On the morning of the 7th of December 2010, I attended with Dr George Julian, Director of ripfa, a seminar by Dr Annette Boaz who works in the Health and Social Care Research Department at the London School of Economics. The seminar sought to “draw on Allan Best’s work on the different models of thinking with regard to knowledge transfer. …Describ[ing] ten exploratory case studies conducted in Europe to better understand the approaches that are currently used to assess the impact of research in practice and the conceptualisations of knowledge transfer that underpin them. It…conclude[d] by focusing on some of the conceptual challenges facing us in promoting and evaluating knowledge transfer.”
Whilst undoubtedly related to social care, and environmental policy from which many of the case studies were drawn, I perceive that much of what was covered in this seminar as also of relevance to the issue of Knowledge Transfer within the discipline of Service Design, or perhaps as it was described in the headline of the Nordic Service Design Conference last week, pertinent to those interested in ‘Knowledge Exchange within the field of Service Design’.
Dr Boaz is a specialist in translational research which Wikipedia can tell you more about here. The resonance of such translational approaches and thought to service design should at be immediately apparent, largely for the strong participatory approach that both such research approaches tend to adopt and for the action research perspective that they embody. Action Research in relation to Service Design is mentioned in Sarah Drummond’s recent post on her ServDes experience as indicative of her own designerly training and education, but I suspect her experience is atypical, it certainly is not representative of my taught design education. The point, that traditional ‘basic’ and ‘applied’ research perspectives and methodologies no longer cut the mustard when it comes to supporting responsible and sustainable design practice (and for that matter informing social care and environmental policy) is a point that Don Norman has also recently argued here. Norman’s point being, much like Boaz yesterday and Sangiorgi and Holmlid last week, that we now live in times where previous ways of thinking and previous approaches to professional practice and knowledge transfer are not robust or reliable enough, in the case of design and service design in particular, to respond to the real world challenges they face or knowingly or unknowingly take responsibility for.
No more could this be exemplified than in the case of some of the responses to the conference published so far on Twitter (see the the hashtag #servdes) and here, from practitioners bemoaning the conference being ‘overly academic’ and, as they alleged, an absence of business people and the business imperative to apply the learning from the ServDes Conference. This provoked a healthy discussion on Twitter this afternoon. A discussion that begs the question that Lucy Kimbell and others have begun to address (and here), before now, of how if attempting to facilitate effective knowledge exchange between academics and practitioners, as the ServDes Conference last week was, should future organisers of this conference or any other in a practitioner-centric discipline seek to facilitate effective knowledge exchange? And how do we measure this?
In a bid to start such a conversation, and to continue that which started on Twitter this afternoon, I want to share the mechanisms that Boaz identified as key knowledge transfer activities that she, and the work she references, currently perceives we have out our disposal to implement effective knowledge exchange. They are grouped into the three-generational model of research that underpins the work of Best that she leveraged throughout the presentation:
First Generation Modes of Knowledge Transfer (Linear)
- Seminars
- Presentations
[- I percieve that the ServDes Unconference falls into this category although I concede that as a two-way discussion forum it is closer to a second generation mode of knowledge transfer]
Second Generation Modes of Knowledge Transfer (Interactive)
-Research briefings
-Policy networks
[Social Network (web 2.0) Exchange - I've added this myself but the emphasis in this generational approach is on two-way communication]
Third Generation Modes of Knowledge Transfer (Systems)
-Practitioners and researcher collaboration (joint research)
So does Service Design as a discipline have any other Modes of Knowledge Transfer at its disposal? Have any Service Design Consultancies entered into Knowledge Transfer Partnerships with Universities or commissioned an academic department to bolster their work with more rigorous approaches? If not why not? By my perception ServDes was far from an ‘academic’ conference and a great effort and achievement by the committed team at Linkoping University, whilst like anything it could of course have been improved in certain areas, it is on the other hand a concern to see and hear that as far as some attendees and practitioners are concerned, it was ‘too academic’. I’m obviously not in a position to defend individual presentations and the first person myself to get frustrated if something is unclearly communicated, as is the stereotype with many ‘academic’ presentations, but the fact remains that Service Design is a discipline that is built on years of scientific and academic research. To give an example, Vargo and Lusch’s Service-Dominant Logic so freely banded around amongst practitioners at ServDes and within the discipline these days was 25 years of ‘academic’ research and rigour to get it to the point conceptually and technically that it now is.
As Service Design as a discipline seeks to explore new areas where it can add value and help address more complex social and ecological problems, it needs academic and scientific research if it is to remain credible and trustworthy. If traditional conferences, and other forms of first generational Knowledge Transfer are (as alleged) no longer acceptable or preferable to practitioners where does that leave us and what, if anything, can the research of Boaz outlined above do to help us structure our thinking… something when you stop and think about it wouldn’t itself have been possible without the academic process which underpins and supports it?
In my next post, I’ll continue my recap of ServDes and further set this debate within the context of established Service Design Research as discussed at Holmlid et al’s workshop on the third day of the programme.
UPDATE: IDEO’s Tim Brown talks about his belief that designers need better checks and balances incorporated into their design process to protect them from systemic failure here and Adaptive Path talk about the challenges of sharing information here, in a way that makes it useful. I think these are useful, design practitioner-centric contributions to the ongoing discussion about Knowledge exchange within Service Design.
Last week I spent an enjoyable few days in the company of some of Northern Europe’s leading service design practitioners and researchers, the excuse, the ServDes Conference in Linkoping, Sweden which followed last year’s conference in Oslo, thoughts from which I blogged about here.
There are myriad possible forms a summarising post from these three days of structured and unstructured workshop and discussions on the practice and process of designing for services could take. Rather than attempt to cram too many thoughts and observations into one post I will structure my reflections across a few posts that I hope will do justice to the pertinent themes and challenges of last week.
I’ll aim to cover the unconference workshop that myself and George Julian ran for research in practice for adults (ripfa) on the first day of the conference, which sought to explore the role of evidence informed practice in the design of services, and without a focussed agenda, sought to reflect on the current approaches taken by service designers to evidence their thinking, processes and outcomes. The theme of this session sought also to generate insights that might inform the design of ripfa’s own products and services that support the use of evidence informed approaches, by frontline practitioners, in the provision of adult social care services in England.
This post will be followed by another containing some reflections on a number of the standout presentations from day one of ServDes, set within the context of a workshop run by Stefan Holmlid, Fabian Segelstrom and Johan Blomkvist that led discussions on the future of Service Design Research. I will conclude with a post later this week that reflects on a presentation by the Swedish design consultancy Doberman and Apoteket, a Swedish highstreet chemist who presented together towards the end of day two, on their service design work supporting health outcomes and behavioural change and which in turn specifically relates to my recent research on designing for motivation.
Initially however, and in the subsequent post, I wish to report on an event at London School of Economics yesterday, Tuesday 7th of December, from Dr Annette Boaz that discussed the role of Knowledge Transfer within environmental and social policy organisations. I set this thinking out initially as I believe it sets in context many of the discussions from last week both from our unconference session and from the ServDes Conference as a event for the transfer of knowledge related to the discipline of service design and as a conference with the theme ‘Exchanging Knowledge’.
One of the most interesting aspects of being involved in inaugural Youth Olympic Games and the development and promotion of the Culture and Education Programme which was part of it, was the insight my role provided into the relationship of the media to the Olympic Movement. This is a relationship that is integral to the IOC’s ability to fulfil its principle function of event managing the largest multi-sport events in the world in the form of the Summer Olympiad and the Winter Games. The Youth Olympic Games, brainchild of incumbent IOC President Jacques Rogge is part mission to educate and indite the world’s elite sporting youth into the Olympic Movement, and, part mission to attract a younger audience to the Olympic Games through the media with all the commercial benefits such a lucrative market presents.
Tom Degun from insidethegames interviewing Georgie Harland, GB and Modern Pentathlon's Athlete Role Model for the Youth Olympic Games
If this seems a tad cynical, allow me to express both my utmost belief that Rogge’s vision is first and foremost a personal and, for want of a better word, a moralistic one. The origin of the Youth Olympic Games lying in the European Youth Festivals he devised in his previous role as President of the European Olympic Committees, to bridge the Iron Curtain and the disparities it created in access to ‘fair’ sporting competition and education.
This fact, the ‘business model of the IOC’, according to a representative from the Olympic Solidarity department of the IOC (the department that distributes the funds to each National Olympic Committee and to International Sports Federations to ensure their support and participation in The Games), reinforces how integral a part the media play in sustaining the Olympic Movement.
The IOC is justifiably proud of the fact that it distributes 92-93% (I’ve heard both figures used recently) of its commercial revenue “back into sports development” via the Olympic Solidarity and Olympic Scholarship Schemes. The IOC claim that their model is sustainable, despite the average age of an Olympic TV viewer being something in the region of 40+ years old. Its clear that the addition of some younger audience members would do the sustainability of the IOC’s business no harm at all – hence the Youth Olympic Games.
One of the big parts of my role was to act as spokesperson for the media for the Youth Olympic Games in the buildup to The Games this saw me participate in a number of media days principally organised and managed by PR firm Ogilvie who were acting for Visit Singapore – the Singapore Tourism Board (the host nation, also looking to recoup some of the $300-400M investment it made in staging the Youth Olympic Games).
Anyone, who watched the BBC’s weekly highlights programme from The Youth Games, would have noticed that the programme, fronted by Blue Peter presenter Helen Skelton and Newsround presenter Ore Oduba, focussed predominantly on Britain’s 5 key medal prospects for The Games. It was scathing in the idea of the athletes “having to live and eat with 3,000 other people”, described by the athletes themselves as one of the best parts of the experience. The programmes described the Culture and Education Programme, another integral component to the Youth Olympic Games experience as sounding “boring”. Not a sentiment expressed by any of the athletes that I’m aware of.
Hardly, representative coverage then of The Youth Games ambition to be a celebration of the Olympic Values of Friendship, Excellence and Respect, nor representative of the opinions of the athlete’s through whom the BBC team were trying to tell their story. The BBC coverage instead concentrating on the Excellence of little more than a handful of the British team. Not even so much as conversing with many of the athletes on the team who despite being amongst the best in the world and having given most of their youth to reach this point, weren’t fortunate enough on this occasion to stand on the podium or indeed begin their competition on the first day of The Games.
Needless to say, no one was going to bite the hand that feeds them and suggest that the BBC might want to paint a more representative picture of The Games. It was also clear that no press officer was going to advance any story unless it involved talking about shiny bits of metal around athletes neck’s, or bizarrely, shiny bits of metal in the form of pin badges. This doesn’t say much for the BBC’s interpretation of how, in fact, athletes can and do more generally contribute back to society and can offer more practical inspiration to folks back home. Because apparently all we the mere mortal public care about is medals. Incidentally, the IOC were adamant that no official medal account be kept of The Games, was anyone advising or correcting the BBC of this? I highly doubt it. The medals are an important part of The Games, but they are not The Games. Would anyone watching the BBC coverage back home have been reassured of this? Again, I highly doubt it.
“As the Olympic Broadcaster, did the BBC take this unique opportunity to make the wider experience and values of The Games more accessible to the British public who will host the next one, no of course not.”
Model of the Financial and Social Capital of The Olympic Games (c) Fergus Bisset
All of which is a shame of course and something of a wasted opportunity to truly give voice to the stories that all of these remarkable young people can tell and the inspiration they can provide their nation. This might also explain why the IOC is, and should be, seeking to better exploit other channels of communication, that to put it bluntly, enable more representative coverage of the experience of The Games and in the words of Alex Huot, IOC Head of Social Media “connect as many people as we can with athletes“.
Intrinsic and Extrinsic Social Rewards of The Olympic Games (c) Fergus Bisset
Remembering something I’d seen on David Armano’s awesome Logic + Emotion blog, which was exploring the role that social engagement can play as part of a broader PR strategy. I was also interested in how this might integrate with the IOC’s presently ‘sustainable’ business model and using a model I co-created with colleagues at the International Olympic Academy in the summer (thanks guys!) explore what new opportunities social engagement offers in terms of more representative and democratic media coverage of future iterations of the The Games, including of course London 2012 and Innsbruck 2012.
How Social Engagement Fits into a Potential Olympic PR strategy (click to enlarge)
What do you think of the coverage of The Games? Does it make you any more enthusiastic about London hosting The Games? What about the role of social media in sport – do you follow any athletes through social media?
As part of the ongoing promotion of his new book Drive, Dan Pink gives an interview discussing some of the underlying theories and principles which he has repackaged as a management book. I’m looking forward to reading the book which comes out here in the UK at the end of this month. Dan is also due to speak at the RSA in a couple of weeks time which again I’m very much looking forward to.
I think this publication is very exciting for those of us involved in motivation research and for forward thinking business managers at whom this book seems to be aimed. Based on both this interview and his Ted talk last year Dan seems to be leveraging, at least conceptually, Hullian Drive Theory which allows him utilise the straightforward metaphor and illustrate the important point that motivation is about energisation of human behaviour. This theory whilst hugely influential in the field of motivation and educational psychology is largely discredited now by the more recent interpretation that it does not fully accomdate explanation of Avoidance behaviour. To put more simply, Drive Theory does not explain risk taking or more intrinsic forms of pleasure seeking behaviour. For a discussion on Approach-Avoidance behaviour and freely downloadable research papers see http://www.psych.rochester.edu/research/apav/.
It’s nice though to see Pink make mention of Autonomy as a component of motivation and a factor which forms a big part of Deci and Ryan’s Self Determination Theory which I have been leveraging heavily in my own work on designing motivation. I feel that their Organismic theory of motivation is far more adaptable and useful as an explanation for motivation than Drive Theory mentioned above. The question of how designers can utilise an organismic theory of motivation is the subject of my recent chapter contributed to the This is Service Design Thinking publication. It’s perhaps apt that Self Determination Theory and Service Design Thinking share the same acronym as they are well placed to conceptualise and design for intrinsic, rather than extrinsic forms of motivation.
It’s nice to see the mention of a sports person as a metaphor for motivated behaviour and I would hope that this reoccurs throughout the book, as someone who has myself become so interested in motivation by approaching it (no pun intended ) from a sports psychology and elite performance background.
Davos 15km - P. Vordenberg - teamtoday.org
I agree ultimately with Pink’s sentiment that people generally need more feedback, annual reviews and even biannual reviews are not going to motivate employees in the best possible way. But I’m a bit confused then as towards the end of the above interview he is so quick to dismiss (or avoid) addressing the work on Anticipated Feedback (Bandura) as a motivator. The original research on this can be found here, but it basically suggests that anticipated social feedback (as a feed-forward mechanism) is a major primary motivator in individuals. Again, put more simply, this is the notion that if you can visualise a positive response to your work you are more likely to be motivated towards and successful in accomplishing it. This is also another reason why I think Service Design Thinking with its emphasis on visualising complexity to understand it and adapt it is so well placed to understand and promote motivation. I’d hoped that in the current era of social media and game changing, hierarchy busting, technology and given that he is speaking to a blogger for a video that is being posted on YouTube Pink might have addressed this more fully…
Either way I think this publication signals that 2010 will be the year that Motivation really hits the mainstream, similarly perhaps to how ‘Design Thinking’ hit the mainstream last year off the back of Brown and Martin’s publications. Much like with those two volumes though, one could imagine that the release of Pink’s book signals that there will be an increase in demand amongst senior management for creative and innovative practitioners who not only understand motivation but also who possess the tools to create and facilitate motivating systems, products and services.
What do you think? Do you think 2010 will be the year of motivation or are there other emerging trends and topics that trump motivation in the understanding and design for behavioural change?
I am currently writing a short chapter for the forthcoming Service Design textbook This is Service Design Thinking. In the spirit of co-creation and participatory design which this publication is attempting to embody I would be very interested to hear what you think about my introduction and the scope of the chapter I am writing. I would really welcome your feedback and suggestions. Presently, it reads as follows:
Motivation has been described as the “energisation and direction of human behaviour” (Reeve, 2005). A fundamental concept in the understanding, regulation and support of human behaviour, Motivation has been debated and discussed for time immemorial. From Confucian and Sanskrit philosophy in the East to that of the Greek political philosophers and Christian biblical scholars in the West: The symbiotic relationship of the individual and their environment and attempts to understand the governing principles of this relationship have been one of the most central questions to ‘energise and direct’ humanity’s thoughts, beliefs and creativity. Defining not only the social structures of the societies in which we live but the political, educational and creative philosophies that govern and sustain them.
Mook (1987) provides a fuller account of the historical evolution of Motivation and in turn the recursive nature of Motivation within society. History builds a case for how significantly a society or community’s conception of ‘motivation’ underpins its philosophical and political stance and behaviour. For example Pre-Enlightenment era Europe was governed by the Christian church and thus the values of the church transcended national boundary, in much the same way that for example modern day Islam and Judaism often transcends or paradoxically in the case of countries such as Iran and Israel respectively, epitomises national or political identity.
There is little escaping the fact that our motivations or how we explain and conceptualise them digs deeper into our own psyche and that of our societies than very often as designers we are prepared or entitled to look. Furthermore, if Design Thinking and Service Design hold the key to solving larger more complex social problems as (Burns, Cottam, Vanstone, & Winhall, 2006),Brown (2009), Martin (2009), Loevlie (2009) and Miller and Rudnick (2009) have claimed, do we need to start being more capable and comfortable at asking those questions and visualising and conceptualising the responses?
This chapter seeks to explore as succinctly as 8000 characters allows what modern day psychology and its literature can contribute to overcoming these sometimes uncomfortable ethical, political and social conceptualisations and how, in addition to existing and established Service Design tools and processes, it might be able to support us ‘design thinkers’ as we seek to ‘energise and direct’ human behaviour through the design and creation of innovative products, systems and services.
Thank you all in anticipation of your help and really looking forward to hearing from you, either via Twitter or via the comments form below:
This is a fairly comprehensive presentation of the underlying philosophy and research behind my masters work in helping designers visualise and support motivation in the design of everyday products and services. I’ve obviously talked about the development of this work extensively on this blog so I’d like to take the chance to thank all of you who have visited and contributed comments and support – its helped me refine and adapt my ideas thus far and I really appreciate it!
I’m hoping to add an audio summary of the presentation at some point, but otherwise the presentation gives an overview of the foundations of my framework of motivation in design, the research behind it and then a few examples of products and services that have either been directed by this conceptualisation or whose success as ‘motivational platforms’ can be interpreted by using the framework.
People may also recognise a few of the case studies from the Nordic Service Design Conference – thanks to the presenters their for their explanations, this presentation also served as an opportunity for me to pass on what I’d learned and enjoyed from that conference to my colleagues at the HCDI at Brunel.
As ever comments and questions are gratefully appreciated and if you are interested in finding our more or understanding how this framework can be applied to your own design or service propositions then please get in touch.
Thanks to Andy Polaine for sharing this tremendous insight in response to my post yesterday. It’s fair to say that those students studying Service Design at Luzern are in great hands.
In his comments he wrapped up a lot of the wider tensions within the Service Design community about the relationship between academia and practice that I know are hot topics of discussion at London events such as Service Design drinks and Service Design thinks at the moment, as well as clearly the Service Design Network Conference held this week.
Indeed, a lot of the background to this post and my own work is fuelled by an urge to bridge some of this tension – between theory and practice as Andy put it – this is synthesis in the truest sense of the word.
For anyone interested further background to these issues can be found here and here.
If I created a strawman yesterday in my discussion of what was said at the Service Design Conference then I apologise. I suppose the essence of what I was attempting to highlight was that despite any personal philosophical or pragmatic differences of opinion that might exist within the community, there appears to be two prevalent ways in which designers classify users. One is to see users as reactive i.e. responsive to extrinsic constraints and the other is to see them as proactive i.e. energised by internal ideas and ambitions (goal oriented).
The reality seems to be that we as humans fluctuate between these states probably faster than we’ll ever be able to measure or generalise accurately (its not going to stop me trying ) and thus we as Service Designers rely on the ethnographic approaches Andy mentions or laboratory based scientific experiments that are well documented in scientific journals to attempt to understand behaviour.
Whether designers are fully concious of the fact that they are making these judgements about users is another issue open to debate and discussion. Indeed, the oft cited definition of Design Research is “to make explicit what is otherwise implicit in the everyday practice of design.” Thus by raising this discussion, I was simply attempting to raise this question within the minds of us designers about how we implicitly view the user we are designing for? As I mention above the answer appears to be as either ‘passive’ or ‘active’ depending on circumstance, context or which particular part of the design or use phase we might be referring to.
Education systems are interesting service examples themselves in how they attempt to balance between encouraging creativity and intrinsically motivated behaviour whilst also controlling these processes with structured curriculum and routines. Indeed, any service we can think of will attempt to strike a balance between generating and controlling value (or creativity, or energy, or money) for all the stakeholders involved.
As Andy clarified in his comment on the last post, Birgit Mager was talking at the Service Design Network Conference about users behaviour being a function of Attitude and The Environment. On further research this would appear to also share perspective with that of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen, 1988) which is also based on Theory of Reasoned Action (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980).
This classifies user behaviour as a product of:
Attitude (Autonomy)
Social Pressure (Relatedness)
Perceived Behavioural Control (Competence)
What I’m interested in as part of my masters is how we can design systems and services that enhance user perception of these three inherent human psychological capabilities. Doing so successfully or even unsuccessfully will result in behavioural change, but doing so successfully and encouraging users to reflect on these capabilities will result in sustainable behavioural change (at least that’s the theory).
I’m incredibly fortunate that through this platform and as a result of contributions such as Andy’s I can also modify my own attitude and perceived competence as a result of being able to relate my work to you all.
Andy is right though we need to do more to work together and bridge the gaps between academia and professional practice. I don’t plan to stay in academia forever but whilst I’m still here I’d be interested to hear from you all… do you have any questions about Motivation? Is there something that you as a practitioner are working on and feel like you could use a bit of academic insight or research on? Please get in touch here, via twitter or through the comments link below.
As I have reported elsewhere I have never truly been comfortable with the concept of User Needs, as a justification or hypothesis for why any designer should be designing something. I get really uncomfortable when otherwise perfectly valid design decisions get glossed with the immeasurable concept of “user need fulfilment”. I get annoyed when otherwise perfectly unjustified design decisions get accepted on account of ‘user need fulfilment’.
Greatest Goal II by Scottwills on Flickr (CC)
These concerns have come to the fore, with the news that Birgit Mager was citing a rough approximation of Kurt Lewin’s field theory http://3.ly/BfAE (thanks Dan for the clarification) in her Service Design Network Conference presentation. Her version of it (via @apolaine) apparently read something like:
“Birgit Mager: “B=(A:E) – behaviour is a function of attitude and environment” #sdnc09“
Whilst Andy warned against me taking this too seriously, I have number of concerns at such an idea being used as representative of a Service Design approach (at least as I perceive it). Simply, for the passivity and clinical (read robotic) view it offers of user motives and behaviour. I think my concerns were shared a little later by @iterations:
“@apolaine Don’t we know most of this stuff from Social Psychology? Any special twist of these ideas in relation to Service Design? #sdnc09“
Good question Ralf, particularly in light of the follow up summary of Birgit’s presentation, Service Designers can and should be digging a little deeper than this in their attempt to understand and influence user behaviour.
“Birgit Mager: “Service Design and Behavioral Change: 1. Understand the current behavior, the motives, gains and consequences.” #sdnc09 again via @apolaine
Put simply, these interpretations of Birgit’s presentation infer an incredibly passive view of the user and of user capabilities: That if we dangle a big enough carrot in front of users (the motives and gains) or hit them with a big enough stick (the consequences) we will be able to sustainably and successfully influence their behaviour.
Whilst I’m relying on a few tweets for my evidence and should probably exercise caution against dangerous oversimplification, Birgit does appear to express that the user has “an attitude” and the environment has influence on user behaviour, both statements with which I agree. My interpretation is that as Service Designers we should seek to understand a user’s current attitude and the experiences that have created their behaviour, before unlocking and empowering their experience and capabilities through co-design activities. This is, in my view the so-called ‘service-design twist’.
To quote Dorynei (2001):
“In current research the concept of a need has been replaced by the concept of a goal.” (p.25)
And further to quote Locke and Latham (1990).
“The more specific [that goal] the easier it is to monitor it.”
“The more challenging [that goal] the greater the satisfaction it presents.”
“The more personally relevant [that goal] the more engaged the user participation in fulfilling it.”
“The more attainable [the goal] the more sustained the human behaviour will be towards achieving it.”
This is not a new concept and I wouldn’t claim to be experienced in defining co-creative activity. But the concept of articulating user requirements through goal-oriented activity is more up to date than the idea of the environment being the primary influence on human behaviour – a world view which is 40-60 years old, depending on your interpretation. Interestingly, of a similar era to the concept of ‘user needs’ and Mr Maslow’s Hierarchy. The concept of goals and outcomes cropped up in an online discussion with @designthinkers this morning and helped spur me into sharing this post and some of my on going research into motivation:
@designthinkers: ”Being successful in life is being able to keep setting new goals for yourself, and enjoying the road trying to get there”
Service Design as an approach, is not 40-60 years old and in order to be successful as a profession itself, perhaps needs to continue to evolve the way it visualises and attempts to understand user behaviour and the processes that regulate it.
What do you think, is the environment the primary influence on human behaviour? Or is it a person’s attitude? Are these entities distinct?
As a designer which one would you prefer to focus on with the aim of creating sustainable behavioural change?
There has been a fair bit of fallout and online conversation over the past week regarding both the future of Industrial Design and the future of Design Research. A lot of it can be found by searching the #drc09 or #idsa09 hashtags on Twitter. But Jon Kolko has written twoarticles over the past week that have got me thinking about where Design Research is headed and how my own current design research fits into that picture.
By my interpretation Jon is reckoning like many others that Design Research is becoming increasingly ‘comoditised’ and democratised. Outsourceable to other countries and to individuals who are not professional designers – as he says:
“Design Research doesn’t require any special training. We can learn to be better at it, but it’s simply the skill of listening and observing.”
Maybe, but I’m therefore left a bit confused by Jon’s conclusion which is that:
“What’s implicitly lurking in all of this discussion of design, synthesis, innovation, research, experience, and empathy is the momentum of design as it breaks out from the confines of business…The “designer in the boardroom” model may already be out of date. To quote Robert Fabricant, “our value is in the long-term conversation.””
I agree with this, but to me there is something missing – a clear distinction in who we are talking to? Jon’s insight, by his own admission, cheaply available, screams out for increased acknowledgement amongst designers of participatory methods and involving everyone in the design process, but he doesn’t by my interpretation, mention that. Yes he talks about the bigger picture view of design – so-called “design thinking”, and urges us to embrace understanding of ”culture, behaviour and society” but I get the sneaking suspicion that both he and Fabricant are still talking about a model of design research or practice where the designer is in the ascendancy – ‘ego-design’ where the designer plays a more traditional ‘passive observational’ role before going away and constructing his vision of the solution.
I don’t see a correlate between what he acknowledges as the changing landscape of design and what he proposes as the solution to help build momentum in the design process. Involving users in the design process, unleashing and directing their deep understanding of their environment is the first step to creating sustainable design. As @tamsina and @jamesamperi from @hereatengine have been saying, designers who want to unlock this potential have to be able to plan and visualise their research process to ensure effective synthesis. This view is also somewhat represented in an article on systems thinking by John Seddon (via @redjotter). The ability to visualise the process and system of design is key to involving non-experts in it. As Kolko says, non-experts are getting involved already, so surely to maintain relevance established designers need to ensure they are planning and visualising their design process effectively.
Designing Design Research by Katherine Bennett & how this relates to participatory processes
Whilst I think each designer or consultancy will have their own database of tools and methods I think an approach like this is incredibly valuable for designers being able to do what Kolko and others have been suggesting, which is to better structure their design research to ensure that it adapts to the changing demands of our time and empower users in the design of their products, systems and services.
As I’ve reported here before I’m in the middle of an MPhil researching the role of motivation in design and how designers can identify and design to encourage motivated behaviour of a suitable nature. I use the term ‘designer’ loosely as I’m not for one minute proposing that Motivation is something that can be prescribed or even should be. At this stage I am in the process of articulating and visualising from my research to date, what motivation looks like or how people might recognise motivation. Some of you may have seen the Motivational Personas I put up a week or so back – thank you so much to all who commented and contributed their thoughts ideas and experience – I’m very grateful! I’m continuing to develop those.
Motivational Framework v0.1 cc Fergus Bisset (click for larger version)
In parallel to those personas, I’m also keen to develop a “Conceptual Framework of Motivation” and begin to elaborate the different levels on which motivation might be observed in oneself or in others. As most behavioural psychologists would doubtless testify, recognising one’s behaviour is the first step to modifying it.
There appears to be a bit of divide in the behavioural design community as to whether people need to recognise either their existing or desired behaviour in order to change it. Some designers and academics arguing that it may be more effective to change behaviour through design without the user having to be aware of it. I had an animated conversation about this over a beer with Frankie Roberto and Dan Lockton. Like I say this is contentious area, but I’m at this stage putting myself fairly firmly in the camp that believe that if behavioural change is to be sustainable, users have to be aware and undertake deliberate and conscious modification of it. Whilst there are doubtless good arguments for the designer as behavioural ‘god’, and I’m more than happy to hear them and discuss them if you wish to share. I find those arguments somewhat belittling of the people that they aim to ‘help’, the typical line in such circumstances being: “that users aren’t always capable of recognising or understanding their ‘needs’ or ‘capabilities’ “. There was a nice quote via Cassie Robinson on this today:
“Accept me as I am & you’ll make me worse. Treat me as what I’m capable of becoming & you’ll help me to become her”
That is not to say that designer’s should shirk all the responsibility onto the user, indeed with reference to the above it perhaps becomes the designer’s responsibility to help that self-reflective process and aid the user in realising their capabilities. The motivational state should be a shared and negotiated agreement between designer, artefact and user, not a diktat by any of those parties. This also means that the designer has an active role and isn’t just subservient to user demands or “lack of vision or creativity“.
Irrespective of this argument and whether user, designer, user-designer or any other stakeholder in the process you will still need to be able to identify, model and measure motivation or any other form of human behaviour for that matter, if you want to change it. I see my motivational personas as aiding identification, whereas I see the attached model, what I’m calling a Motivational Framework as the next step towards being able to model or synthesise motivated behaviour within the wider context of the product or service lifecycle. This understanding is perhaps fundamental to the process of increasing motivational awareness, capability and thereafter designing to empower users in their motivational capabilities.
I would really welcome any feedback you might have on this, particularly in relation to how this might fit into or overlap with your existing creative practice or world view – and I would especially like to hear from you if it seems incompatible with your own views or established methodology.
) from a sports psychology and elite performance background.
