All the best

I wasn’t in Dundee on Monday of week 1 because my son was in hospital having a fairly major operation to remove a benign tumour from one of his legs, I was in Edinburgh with him from 7.15am until around 7pm.

On Tuesday we had a Co-Design lectures from Mike Press and Fraser Bruce, both were very interesting and gave us plenty to think about. My son was allowed home from Hospital on Tuesday afternoon.

On Wednesday morning Fraser did a lecture on the ‘Rip & Mix’ process of idea generation and then we did a short session in groups. I went home on Wednesday afternoon to take my son to the local doctors to get his leg dressing changed.

Thursday, I was working, but before work I had to take my son back to the doctors because his leg was bleeding a bit. I wasn’t too worried about it but he was, so to get some reassurance back we went.

I came up to Dundee on Thursday evening for an evening of healthcare lectures, Hazel White also did a presentation. For me this event was a ‘must see’ because my main interest is designing for health.

On Friday we spent the day listing to David Townson. I had a lecture from David in the 2nd year of my B.Des. I didn’t really listen to him then because I thought his input had nothing to do with jewellery design! After a week where I missed a lot of important things David’s presentation got me back on track and really inspired me to get off my butt and get on with it.

The following images are my P&D module reflective slides for this week.

Tuesday – Mike Press

Part of Mike’s lecture concerned the way businesses are recruiting customers to help to develop the designs of their products, on the surface this may seem like co-design (and probably is) but in my opinion it’s little more than an opportunity for free research. Customers who might come up with great ideas get little or no return. I think ‘exploitation’ is the word I’m reaching for.

Wednesday – Fraser Bruce

This lecture dealt with the Rip & Mix system which was developed at DoJ. It involves using two apparently unconnected and dissimilar design ideas to form a single new idea. Often this will produce a large number of ideas which may or may not be carried forward. The system allows all stakeholders to have an input and be part of the process.

Friday – David Townson

David Townson spoke about his career and design theory. He gave us some real world examples of work he’s been involved in. In the afternoon we did a bit of an exercise in small groups. We all became guerilla ethnographers and carried out a set task. My group had to go to the Post Office in the Perth Road, buy 7 stamps and enquire about buying car tax!

The following images are one’s I took during the week. (Descriptions below the images)

An initial mind map session of the visit to SOEC

Becca & Jun, the rip and mix session

Hazel White lecture to health care workers, during her presentation, she descibed the rip and mix process!

Our exercise instructions

In the P.O.

Outside the P.O.

Teams working on the before, during and after observations wall

The wall with all of the teams before, during and after observations.

Team 3 development mind map, our first as a finalised group.

Our task initial team tasks for the week-end. This was the last thing we did for the week. It was a fairly intense week for everyone, even me!

Next week (Monday 24th) sees the start of the People and Design module led by Fraser Bruce. Looking forward to getting back into it.

Our group boards have been printed and look good, the presentation will no doubt be rehearsed during the morning in preparation for this afternoon. I have decided not to speak during this presentation having done so in the first one we did, at the time of writing this is also the case for Jamie. The three members who didn’t speak during the first one will present the final one.

I’d like to thank my team members for an enjoyable experience and for their input into this module. I’ve learned from them as well as from the lectures. Good luck folks.

Team B, L to R – Jie, Katherina, Junying, Jamie, Dougie

The image below is my Morrisons loyalty card, points are added every time I get fuel and when I reach a certain amount I get a whole £5 voucher to spend in-store.

Note the graphics linking petrol money and shopping.

This was another studio day. We have been working on the slides and boards for Friday. I’ve felt this has been our least productive day, certainly for me. Jamie has been busy with the board visuals and Katherina has been laying out the presentation slides. I don’t feel I’ve dome much today at all. I’ve dome a small amount of writing for the text boxes on the boards.

Day 13

Will be a work day for me and I won’t be in Dundee. The group will put the finishing touches to the presentation and will hopefully get a chance to practice it for Mike Press. I will be getting the board visuals (they were e-mailed to me earlier by Jamie) printed at a local printers ready for mounting on Friday morning.

Jamie has been largely responsible for producing our graphics for all of the visuals so well done to him. I really need to get my Illustrator and Photoshop skills up to speed.

The following images are shots of board and slide development sessions.

Slide list and board mock-up

Key points to make

Expanding key point details

StopMotion – Post-It development sessions

Today ended with us each taking tasks home to complete for tomorrow.

We all put our main points (as we saw them) on post-its and put them up on the wall to see what sort of patterns they would form.

This resulted in clusters, which we later tagged, listed below in no particular order

Petrol as a hook

Fuel and food

Misc

Impact

Cost ‘V’ Loyalty

Re-use of fuel station - It’s not all doom and bloom

Stats

This was a useful exercise in that it showed up similarities in our own conclusions and, I think, nailed the main points we might like to develop into our final presentation. We used a video camera to film the posting process because we wanted to produce a short stop motion of the event, but, due to time constrains and the future unavailability of the camera it looks like this is now unlikely to happen.

We ended the day with some serious debate over what to do next bearing in mind we only have until Friday of this week to complete the work. Plans were made for tomorrow, I’ll post about that in due course.

image - Jamie Thoms

The image above shows our clusters with tags in place

She did know about the petrol station in Ladybank but wasn’t driving when it was open.

The interviewee gets her fuel at the ASDA store in Glenrothes, usually as part of a shopping trip to the store. If she is in Ladybank and running low she will make a special fuel buying trip to ASDA in Glenrothes rather than visit her nearest station at Freuchie. This is because the fuel is too expensive at Freuchie and she would rather travel the extra distance to get cheaper fuel.

Getting fuel is usually part of a routine unless something unexpected causes her to run low. Until recently she was a student in Dundee and would often get fuel at Tesco on Riverside because it is on the route back to Fife

I counted 3 things

The total number of vehicles that went directly to the shops.

The total number of vehicles that went directly to the petrol stations.

The number of vehicles that left the shop and went into the petrol stations.

The results were as follows

Morrisons Glenrothes 12.36 – 13.36 Saturday 8th Oct

Vehicles to shop = 366

Vehicles fuel only = 126

Vehicles for fuel after shop = 46

This means that 12.57% of shoppers also went for fuel.

Tesco Cupar 17.30 – 18.30 Sunday 9th Oct

Vehicles to shop = 154

Vehicles fuel only = 51

Vehicles for fuel after shop = 29

This means that 18.83% of shoppers also went for fuel.

Interesting numbers here, I’d like to do a longer observation at the locations to get some better average figures, however, the module isn’t long enough to carry out such in depth work. I’m looking forward to seeing the other group members figures.

Morrisons

Tesco

The article claims that there were around 74000 petrol stations in Britain c1977 and that since then they closed at a rate of up to 600 per year, leaving around a 7^th of the 74000 still open in 2007.

The author cites increased fuel efficiency as a reason, we use less petrol. He mentions supermarket offers for cheap fuel, something backed up by our interviews in Ladybank. The article states that independent petrol retailers can’t even buy in petrol at the price the supermarkets sell it, never mind beat their prices.

The author also mentions our initial scenario of the petrol station also being a shop and post office so closure is, or can be, a double or even triple edged sword.

Petrol stations have to do much more trade than that, which is why so many double as rural post offices and newsagents and basic groceries. Knock away one of those props, however – or two, because the new Asda 10 miles away sells petrol as well – and there’s nothing left to hang on to. (Preston, 2007)

This is an interesting article because it shows that the problem has been apparent for some time, if the closure rates are still the same around 2400 more stations will have closed since it was written, possibly many of them in rural areas with shops closing with them.

Bibliography

Preston, P.,2007. Petrol Pat, we need you too. theguardian, [online] 20^th August. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/aug/20/comment.oil?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487 [Accessed 08.10.11]

If I get home without getting petrol and am going to Dundee the next day this would mean I will have to go into town, travelling south before I go north again. This happens quite a lot and I’m impressed that I haven’t done it in the last 3 days!

So why Morrisons? Well it’s cheaper, I also buy my Irn Bru supply for the next day from the garage shop (Irn Bru is much dearer in the local Shell stations as is the petrol) Price is also the reason I don’t stop in at the Freuchie petrol station on the way to Dundee, the petrol is 3/4 pence a litre dearer than Morrisons as are the other items I buy.

The group met up at Ladybank railway station at around 10.30am we then went for a coffee at a near-by garden centre to prepare out paperwork and plan of action. We returned to Ladybank around 40/50 minutes later and split into two teams of two while I took some photos of the teams and then went on to carry out some interviews.

As well as speaking to people on the street we approached some shop-keepers  in the vicinity of the ex-petrol station to ask the same questions of them.

My interview notes were as follows

We slipped out student ID’s into the wallets as well and suspended them on lanyards. We also made up some signs to use if we felt we weren’t getting a response. We were going to use them to try and provoke people to come to us rather than us go to them. Jamie came up with the phrase, based on the request that is often made in city centres these days – any spare change pal?

In the event we didn’t use it but that’s another story (Tomorrow)

We, as a group, also went over our questions for interviews, and generally planned our Ladybank visit. We also planned out petrol station observations. We are each going to visit a supermarket petrol station to observe how many vehicles come in to get petrol then leave and how many go in to shop and then see how many go for petrol after shopping.

Above – Our questions

Observation Schedule

After this we called it a day and went to get other materials, highlighters, maps, clipboards etc.

During the morning we had a group seminar with Mike Press where we were asked our research question, what we wanted to get from our interviews, what we hoped to achieve and why we thought our question was valid. It was a useful exercise because it made us think about the task ahead, it also gave us more questions to answer but we became more focussed on the issue.

I also had a one to one session with Mike Press later that day to discuss my blog and the criteria for assessment. I left a happier student!

We redefined our question to suit the narrowing down of the brief to What is your journey to get fuel? We intend to ask interview participants further questions along the lines off…

Did you use the local petrol station when it was open?

Where do you go for petrol now?

Has this added to your daily or weekly mileage or do you plan a visit to the petrol station when you are en route to other places?

We feel that questions along these lines will provide enough information to fulfil the brief requirements. Each of us is required to interview a minimum of 2 people and also to carry out one observation. We should all manage this during our field trip to Ladybank.

In addition to the field work we are also investigation the use of diaries to record some information. I will be completing a petrol buying diary along with, hopefully, some of Jamie’s relatives. I will be taking a photo each time I visit a petrol station over the next 10 days or so and recording whether it was a specific journey to get petrol or it was planned inot my routine. Sometimes if I forget petrol I have to go back into town to get it then retrace my steps on the way to Dundee. These photos will be uploaded to Flickr and tagged petrol journey

Lecture – Professor Tom Inns

Tom Inns lecture was about workshops as a research and facilitating tool. He told us that workshops are a powerful mechanism for interdisciplinary working and they are a great way for organising work in an efficient manner. He compared it to theatre, working in acts with props and some improvisation. There is also an element of reflecting on the outcome. In-keeping with his theatre analogy I see the reflection as being similar to discussing a play after you have watched it being performed.

Professor Inns, with the aid of a diagram, went on to explain the ‘4 Ds‘

Discover – Define – Develop – Deliver

The diagram shows the stages of the design process and Prof. Inns told us that we could have workshops at any of these stages. The opening up and narrowing down cycles of the red lines represent divergent thinking (open) and convergent thinking (narrowing) As I understand the terms, divergent thinking would represent the investigation of many possible ideas and convergent thinking would limit these to a few or just one. So as represented in the diagram you begin by discovering many but refining to fewer and developing these to possibly one outcome to deliver (it could be a range of outcomes though).

Tom went through a range of slides and discussed the principles of ‘designing’ a workshop. These include the venue, required materials, information about the stakeholders and the workshop ‘choreography’ (back to the theatre analogy).

He covered the needs, aims and intentions of the stakeholders, the needs of the participants. He pointed out that a key part of these needs centred round whether the participants knew each other and their backgrounds.

The workshops should be designed to encourage participants to engage with the tasks (acts in the play?) and commit to the event, an on-line booking system was discussed at this point in the lecture (commitment). Discussing the venue we were informed that they should be accessible, flexible and conducive to the workshop aims.

Getting into details Tom spoke about ‘theatres of thinking’. This relates to specific workshop materials and the journey they will map out. Things to think about are initial introductions, exploration of contexts, idea generation and evaluation leading to strategy setting.

Tom finished his lecture by covering some case studies of his own work. He pointed out the main stakeholders, gave us some background information on the issues and showed us some of the end results of his workshops as presented to his clients.

Tom emphasised the importance of giving feedback to the participants. I think that this serves three main purposes, firstly, promising feedback can be a reward and, therefore, an incentive to participate. Secondly, it will encourage future participation and third, it will encoursge the participants to remain in your network of contacts (or keep you in theirs!)

I think that workshops are a valuable tool for researchers. They can provide a huge amount of data in a relatively short space of time, from differing numbers of participants. They are a skill that need to be learned and practised but I’m sure that I’ll use workshops in the future. I’m looking forward to the Module led by Tom Inns where I am sure I’ll be a workshop participant!

Brief
Re-conceive or find a new purpose for
non-operational and increasingly obsolete
service stations by capitalising on their
unique design features.

We had to look at the brief, brand ourselves as a research team and make a ‘pitch’ to tutors that afternoon about our way forward over the next two weeks.

We had a brainstorming session to come up with key words about the group, our mission statement, our plan and ultimately our brand. We also did some initial on-line research around the issue, we wanted a key fact to open the presentation and also made the decision to concentrate on rural locations, we felt that closures may have had a bigger impact on rural communities. We concentrated on know locations of defunct petrol stations in Fife and Perthshire.

Our whiteboards from our brainstorming session

The brand logo

Some of the initial thoughts we had were that the closure of a station would cause its users to have to travel further afield for fuel, it may have meant the loss of other amenities, a shop for instance, and that it leaves an empty and unproductive space. Possibly coupled with a difficult clean up operation before a new use could go ahead.

Jamie and I did the presentation, I think it went badly on my part, I don’t think I got our points over as well as I could have. The tutors didn’t view it as badly as I thought, they were aware of the lack of prep time we all had, however, it could have gone better. I wanted to do the presentation because I hate public speaking but want to get better at it and get used to the pressure.

One of the main points made by the tutors that we were (all of the groups) taking the RSA briefs too literally. I think we need to use them as a starting point then narrow it down to a single issue. We aren’t submitting the research and only have two weeks.

Given an evening to think about the crit I think we have approached it the wrong way and along with that we have made some quite big assumptions, or at least I have, regarding the Fife ex-petrol stations.

On Saturday I did a tour of Fife (and some of Perth & Kinross) looking at the stations I know about that no longer sell petrol. I discovered that very few of them are actually sitting as empty defunct properties. Most have been re-invented as other, apparently thriving, businesses.

This image shows the old Kingskettle petrol station, it appears to be offices now. The ECCO sign used to say ESSO!

A close up of the old petrol pump still in situ.

Kingskettle also has another ex-petrol station that is now dedicated to car sales, repairs and a car wash.

The old Ladybank petrol station. I didn’t know that this had been opened here.

One of 2 ex-petrol stations in Abernethy

The second Abernethy station, now a garage and car sales

Glenfarg, now car sales

Auchtermuchty, now residential, there is still a petrol station in Auchtermuchty.

Cupar 1, now a van rental business and car wash

Cupar 2, now motorcycle sales, the company who ran the petrol sales also did garden machinery, this still exists in the rear of the premises.

Cupar 3, now car sales. Cupar still has a petrol station, it belongs to Tesco and is part of their supermarket.

The three images above show the southbound defunct petrol station on the New-Inn stretch of dual carriageway near Glenrothes. There is another defunct site on the northbound carriageway directly opposite this one.

What struck me as I drove round these sites is that most of them are being re-used already and that car related activities seem to be popular. Perhaps the ‘rural’ sites I thought about aren’t as rural as they could be. They would appear to be able to support small businesses, mostly related to car sales and repair. I’m trying not to fall into the trap of making assumptions, having recently just climbed out of it!

The New-Inn sites are the only derelict sites I saw. Even the Abernethy site that is currently unused still has serviceable buildings on it. I think as a group we need to re-visit the brief, narrow down our possibilities and define our question and then carry on from there. We have a meeting on Monday and I am sure we’ll get back on track after that.

*All images - D Kinnear*

I will look around the log posts of others to get an idea about what I missed as well as ask questions when I return.

One of the points made by Rosling was that our biggest enemy (as researchers) is our false assumptions. We make false assumptions based on what we ‘think’ we know. This knowledge may have come from many places, the media, friends etc. The false information isn’t given to us (for the most-part) intentionally but we use it to form opinions. However, Rosling shows, with his clear visualisations and research, that if we dig a little deeper we can find the truth.

During the group debate Sub-Saharan Africa was used as an example of countries that have/have had assumptions made about its society, wealth, growth and health. Examples were also given to show these assumptions as false, including short clips from Hans Roling presentations.

The session ended with the point that ‘The only point in research is to make a difference’ and that there are a huge variety of ways to make research vivid and clear using visualisation techniques.

The following sessions were delivered by guest speakers, I’m not going to blog about their work, I think it’s more important to concentrate on the messages they had for us as researchers and designers. If anyone reading this wants more information about their work click on their names to visit their websites.

Joanna Montgomery

Joanna spoke to us about delivering a pitch. A pitch is a presentation to prospective clients or funding bodies. The pitch is delivered to get people to buy into your ideas, this could be a job, a research project or for funding.

Joanna told us that there are 2 key elements t0 a pitch, Content – which should make sense and the Performance – which must be delivered well.

The content of the pitch should cover

Why? – What problem are you solving, turn it into a story

What?- Explain it as clearly and concisely as possible, how it will solve the problem, be clear about what you are asking for. (e.g. money, resources, mentoring)

How? – How are you going to succeed, things you need and how your audience can help.

We were also told that you should also always be aware of your audience, engage with them as much as possible, eye contact etc. And never tell them what to think, allow them to form their own opinions based on the pitch.

Joanna went on to demonstrate how words and phrases can mean different things to different people. She gave examples like ‘ground breaking’ and ‘top of the range’. She advised us that we should steer clear of phrases and words like these.

She also said that people like to know what the benefits of something are rather than (technical like) features. She gave another example that a target audience might be more interested to know that a small laptop would fit in a bag rather than its diagonal screen size.

Summing up she said that content should grab attention, keep the audience interested and get a decision.

Moving on to the performance aspect of a pitch Joanna said that it is important to dress appropriately depending on the audience. Remember it is a performance and to engage with the audience, keeping them interested. We should let our passion lead us. A passionate pitch could over-rule everything else that happens during it, even the content and lead to a positive outcome and show enthusiasm.

On the topic of nerves, everyone gets nervous, Joanna told us that they show we care otherwise we wouldn’t be bothered, a tip for this was to clasp and squeeze your hand together.

She also said it that before a pitch it might be useful to write down what might possibly go wrong during a pitch and think of resolutions for that. It was Ok to use cue cards but that if you did then don’t try to hide the fact that you have them and don’t pull crumpled bits of paper from your pocket.

Joanna finished with a list of 3 things to strive for

Performance – give the best you can

Always have belief – if you don’t know-one else will

Honesty – tell the truth, bluffers will be caught out!

Linsey McIntosh

Linsey has just graduated form the MDes and spoke about her MDes project, visit her blog to get the details of it. I’m just going to post about her advice to us and her research methods etc.

Her first piece of advice was that we should always keep any key initial research information. She went on to say that it’s OK to look at the work of others when researching. I think it would be unusual to not find previous work on a subject, it might be coming from a different direction but there is usually related work out there.

Always interview key stakeholders, including experts. Never make assumptions (we’ve heard this before from Hans Rosling). Interviews have to be carried out to prevent us making assumptions. Keep things simple and readily understood…

…ideas – information – visualisation…

…is how research should flow. I read this to mean that we start off with ideas then research to gather information, we can then collate this into an understandable visualisation, for us and importantly the stakeholders.

Another tip from Linsey was that she attended a relevant conference where she extended her (field) stakeholder network, I think this is great advice.

When conducting research she advised us to do it in the appropriate environment and not to hide in books or the internet, this links back to interviewing stakeholders, use of social networks is also advised where appropriate. If you visit Linsey’s blog you will see, in her case, it was essential, not only for conducting research and engaging stakeholders but to also show the benefits of the research.

Linsey’s final piece of advice was to embed research into everything we do. Again, good advice from someone who’s just finished the journey I’ve just begun.

Linsey McIntosh - Photo D Kinnear

Jen Ballie

In relation to her research Jen began by outlining her main research method, co-design. This invvolves designing for inclusion and co-innovation, involving many more stakeholders in the research process, pushing co-design and interdisciplinary working.

Jen uses 4 steps in the process

Planning – Action – Observation – Reflection

As I understand it this involves planning what she intends to do, everything needs to start with a plan, then she puts this into action, carrying out research and involving stakeholders. She observes what happens at participatory workshops and collects data using tool-kits which evolve as the workshops develop.

Giving an example of this in practice she went on to describe how she designed games to prompt collaberation, made products using the equipment that was available at the location, styled the products to fit the brief, to contain the story. She also enocuraged ‘auto-documantation’ by encouraging participants to capture data themselves using disposable cameras.

Jen also mentioned the use of social media/networking to promote participation. She re-emphasised the process of bringing groups together, collecting data through hands on experience and low fidelity prototyping.

I understand the term low fidelity prototyping to mean the production of the objects using available equipment, a computer, textiles and a normal printer rather than having it produced using commercial means

Jen Ballie - Photo D Kinnear

Fan Xia

Fan spoke about her research methods and inspiration. her main interest is design transformation – what can design achieve in the new age of innovation. Her ‘ingredients’ are current knowledge, knowledge from other researchers and experimental practice.

Fan reiterated points made by earlier speakers (great minds…) and spoke about visualisation, the importance of field research and involving stakeholders and her methodological research approach. She stated that she has a very holistic approach

Fan also mentione dthe use of toolkits to help participants engage with workshops and the need for the researcher to be confident, more repeat advice, however, it emphasises the importance of the advice when all of these speakers say the same thing even though they may use different methods and approaches and are all working on very different problems.

What struck me most about Fan is that she uses a lot of graphics in her work, this helps the clients/stakeholders to visualise her ideas and understand them.

Fan Xia - Photo D Kinnear

Lauren Currie

Lauren delivered her presentation via Skype, I wasn’t sure how well this would work, I don’t have much Skype experience, however, it was a great experience and took little, if anything, away from the presentation., in fact it probably added to the audience engagement.

Lauren began by outlining what design research is, it’s how we get people to tell stories and so a core skill as a researcher is to be a good listener. this means one of the challenges is to get people to open up and tell.

lauren went on to say that talking to people and listening was na aquired skill and (she has/does) and we should develop skills to help.

She said there are 3 main ways to talk to people, the man in the street approach which is to just go up to people (with a clipboard) and talk to them, next is a user interview (don’t brand it as that though, (it’s off-putting), ask them for a coffee and a chat (and listen to them). Lastly, an extreme user interview which will be longer and more in-depth, do that in the users environment.

Lauren’s top tips for us were

Be presentable – to suit the user environment

Always think about things beforehand – plan, agenda, consent forms, rsults & a plan B

Treat people with respect

Phone off – LISTEN

Establish a rapport with the user (be banterous!)

Be positive – Smile

Equipment – research tools, notebooks, felt tips (sharpies) ban biro’s people will write rather than draw, post-its, a camera and finally, a rubber chicken!!

Lauren advised us to look up LiZ Sanders and read about generative tools. I think that we will get much richer data from these methods that traditional methods.

Lauren says that she connects stuff in new ways which separates her from others, all of today’s guest speakers have this in common I think, which is why they are successful as designers and researchers.

Lauren Currie - Photo D Kinnear

Apologies for the Red Dwarf look of this image!

Jonathan Baldwin

Lastly we had a lecture form another DoJ tutor, Jonathan Baldwin. Jonathan spoke about social media for research. Unfortunately I had leave during his presentation to get home in time for work. Others in the group will catch me up I’m sure, or I can read their logs.

What I saw from Jonathan was an intro to Delicious and Google Reader. I never realised the power of the tools and have already signed up to them, He also mentioned Evernote, an app I already had, (I recently bought an iPhone), but haven’t yet experimented with. I’m going to use Google Reader to subscribe to blogs and feeds.

At the beginning of his talk Jonathan spoke about Google Scholar, I had heard of this but not really used it.

Jonathan Baldwin - Photo D Kinnear

My Thoughts

This was a really interesting day, loads of great advice and interesting stories from people who are out there doing the work. As I’ve mentioned at some points in this post some advice was repeated, and not just by the presenters, but read or seen in other sources. This repetition gives their advice validity, because these are successful designers and researchers, and it shows it’s importance to us as learners. I thank them all for coming in to see us, entertaining us and sharing.

These notes are my take on what was said during the presentations, if any of the contributors read them and think ‘I didn’t say that’ please don’t panic, it’s what I heard!

My skills at notes have improved, a little, I’m hoping that it will develop. I worry that I may miss something.

My notebook - Photo D Kinnear

Today we heard firstly from Professor Mike Press who dealt two main topics, the relationships between practice and research in design, and two examples of his own research projects.

The first section was an introduction to what research is, why it is carried out and the methods we can use to do it.

Research begins with a question, we do the research to provide an answer. The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funds academic research and has 3 main features in its criteria before it will consider funding a piece of research. The first of these is that there must be a clearly articulated research question. Without a question it would be impossible to give context and rationale to the research which are the second part of the AHRC criteria. The third part is that specifics of the appropriate methods for carrying out the research must be given.

Methods are the (creative) tools and techniques we use to gather and analyse data whereas the methodology is the set of principles, rules and methods employed by the researcher to carry out the researcher.

Some terms related to research were used during this part of the lecture – ontological and epistemological. I will have to some reading before commenting on them. At the moment, as I understand them, they relate to what we actually know and what we could know but I don’t fully understand their meanings yet. The terms – positivism and constructivism were also used, I’ll also have to do some reading about these concepts but again, as I understand them, they relate to the objectivity of the researcher.

The remainder of this section dealt with examples of research ‘types’ and researchers from Aristotle and Galileo through Watson & Crick to contemporary designers and researchers including Jane Harris, John McGee and Peter Walters

We also covered some reading and reference material and some software programs for helping collate information and actually write reports. I will investigate the software in due course and will add suggest books to my shopping list!

We then covered reading, we read a nursery rhyme and were asked to write about it for 2 minutes. We then compared what we had written and saw that we had written about in different ways, by restatement – what a text says, by description – what a text does and by interpretation – what a text means.

We then looked at two past research projects that Professor Press had completed. They were both very different, one dealt with what graduates had done over a 10 year period since graduating, the research team asked survey respondents to complete a timeline to gather data, I see this method as a cultural probe. The other project was Design Against Crime which looked at effective ways in which design could help reduce crime. This was/is a long term project and was the result of an initial research grant leading to further, more comprehensive studies. Point raised in this section were that research projects need to be branded, innovative methods should be employed, part of the Design Against Crime research involved actors confronting researchers/stakeholders in character. And a tip to always end reports by stating that ‘Clearly further research is necessary’!

A small set task is to find a good example of how research or research data is presented. I think an excellent example of this is the way the RSA present data in their RSAnimate lecture videos.

RSA Animate – Crises of Capitalism from The RSA on Vimeo.

These films not only present data in an audio format but in an engaging graphical format as well, often the presenter will move around showing a graphical representation of linking data together.

Second Session

This was delivered by Cat Macauley, programme leader for the Master of Design Ethnography and was about her journey to design ethnography but pushed the important message – don’t be afraid to ask why, re-learn how to ask why.

Asking questions is a fundamental part of research, how, what and why are very important. How and what more-so to designers and why to ethnographers.

Third Session

Delivered by Kate Saunderson this was about ethics and risk assessments. I will have to do some more reading about ethics but the topic and procedures are very important to researchers.

My thoughts

This was a very busy day and if it’s an indicator of things to come then I’m going to have to up my game. I need to take better, and possibly more, notes.

In the afternoon we had a tutorial with Professor Mike Press who spoke about the importance of reading newspapers to designers. The tutorial covered the ownership of papers, their differing biases, political slants, some history, critical reading skills and a small exercise to get us using those critical reading skills. Newspapers will never be the same again.

image credit beehivecity.com

Another part of this task is to sit in silence with no distractions for 5 minutes. We have to do this at home (a safe environment) and in a place we might feel uncomfortable or out of place. I’ve done the first part, it’s amazing how long 5 minutes can seem! I’ll do the second part tomorrow on the way home from Dundee, where will I feel out of place? In a church! (Thanks for the suggestion Becca!). I’ll post about the results of this experiment.

This is Service Design Thinking – Book Trailer / Explanimation from Nick Lievendag on Vimeo.

The next major step is to give a 3 minute ‘who am I’ talk on Tuesday next week. I’m not looking forward to that, public speaking is not something I enjoy. However, it’s an essential skill for a designer so…

It also appears that these talks will be videoed, great!