1.3 Approaching the end user: BETA protocols

1.3 JAN25/ Beta approach to end user and protocol design We want to design with the people not just for the people, so we need to know their expectatins, goals, needs and ideas. It is absolutely important to go to the field with a plan. Not a static plan, but an organic one that might adapt to the researcher’s needs. It is not enough just to acknowledge the tools to work with, but to know whom we are working with, in what conditions and what we want to get from this experience. So a “roadmap” should be made before making any moves. This is a research protocol. Also it is a good thing to test it. This, in allusion to Google’s concept, I’ve called it a Beta Protocol. By testing it in real contexts, it is easier to make changes before getting to the real situation. We use and modify Eric Dishman’s [http://www.intel.com/pressroom/kits/bios/edishman.htm] the Ask, Perform, and Observe protocol. Yet, with some typical recommendations in anthropological research [Schensul, Jean J., and Margaret Diane LeCompte, 1999 Designing and Conducting Ethnographic Research. Vol. 1. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: AltaMira Press].  A basic research toolbox will help us to design and imagine new research methods or ways to elicit and collect information. They can be participative, and they should look to be designed accomplishing the objectives defined by the student.

The students made 1 to 1 in-context interviews to elder people from around Raleigh. Interviews are particularly useful for this EXPLORATORY PHASE. Researchers designed charts and other graphic supporting material to collect the information in an organized and thoughtful fashion. This material is the one subjected to change. We won’t  just modify the protocol itself, but also the worksheets used for the researcher’s data collection. There is also designed material to write reflective insights post-interview. This is used when team meets to check out the audiovisual material. Students did modify the typeface for the informed consent forms to enhance the readability of the participants. They also changed some approaches to questions and ways to download the information. The team profits from the information interchange that takes place within the class. Rebecca Myers and Sam Cox did revise once and again their protocols, going into the field and revising the processes and the material after. They were very successful with their insights.

Symposium@NCState:education/ consumption/research/authenticity

ENG/ The NC Master of Graphic Design candidates, leaded by Denise Gonzales Crisp [http://superstove.blogs.com/about.html], hosted a graduate symposium, which was absolutely great. Three days of developing thinking on themes like rhetoric and authenticity under different scopes. The opening lecturers were as different as they can be. Brenda Laurel [http://www.tauzero.com/Brenda_Laurel/BrendaBio.html], Chair of the graduate program in Design from CCA. She is well known because of her edition of the book: The Design Research, Methods and perspectives [http://www.amazon.com/Design-Research-Perspectives-Brenda-Laurel/dp/0262122634#reader_0262122634]. On the other hand we had Elliott Earls, the head of the graduate graphic design program at Cranbrook Academy of Art [http://www.theapolloprogram.com/Bio.html]. “The writer Rick Poynor has said of Elliott: “If ever a designer seemed like a certified oddball, pursuing a trajectory far removed from the obligations of institutional life, it is Earls. He is one of those unclassifiable, mutant blooms thrown up by the fractured landscape of 1990’s graphic design” [http://www.theapolloprogram.com/Bio.html]. I’m not going to go into details of both of the characters, but I would just like to recover some ideas and thinking from both lectures, especially Brenda´s, who’s work and mine share common procedures.
EDUCATIONAL CONSUMPTION VS/ CRANBROOK’S MODEL
Elliott’s most appealing (to me) intervention had to do with the “consumerist attitude to graphic design”, the dissent or “elegant dissent” to that. I believe this opposition can make graphic designers interested in Social Matters, at least is what took me into this area. On the other hand, Cranbrook Academy of Art opposes to the “bankruptcy of the educational model”. And even though I find difficult to make a model outside from the forces of the liberal economy (I actually can’t figure out where they take the money for sustaining this educational system), it is kind of an interesting reflection to make. Students, in my personal opinion, shouldn’t be treated as education consumers. It may lead to just a transactional relationship that tears apart any vocational willingness from the professors. It also reduces the possibilities for knowledge construction, as sharing knowledge would seem like a bad strategy to succeed. If everything is a business planning is hidden, courses are registered as intellectual property and the intentions of “open source” knowledge diminish. An educational business model does not encourage or afford the knowledge dissemination in an uninterested way. And isn’t that the role of universities? I’ve been frequently challenged by these ideas. The objective is not to encourage plagiarism of knowledge, but to encourage an ethical interest in constructing knowledge. Back in Latin America, some private establishments taking advantage of students seeking for a university career, who do not have the performance, but do have the money, is growing. Not all of them, of course. Yet there are a vast number of examples where we can find students getting a non-accredited education and not being able to perform as a professional. Essentially, they pay and get a diploma. So this is a point to make a reflection on.

DESIGN FOR SOCIAL CHANGE: BRENDA LAUREL
Brenda Laurel’s intervention was around the topic of “DESIGN FOR CHANGE”. Brenda explained the notion that design can cross community boundaries. She highlighted the importance of Design Research helping designers to get the “right question” to problems (not necessary bad things) and not just a question phrased from your own values as a designer. Nonetheless, she assumes the fact that designers do come with a particular set of values into the context they are working in. By giving some examples of some of her early work as a design researcher and game developer, she commented on the idea that rich discoveries are related to human processes. For her, every design project is context-based. Which I believe it has a correlation with the generalizability of the qualitative approach. On the other hand, addressing communities, she asserts that some causes of exclusion have to do with: self-exclusion, ingrained attitudes and barriers to change. In her thought, new normatives do create new communities. This could be an idea leading design for change. Objects or products (tangible or intangible) with a new norm create new affiliations to it, and thereof, new communities. So, according to Laurel, it is about creating a new norm through cultural intervention. In her words: “introducing new genetic material into a culture without activating its immune system”. That is such an important reflection! Bringing change together with a successful cultural implementation. After showing some work she did with her class, overall in the area of sustainability and ecology, Laurel mentions that: ”you need to know how to speak business, they have to know the “enemy” (recalling some of Earl’s conception of design research used by the evil business aparathus) They have to know their aspects. We don’t use the word consumer. Methods look similar but the purpose is different”. Laurel poses a realist stand. Do we want to be doing research just to sell deodorants? Yet we need to know how it works, overall when we want to engage different sectors for social change.

BEING PART OF THE COMMUNITY: GIVES US MORE RIGHT TO DESIGN FOR THEM?
Denise Gonzalez Crisp made a bold assertion: “What right do we have to design for these communities?” And not just talking about the social aid to unprivileged communities, but to communities to  whom we don’t belong. I can link this question with Jon Sueda’s [http://www.cca.edu/academics/faculty/jsueda] lecture where he gave Butt Magazine’s example. “Gert Jonkers and Jop van Bennekom. They are two homos from Amsterdam, The Netherlands”[ http://www.buttmagazine.com/?p=259]. So these designers are part and belong to the community they design for. So can we achieve the same effects through collaboration with participants? Can we design for communities we don’t belong to? Can we really do co-participative design? Can we be authentic when being outside of the cultural system? These are questions I still haven’t been able to solve as a PhD student and designer. Lastly, Brenda commented that we should be aware that “research is there to make design better, but is not the larger picture”.

1.1 Quantitative and qualitative secondary data on the topic

JAN22/ FIRST @DESK SONDEO In an exploratory phase, it is relevant to a first approach to the topics we will be working on. That being: aging, transgenerational design, user-centered methods, design research, etc. We, always come into research with our values, our assumptions and our beliefs. To start thinking on others, we have to build upon the existing knowledge, the ideas that have been written about a certain theme and the research that has been done. We need to be ‘pre-informed’ about what others have been investigating on the area or even just collect secondary data not to immerse in a “blind exploration”. This is a choice, as we believe is important to have some kind of idea when you have interchange with stakeholders. They frequently manage information (either coming from market research or other source). This would be something similar to the “Sondeo” but an “@-desk-sondeo”.

A Sondeo means to get a sense of what is happening. We’ve adapted it to be a pre-phase to inform the exploratory research phase. The information is mapped in an associative way, so that the students can identify areas of interest. William Calloway and Celise Bravo-Taylor made an excellent graphic map for the quali/quanti sondeo. Through hierarchization of topics and data they achieve some sense of what is going on under their own informed criteria. The other groups also did a great job in understanding main ideas like: considering other key actors such as care givers, taking in account that old people weren’t always old, which are their isolation state, etc. We looked around interesting topics to “put their hands on” in the exploration to begin.

By Design: listen to valid interlocutors

ENG/ So there is this interesting show that gives a space to design, presented by Alan Saunders. And it is from ABC www.abc.net.au/rn/bydesign/ You can start by listening to Dori Tunstall talking about DESIGN ANTHROPOLOGY, topic that has gotten me quite interested as a researcher. This is a topic that generates controversy as there are many complexities involved in this interchange (people, social innovation, methods, empathy, discipline, collaboration, participation, empowerment, business?, inequality… within others)

“What can designers learn from anthropologists?
Our guest today believes they can learn a great deal. In fact, she has married the two disciplines and is a leading exponent of what has come to be known as design anthropology. She believes successful design begins with carefully observing human nature, whether it be how high-heeled shoes affect natural ways of walking or how participation in the design process empowers marginalized communities” (www.abc.net.au/rn/bydesign/stories/2008/2342047.htm).
You can even download the audio: http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2008/08/bdn_20080823.mp3

ESPAÑOL/ Me topé con un programa acá en Estados Unidos, llamado BY DESIGN, dirigido por Alan Saunders. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bydesign/ Les recomiendo partir escuchando a Dori Tunstall, a quién he seguido últimamente debido a un interés en antropología del diseño. Este es ciertamente un tema controversial debido a la complejidad de sus componentes (personas, innovacion social, métodos, disciplina, empatía, colaboración, participación, empoderamiento, ¿negocios? …entre otros)

“¿Qué pueden los diseñadores aprender de los antropólogos?
Nuestra invitada cree que pueden aprender mucho. Incluso ella ha “casado” ambas disciplinas y es una exponente líder de lo que se a llamado antropología del diseño. Cree que el diseño exitoso observa detenidamente la naturaleza humana. Puede ser en áreas tanto como qué pasa cuando caminan en taco alto, o cuando estamos participando en procesos de diseño que empoderan a comunidades marginadas”(www.abc.net.au/rn/bydesign/stories/2008/2342047.htm).
Se puede bajar el audio: http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2008/08/bdn_20080823.mp3

US Design Policy-Dori Tunstall

ENG/ Dori Tunstall, Design Anthropologist, “organizer of the U.S. National Design Policy Initiative, shares a short video of her thoughts about the role design plays in US economic competitiveness and democratic governance, how a national design policy would help, and her personal pledge to support the efforts.  Between March 15, 2009 and April 15, 2009, the Initiative will collect videos via our YouTube group page and FaceBook Event page. Select videos will be included in our Design CEO video series communicating the same message and to be presented at national design conferences, to government officials, and other promotional venues’(via youtube).

ESPAÑOL/Dori Tunstall, Antropóloga en diseño, cuenta sobre la nueva política nacional Norteamericana. Será una política pública, de estado, en la cuál ella participa como organizadora. Comenta el rol del diseño en la competitividad económica de los Estados Unidos y en la gobernabilidad en democracia. Para ella es claro que una política nacional de diseño es necesaria. Hasta el año pasado, recolectó videos vía fbk y youtube sobre este tópico pidiendo la opinión pública. Los países latinoamericanos podriamos empezar a pensar en medidas como estas, considerando: sustentabilidad, competitividad global, economía y potenciar una disciplina que puede hacer mucho por el desarrollo de un país (si es que se maneja bien).