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.
This as I interpret it in my own recent contribution to the ‘Design Thinking debate is framing Design from a situated-cognition perspective. Again, saying that the activity of Design is inherently bound to it’s context of activity and therefore it is impossible to completely rely on empirical definitions of what design is or how to practice it. This is a controversial statement and one that can undoubtedly take a bit of time to come to terms with. I’d like to briefly use this post to elaborate how this idea has evolved in my mind and through my recent research into skill acquisition – as such it can be considered the full fat version of my previous post. It contains about 700 words and will therefore take about four minutes to read.
Concrete courtesy of Katorisi and Wikimedia Commons
‘Design Thinking’ of the sort discussed in the past months online debate and that first brought to our collective attention by IDEO represents “a community of practice” that is to say a socially mediated or mutually agreed definition of what design thinking is and how design thinkers should practice it. IDEO has very successfully wielded old media and more recently new media savvy to leverage it’s definition upon the world, thus increasing the awareness or ‘social definition’ or it’s Design Thinking ‘community of practice’. IDEO has done this so successfully in fact that like so many successful communities of practice the term ‘Design Thinking’ has become hugely widespread in its usage and definition, with the fringes of the community taking this definition and it’s processes and bending and moulding them to suit there own purposes and requirements. ‘Design Thinking’ has thus developed ‘social capital’ in terms of it’s ability to describe the tacit knowledge and processes of designers. A term that many people within the design and now business community understand and possess their own definition of.
What is clear however, is that the broader that ‘community of practice’ has become so to has the definition of ‘Design Thinking’. As I argued in my previous post it is now such a broad term that it is being rejected by aspects of the community it is supposed to represent. Indeed, judging by the comments to Collopy’s article it is being rejected by a large proportion of the design community, particularly those at fringes of the established design community in the evolving service design industry who are seeking at present to develop their own ‘community of practice’ and distinguish it from what has gone before.
The term ‘design thinking’ is not concrete. It therefore only exists as a social construct and it’s application is entirely dependent upon, influenced by and subject to its context.
This week I want to look at how then to develop ‘social capital’? Or more specifically how to teach or engage others with the essence or definition of what it is that you do as a service designer? How you become an Expert Design Thinker or Service Designer without an agreed definition of what that actually entails? More importantly, even if you or the institution that educates or employs you possesses such a definition, how do you communicate this to the rest of the world in terms that are meaningful and valuable to them? How do you interact with their “communities of practice”?
This is what might be referred to as establishing Legitimate Peripheral Participation, a process of individuals in this case entering the ‘design thinkers’ or ‘service design’ community and developing their skill gradually over time so as to become experts in the domain. In the terms of my recent research in Skill Acquisition and Public Engagement, this can be described as the transition from abstract observer to concrete experience. This process is perhaps better known as experiential learning.
I’m aware of a number of initiatives or individuals working on projects that are simultaneously attempting to develop ways of guiding people through this process towards concrete experience and education of ‘service design’ or design in general, I highlighted Participle’s Loops Initiative and Small Fish already. In the next few posts I plan to elaborate my own thoughts on how using the whole body and mind is key to developing ‘concrete experiences’ and key to successful engagement.
I’ve been mulling over Robert Fabricant’s ‘Ethnographic Defense’ post from the beginning of the week. Mulling because when I first read it I got quite worked up and decided to leave it until I’d calmed down a bit. I’ve just now (via @fredcollopy) seen another eerly similar article by Fabricant on Core77 and felt I had to respond on behalf all designers who believe in empowering rather than diminishing their users:
“users are not very self-aware. Shouldn’t designers be?”
The article serves as a discussion of how some of the currently employed or mooted Persuasive Design techniques might be considered by users to be “contrived or manipulating”. If I’m being honest, there’s not much more contrived or manipulative than his closing statement in the article, I’ll repeat it again:
“users are not very self-aware. Shouldn’t designers be?”
Hardly a statement likely to breed trust confidence or satisfaction in the design profession by their clients and consumers. Coming a few day’s after I’d read this article by Kicker’s Jen Bove summarising this presentation which also addressed the issue of ‘user needs’. I’ve been struck by the conflicting views of designers in their assessment of user needs and the best ways to repond to them.
There appear to be those designers who view their users as helpless ‘pinballs‘ (thanks Dan!) or those who have belief and trust in their users and wait for it…might even be prepared to involve and empower them in the design process. To clarify it seems Fabricant is positioning himself as only willing to engage with users if as a design professional he maintains a superiority or controlling influence. Whilst Bove in her talk seems more content by empowering her users through co-design and collaboration and admits rightly that as a designer she “has more questions than answers”.
I discussed some of these same ideas in my last post here about user’s expectancy for success – as my current research into designing motivationally engaging experiences demonstrates – the first step to engaging with your users is by making them awareof whatever new technology you want them to use. Thus, in a Motivational Design approach encouraging Awareness is the first responsibility of a designer. Making this new pattern of behaviour or technology relevantinvolves understanding not what user’s need, but rather how they learn and adapt to new situations and circumstances – their skill acquisition process. As a designer it is fundamental that you believe that your users are capable of and you empower them for behavioural change otherwise you, the designer and facilitator of their new behaviour or experience, are damned from the start by damning them.
The challenge as I see it for designers is being content to play a secondary supportive or coaching role in the process of persuasive design “Encouragement” as Albert Bandura might refer to it. Too often it seems that designers are more intent on pushing their own “genius of insight or perception” or the latest “cool technology” as opposed to truely recognising and supporting what users need or the best way to engage with them.
Industrial Design may have evolved from a Bauhaus ideology of making things aesthetically pleasing so that users felt inclined to purchase them over less attractive products and I concede it may have done so with some success, evolving to the point where designers are polished and capable enough to address more than simply a user’s perceived aesthetic need but also more recently their percieved emotional and social needs as well.
What if the ‘users’ themselves are the problem? What if users represent not a coherent set of needs but a messy mix of desires and influences?
From where I’m standing it’s actually designer’s messy mix of desires, influences and egos that are the problem. Through the work on my Masters on Motivational Design and Public Engagement I plan to share with you an alternate approach to Persuasive Design, one that believes in supporting a user’s confidence and skill acquisition process, not diminishing it.
Amateurs versus Professionals? Something I considered here the other day.
Convene versus Control?
Shirky presents the changing media landscape in terms of the sliding scales above. How can we make best use of the media tools that we all have available?
The process behind this blog has always aimed to be one big post a week that framed a particular aspect of my research, followed by a series of smaller supporting or conflicting posts throughout the week. These smaller posts intending to encourage contribution and consensus by the end of the week and are intended to focus on real world or anecdotal application of that week’s research question. Thus far I’ve shared thoughts and observations from my research into Intrinsically Motivating Design and supported Skill Acquisition in the design of products and services. I’ve also volunteered some of the thinking from my experiences in designing for public engagement.
Ever been left frustrated by a system, product or service that didn't work the way you wanted it to? Photo from: Maryam Kh
This week I’m going to try and do it in more of an active problem solving sort of way, responding to the design brief of designing for democratic regime change. In other words, as a designer of systems, products and services what can I contribute from my research to enable and empower individuals striving to undermine an autocratic regime. Contentious – yes. Interesting – yes. Educational – yes.
Hopefully, if I do a good enough job, this will be a nice theoretical study into motivational design and to positively influencing human behaviour. Indeed, this exercise might provide an insight into understanding contrary behaviour, which is to say systems, products and services that aren’t designed to motivate or empower their users or might be actively implemented to demotivate and dis-empower them. My hope is that this exercise will provide a valuable and unique insight into better designing dynamic systems and services to better support the intentions and will of the majority of it’s users. I hope you will see this as something worth contributing to or at least broadcasting further afield, it is certainly not intended to be prescriptive and as far as it is published here is purely a theoretical discussion, although clearly influenced by powerful recent world events.
In addition to reading up on Self Determination Theory recently, I’m really grateful to Kim Hiltz for sending me her recent Alf Ulberg Prize winning paper. Picking up where my last post left off by questioning how products, interfaces and systems could be better designed to encourage user competency. Kim’s paper (currently in press) highlights how interfaces or for that matter products and services could be adjusted to decrease the chance of users failing to properly interact with them. The study highlights how telling user’s to ‘test’ a machine decreased the chance of them making common ‘slip errors’.
A slip error is something like forgetting to position the cursor in the text entry field before beginning to type or a failure by a user to set a product in the correct mode before using it. The common perception is that initialisation errors such as these are not that serious except when they occur in safety critical circumstances, such as forgetting to administer anaesthetic before an operation, or forgetting to engage the landing gear before touching the runway.
They are of interest to my research however, as such minor errors have a big impact on our perceived competence or ‘self-efficacy’. That is our ability to carry out tasks as we had planned them. This in turn has implications for our overall motivation towards a particular task. Particularly in individuals who are not skilled or experienced operators.
Say for example, I really want to be an acclaimed photographer, I went out and bought a top of the range camera and started snapping. In my haste to become the next Wolfgang Tillmans however, I forget to put the camera in the correct mode for the lighting conditions – the results might put paid to my ambitions right there and then. However, the camera manufacturers have afforded me a couple of features to keep my dream alive (auto-focus and these days a screen on which to preview the shots).
This is but one example of where technology and particularly automation can assist individuals in realising ambitions that would previously have taken many years of hard labour and considerably greater expense.
Hiltz’s paper however, also shows that adjusting the role or expectations of the user (without making any changes to the underlying technology or interface) by asking them to ‘test’ the interface, is effectively asking the user to less readily trust the equipment or underlying technology within a system. Put more technically this is asking the user to assume a more analytic or supervisory role – thus empowering them with a greater degree of responsibility within the socio-technical system. In this case by belittling the technology.
This is further demonstrated within a questionnaire conducted with participants in Hiltz’s experiment where those who had been asked to ‘test’ the interface talked of “activating power to the system”. By contrast those in the study who were simply asked to ‘operate’ rather than ‘test’ the system talked about “pressing the power button”. This implies that those in the latter group felt less empowered in relation to the technology. It was this latter group that also made the most errors in operating the system.
I think this is of particular significance within the design of services or products that individuals interact with irregularly. As a designer you want those few higher value transactions to be as smooth as possible, but at the same time the user is less likely to successfully achieve these because of lack of persistent experience with the system. Thus a potential solution is to afford cues within the environment or at the consumer touchpoints that help the user assert themselves over the environmental/technological factors with which they are interacting. This boost to user self-confidence might well encourage them to engage in repeated or more regular interactions or refer other people to service.
The camera is an interesting example of a system which due to its high initial investment costs is more likely to encourage individuals to spend time and get appropriate training to master it appropriately. What other tools/cues or design techniques can and are being incorporated in the design process to help users feel more confident and assertive about successful interaction with products or services?
Here is the presentation I gave last week as part of the Human Centred Design Institute’s Seminar Series. Provocatively titled – how is this relevant to me? Whilst a very rough outline sketch this presentation should give you a flavour of some of the areas that I’m researching as I work towards my Masters in Design Research. These themes will be elaborated on this blog over the coming weeks and months. If you want any specific information about any aspect of the presentation or a pdf copy then please contact me. In the meantime – enjoy!
