Apologies for the recent blogging hiatus, in large part due to the launch last week of The Ergonomics Real Design Exhibition at the Design Museum which I have been working on over the last year and half. I’m also recently back from the excellent Nordic Service Design Conference in Oslo. I will post more on both of those things in due course. In the meantime, I’ve also been working on my MPhil in Intrinsically Motivating Design and recently developed a model that I hope to validate as a tool to help designers design Intrinsically Motivating and behaviourally self sustaining systems, services and products. I’ve posted this on Wenovski as well so apologies for the cross posting if you’ve already seen it there. I’d really welcome your feedback on this and if you have any questions or would be interested in offering me an opportunity to validate the model then give me shout either in the comments below or at hello@fergusbisset.com.
My research into Human Motivation and its relationship with design has seen me exploring a lot of organismic theories of human behaviour, those are the theories that suggest we are naturally predisposed or energised to grow or seek new challenges, affiliation or environments in order to remain healthy, happy and fulfilled.
Obviously not everyone is in agreement on the underlying mechanisms of human motivation and behaviour, there are many models, but these are issues that we as designers revisit often in the form of the well intentioned but hideously over-cited and rarely understood Maslow’s Hierarchy is based on such a humanist/organismic perspective.
My own research is exploring a newer an more updated model of which I attach an early draft below, one that also represents the iterative and dynamic nature of human behaviour – something that is overlooked in Maslow’s version.
My model and the research that underpins it (predominantly Deci and Ryan’s Self Determination Theory) indicates that in order to remain psychologically fulfilled we need to balance three psychological needs for AUTONOMY (Self Reflection, Independence, Empowerment), RELATEDNESS (Socialisation, Care and Concern for and from others), COMPETENCE (Feelings of efficacy, self control and accomplishment).
Deci and Ryan’s premise (and mine) is that only by balancing and fulfilling these core psychological needs will we be truely HAPPY and HEALTHY. My model attempts to illustrate how these INTRINSIC (some might say INNATE) psychological needs are often balanced against EXTRINSIC design factors and criteria and just as with Maslow’s Hierarchy if we want as designers to design systems and services that leave us feeling fulfilled they will need to address all of these INNATE HUMAN with EXPLICIT DESIGN capabilities and specifications.
If an intentionally or accidentally designed system cannot SELF REGULATE, or as you say Arne, “balance” EXTRINSIC and INTRINSIC demands it ultimately will become unsustainable.
To help make this idea more explicit I will elaborate – much of industrial design is focussed on the SENSORY features of products, services and systems, whilst interaction design and ‘soft design disciplines’ are interested in COGNITIVE levels of interaction. Recently of course, as most of us here will be aware Design has begun to shift towards more ORGANISATIONAL or ‘Service’ perspectives in an attempt to satisfy the ‘NEEDS’ of its users and customers. Or perhaps if I put it more cynically – in an attempt to continue to generate value for stakeholders in the design process. This shift in the focus of design, as is well documented, has occurred as a result of technology that initially enable ‘interfaces’ and more recently high levels of social connectivity and networking.
With my model, I hope to help move design one step closer to exactly the call you’ve made here Arne, by helping designers to understand how their expertise in manipulation of SENSORY, COGNITIVE and ORGANISATIONAL affordances and data can be better focussed on meeting users genuine SOCIAL, COMPETENCE and AUTONOMY needs and in turn designing systems that are by consequence self motivating, sustaining and perhaps as you allude here ‘caring’.
Jason Cooper (@jasecoop) fired out some quick Twitter research this afternoon inquiring after people’s perceptions of the self-service checkout machines we are increasingly faced with at supermarkets these days. These have been in the press this week as Tesco announced that it is to open it’s first ‘automated’ store in Northampton.
I have been meaning to write about these for awhile, so thanks Jase for pushing me in that direction.
M&S Self Service Checkout from jaygooby on Flickr
These machines as most of us will doubtless testify are incredibly frustrating. Not once have I ever used one without the human operator having to be summoned to remedy some sensor malfunction or barcode scanning problem. Yet, every time I see one available, even if simultaneously offered the option of a human operator I seem inexplicably drawn to the automatic machine and it’s purgatorial system processes.
Apart from a potential underlying masochistic streak, the only logical explanation I can find is that it is the perception that it will save me time (efficiency) that drives me to persist with these things. Doubtless this is the win for Tesco too. Yet, no sooner have I pressed it’s big green greasy start button and started scanning than it fails to register me place one of my items in the ‘bagging area’. This usually results in a near instant increase in blood pressure and me swearing blind I’ll never use one again.
Indeed, it is always an issue with the ‘bagging area’ on these machines – with either the sensor not registering that you have placed the item there after scanning it or the sensor detecting that somehow there is “an unidentified item in the bagging area.” In either eventuality it stalls and requires someone to come and prod your shopping or swipe their golden keycard until it is satisfied again. Urghh – even thinking about it makes me tense. No wonder that some of the responses that Jason’s questions were generating this afternoon on these machines were strong in their tone.
From a motivational design perspective however, these machines should really be a hands down winner, as I discussed here and again yesterday. The literature would suggest that anything that promotes our autonomy – our ability to do our shopping ourself, should be a strong motivational tool. The fact that at least until this week in Northampton, customers had a choice between machine and human was also a strong piece of motivational design as it offered otherwise inclined service users the chance to further their relatedness (social) goals for the shopping experience. If they preferred to have someone scan their shopping for them instead of scan their own shopping autonomously.
As I perceive it where these ‘self-service’ checkouts fall down at the moment is in how they fail to fulfil our competence needs. Every time the sensor fails or the barcode is dirty or scratched, we can’t help but take it personally. The machine and it’s support processes make us feel incompetent. Not so much the fact it doesn’t work, as Eddie Izzard highlights brilliantly that has always been a integral part of supermarket shopping.
No, its the fact that in the majority of these ‘problem’ situations we require some other (usually slouching and disinterested) bod to come and fix it for us that these machines leave us feeling so drained and bitter. Further, it is the fact that they usually have to do this three or four times in one transaction that makes us want to burn effigies of the things. And yet next time round, and for me at least, the allure of autonomously being able to scan my own shopping is enough to suck me back into it’s beeping, monotone voiced vortex.
How could all this be made better then? Well, I’m quite keen to open that question up to you…I also kind of think that this is what Jase is away working on right now…
But, first things first Tesco could sort that ‘bagging area’ sensor out, either by eliminating it completely and demonstrating a bit more trust that users aren’t going to scan one item whilst sneaking others into their bags – surely that sort of behaviour is far more effectively prevented by the humans in Tesco’s employ. Indeed the more I reflect on it, this really seems like a engineering function (feedback process) that looked great on the system flowchart and in the product presentation pitch but that simply is not up to the demands of real world, non-expert operation. Probably as a result of a complete and utter lack of real world testing prior to installation, and the fact that the product development process clearly doesn’t accommodate an iterative design process or user feedback even now the product is in operation.
Most of all, and the biggest design issue from a Motivational Design point of view, is the fact that when this flawed functionality inevitably fails, the staff should look us in the eye and explain to us why the machine is having this problem as they solve it for us. Such increased transparency (or supported user skill and knowledge acquisition) will empower users to at least feel like they understand the technology a bit better. Such understanding or ‘mental model’ will help users in the event of a problem feel superior and more capable than the machine. Such an enhanced perception of capability will help restore a little of the behavioural equilibrium within the human-product interaction and ensure that we are just as motivated next time we visit to use the self-service systems. This is indeed, the paradox of automation – the more automated a process the more we rely on non-automated components of the system. Its also why all the unions, consumers groups and sensationalist press should stop their moaning about the so-called “death of the supermarket operator”.
In summary, if Tesco plan to introduce these machines nationwide, they will have to take a more holistic view of the service these machines are supposed to provide as well as realising the fundamental role that their human staff play in ensuring a smooth and seamless consumer experience.
What do you think? How would you redesign these machines to motivate more people to use them?
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.
My research around the past couple of posts on participatory processes and the responses they have generated have helped focus my attention on an issue that has interested me for some time – the question of “User Needs”.
As the above video nicely represents, many of the early proponents or more successful marketers of ‘design thinking’ have often backhandedly justified the core value that ‘design thinking’ represents in terms of how it better fulfils ‘user needs’. Or at their most honest like in the video above (around 1min in), justified design thinking as the process of converting ‘needs’ to ‘demands’.
In reading and writing about Design, I can’t help but stumble across the term ‘user needs’, without ever finding a particularly compelling definition of what it is in any given context, let alone independent of context.
Having seen that horrible video above a few weeks ago and blown off a bit of steam on Wenovski about it at the time – I couldn’t help but be reminded of it when I read this rather cynical, but actually quite apt historical review of the term ‘user needs’ in a psychology paper today:
“A need is a construct (a convenient fiction or hypothetical concept) that stands for a force (the physico-chemical nature of which is unknown) in the brain region, a force that organizes perception, apperception, intellection, conation and action in such a way as to transform in a certain direction an existing, unsatisfying situation.” (Murray, 1938, pp. 123–124 in Deci and Ryan, 2000).
Aneed is a construct (a convenient fiction or hypothetical
concept) that stands for a force (the physico-chemical
nature of which is unknown) in the brain region, a
force that organizes perception, apperception,
intellection, conation and action in such a way as to
transform in a certain direction an existing, unsatisfying
situation. (pp. 123–124).
As a designer who over the past few years has done quite a bit of rummaging around in psychology books and papers, perhaps with a view to fulfilling some of my own user needs and requirements!? The issue of ‘needs’ whether psychological or physiological is a term that again crops up quite a lot. I’ve long personally held the suspicion that the designerly version of “user needs” was somehow different from the social scientist’s. However, if Murray as cited above is to be believed the term may be used as indiscriminately and cynically in psychology circles as it seems in design circles.
I’m not for a minute disputing that user needs are a real and important driver of both the work of designers and psychologists alike. I wholeheartedly believe that there are designers out there who strive to cater for genuine user needs and requirements. But if so what are they? Do we have a consistent definition amongst us that isn’t just a justification for making things in a way that people will want to buy them?
Is the whole concept of user needs a smokescreen behind which designers just do whatever they want and take your money in the process?
I’d really like to hear your thoughts on this so please either tweet them to me @fergusbisset or use the comments box below to let me know what you think. It’ll really help my Masters research into Motivational Design and judging by the video above it might even help our integrity as a community.
Nina Simon responded yesterday to my recent post on visualising participatory processes. What she said has been rattling around in my head for the past day and certainly resonates with my own experience of working with museums and cultural institutions. You can read her kind words and insight in this link: here. But Nina’s point as I interpret it is that:
The institution maintains and always seeks to assert its didactic, aesthetic or intellectual superiority on the user, because ultimately that is its business, in the industrial era sense of the word. If it failed to do so effectively people might not return…
Musee Beaux Arts - Brussels - cc John & Mel Kots - Flickr
My own interviews and conversations with visitors to museums and exhibitions in the past year as part of my work on the Ergonomics Real Design Project seems to indicate that more often than not this isn’t a problem. In other words, it is exactly this superiority or dominance of the institution over the individual that attracts people to come and visit the museum. People come to appreciate the superior knowledge, history, ability or experience the museum celebrates.
Anecdotally, I have also observed the almost reverential manner in which many visitors approach the museum, almost as if it was a sort of pilgrimage or chance to surround oneself in higher level knowledge and understanding without any real wish, belief or ambition to participate in the creation of that knowledge or understanding. Visiting an art gallery for example, to observe and appreciate art but not with the aim of understanding how to paint, simply just to be closer to the product of ‘those that can’.
This too happens in design, people buy artefacts or “follow” design and designers with a reverential or ecclesiastical fervour – surrounding themselves and ‘enhancing’ their experience of life with the beauty, satisfaction and the enhanced function afforded by good design. One need only look as far as ‘Apple Fanboys’ or early adopters of technology to see examples of this behaviour.
Whilst this is perhaps a fundamental and arguably necessary facet of organismic human behaviour, my own recent exploration of Participatory Methods is with a view to questioning whether such an imbalance in the roles of institution and visitor, or in the case of design, designer and user are in the long term sustainable?
Are these new participatory ways of business going to have a better impact on human and environmental equality than the established industrial era way of doing business?
It strikes me that this situation of the museum being more dominant than the user breeds either a dependency or a ‘learned helplessness’ in the visitor towards the museum. How much are they internalising or questioning the value of the artefacts they are presented with? The same is true in relation to users of products, how well are their capabilities being supported? Should people not be left feeling empowered with rather than dependent on the products or services they use or consume?
Taken to it’s extreme and in relation to the museum again, this potentially results in people feeling like they can’t learn how to paint because, they aren’t good enough because of a culture where only ‘genius painters’ are celebrated or where people feel they can’t impact on the environment because they feel insignificant and unempowered. This is also something of an individual trait that I discussed recently in relation to whether or not you possess an entity or incremental world view. But it can also be argued that this ‘learned helpless’ or entity world view is simply a product of unfulfilled psychological needs.
Nina’s Museum 2.0 blog and forthcoming book ask, can increased user participation and empowerment be injected into the established service that the museum provides?
Many service designers have asked the same question of design recently. Service designers have also looked to more holistic metrics of ROI, such as Livework’s use of Triple Bottom Line in their work with Streetcar, to advocate for and validate these more user-centric methods and egalitarian metrics of business success. I believe that given how many museums already have established education and ‘community outreach and involvement’ programmes the transition to a genuinely participatory museum culture is possible.
What it might require however, is the same paradigm product to service shift (i.e. entity to incremental or iterative mindset) that is occurring in the industrial design community. From my perspective that requires designers and design methods that prioritise and campaign for the equality of stakeholders – treating both institution and visitor, and designer and user equally.
In the past couple of days I’ve come across a couple of valuable articles on Participatory processes and how best to visualise them. The first is from the excellent Museum 2.0 blog, which I’ve followed for a while as a source of theory and inspiration for the day job. Nina Simon’s article, in turn inspired by this document, explore the various ways in which you can incorporate users in public engagement with science. In another post I’ll explain which of these methods we used on the Ergonomics Real Design project, but I think these are of value to designers and public engagement specialists alike in evaluating how best to integrate participatory design into your engagement or design process.
Participatory Processes ((c) Nina Simon from the Museum 2.0 Blog)
Today I also uncovered another typically brilliant paper from DDO detailing the role that Cybernetics (described as the science of feedback) and systems theory can play in helping designers design sustainable products and services. Some of the article seemed similar to work that the likes of Birgit Mager, Stefan Moritz and Ezio Manzini have contributed long since to the Service Design Community but I think this article also serves as useful introduction to or simplification of Cybernetics and the value of reciprocity in the design of systems and services. If you haven’t checked out the others you should, particularly Stefan’s dissertation. This paper by renowned Cybernetician Klaus Krippendorf was also one of that encouraged me to pursue my Masters studies in Intrinsically Motivating Design.
Taken together these articles are brilliant in asking us to reflect on why Participatory Processes are valuable? Something that many of us know and feel as designers, but something that we often can’t justify or articulate. Having witnessed a few examples of this inarticulable, unsystematic ego-design this week – not least in watching the BBC’s Design for Life series with Philip Starck – I feel it appropriate to reiterate my own personal enthusiasm for a more systematic and empowering way of visualising and articulating design thinking. I’m as giddy as anyone when I see something, product or otherwise that is aesthetically out of this world or that contains an inordinate amount of technology or machined aluminium – I just think that we need to find a more sustainable way to focus our energies as designers. This in turn will result in more sustainable and empowered behaviour of those that interact with the products and services we design.
The Dubberly article is thus to me valuable in how it visualises the reciprocity of participatory processes. Their classification of this seemed to overlap a little with that of Nina Simon’s more theoretical but equally valuable insight.
The idea of reciprocity in both human effort and reward, and how this relates to the wider product or service eco-systems we interact with, is integral to my Masters work on Motivational Design. It’s also instrumental in ensuring effective public engagement with science. I’ve thus attempted to visualise the various collaborative processes detailed in both the previously cited articles. These, like the Motivational Design Personas I put up at the weekend, are still very much in draft so any feedback on these would be gratefully received. The basic premise is – the more balanced and symmetrical the image and correspondingly the transfer of information between left and right, the more sustainable the process.
The red lines indicate an internalised process (i.e an internal thought process), the dotted blue line indicates an observed (implicit) process, the think blue line indicates an articulated (explicit) process. [Does this need greater clarification? - If this doesn't make much sense let me know and check out the Dubberly article first as a primer.]
Observation (cc Fergus Bisset)
Observed Comparison (cc Fergus Bisset)
Conversation (cc Fergus Bisset)
Contribution (cc Fergus Bisset)
Collaboration (cc Fergus Bisset)
Cooperation (cc Fergus Bisset)
Co-Option (cc Fergus Bisset)
Thanks to DDO and Nina Simon for the inspiration.
How do you visualise or conceptualise the sustainability or equilibrium within the products and systems you design?
How do you decide which participatory processes to implement as part of your design process?
Which of these processes are most effective? Is there any correlation between the perceived success of participatory methods and their reciprocity as indicated in these diagrams?
As I’ve mentioned a few times this blog is in part a platform from which to share my experiences and progress as I complete my MPhil in Design Research at Brunel University in West London. Things have been progressing well on that front recently. I’ve just completed a paper with Nicola Combe that’s been provisionally accepted for the UK Ergonomics Society Conference next year on improved visualisation of Ergonomic tools to support Inclusive Design. More on that in due course. In the meantime, and after a year of mostly reading, I’ve also begun the first phase of synthesising some of my research into Motivation and it’s role with design.
This first step sees me go back to elucidate some of the observations that lead to my interest in Motivation in the first place. I want to understand what motivates people’s behaviour in relation to their use of products, systems and services. I feel designers have a duty to better support individuals motivational capabilities. The first phase of beginning to synthesise and communicate this has seen me draft some early personas of motivated behaviour.
Hopefully you will recognise some of the attitudes and motivational states represented as well as levels of engagement that these personas are supposed to represent. As most designers are aware personas are a fantastic tool for visualising users and service stakeholders behaviour. I hope that this early draft will both help you all understand a bit more about what I am investigating as well as help you visualise how we as humans direct our focus and energies (our motivation) towards, people, products and services we interact with everyday.
Motivation Personas (click for larger version)
It builds on Self Determination (or Cognitive Evaluation) Theory (SDT) as proposed by Deci and Ryan. I’ve chosen this theory as it has strong links with Anders Ericsson and Herbert Simon’s theories of expert behaviour which I appreciate. Simply, these are theories that argue that expert behaviour is a product of Deliberate Practice. It’s this theory that has given rise to the “10,000 hour rule” which whilst controversial I like because it implies, much like SDT that anything is possible if you are prepared to deliberately work for it.
I will elaborate my justifications and hopefully explain more fully my own feelings about these theories in due course. But in the mean time I would really appreciate feedback on the personas – do you find this way of conceptualising motivation valuable?
- Is this a new insight to you or do you feel it’s old hat?
- Can you understand the document, in what way does it require further elaboration?
- Does the document and the role of motivation seem a valuable concept to you?
You can use the comments box at the bottom of the post or by clicking here. Or contact me directly. Thanks for your time in reading the post and I look forward to hearing from you.
