC, in great detail, about their concerns. I know from my own experience in the field young people do care and would jump at the chance to get involved - provided they feel like it's going to make a difference and they will learn something in the process.

Ronan feels the way to get young people more involved is to make them the authority - give them the microphone and let them investigate and tell the story. This has wider implications for the research process ... how many of us enable participants share their lives with us, on their terms? Would this mean sending out digital video cameras and voice recorders more often, asking people to take charge of how they'd like to report back to the researchers, giving them the power to truely represent themselves.

... We have done this and it can reveal some wonderful spaces otherwise inaccessible to a researcher - for instance one teenager gave us a tour of his shed, playing instuments as he told stories about his time spent in his shed. This kind of performative storytelling opens up a proximity and creates an intimacy difficult to replicate in a one on one interview or discussion group. The pace of the performance, the pauses and the changing energy levels of the participant bring us closer to their world.

The link to Ronan's talk is below:

http://digitaleskimo.net/blog/2009/05/11/de-talks-series

Thinking and listening.

While driving between interviews I happened to catch this amazing segment on Radio National about how young children are being taken through a process of philosophical inquiry.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/encounter/stories/2009/2542653.htm#transcript

According to Stephan Millett: What a philosophical inquiry does, is to first ask, what might this person be meaning? What are the possibilities of meaning that are inherent in this statement? Don't presume that at the outset your first take on it is the right take. I think that kids are an enormously rich resource for learning. Now I mean that in the sense that my job as a teacher isn't just to teach them how. I learn from them at the same time, so we actually engage in a learning community. The kids have different takes on things, they have different understandings, and their view might come to me as something completely fresh. And having a learning community, where it's a form of democracy, where voices are allowed to be heard, and I think when we hear the voices of our children, and we listen attentively, we listen very carefully to what they might be saying, and give them the time, and at least assume, prima facie, that they have something of value to say, then I think we can have a much fairer and more equitable society.

The audio of this show is wonderful: listening to 8-10 year old children discussing the nature of reality, the role of beliefs and imagination in a considered way is really delightful.