Brief 4, for end of 1st term

As I outlined on the sketch of the programme of this term, see one of the posts below, you need to complete by the end of this term:

• a research question
• a 200 word abstract
• a mindmap or drawing of the thesis topic
• a 1000 word literature review
• a 1000 word people research report
  

For the literature review, you can review not only books but also magazines, articles, films, photos, buildings, parks, etcetera. The complete list of your inspirations can feed into your 'literature review'. You will have to make choices though because you have only a thousand words. Basically this writing should give an overview of the field to which you want to make a contribution. The overview must offer a description and also your perspective on the field. Make sure the reader always knows though when you give a description, and when you give your perspective. Journalists mix the two up often, researcher must not. Use endnotes or footnotes and add a bibliography (these are not part of the 1000 words), using the Harvard referencing system.

For the people research report you need to have done your discovery research with the people you design for. In the report you write who you worked with and the method(s) you used, but most attention must be given to the results: your insights. The insights are built on your deep understanding of what matters to the people you design for. Conclude with a section on the opportunities for design that you see after doing this research.
I advise you all to rewrite your people research plans, because it will help you a lot to get this done. But it is no formal requirement and you don't need to hand it in with me. I'm happy to take a look though if you want me to.

The deadline for all five requirements is Monday 8 December 6pm. Counting back from the deadline I suggest you use the firt two weeks of November to prepare and find participants, the 3rd and 4th week to talk to people or engage with them otherwise, and the remaining two weeks to write the report.
Put all deliverables on your blog. You can link to the literature review and people research report if you want to make them available as a downloadable file rather than putting them up as a post. You can use for instance getdropbox.com for putting files online for free, past the link to the file in your blog if you prefer this.

I see you all at the end of term. Good luck and enjoy!

Interview workshop

On 3 November we had a day of discussing the proposals everyone made to involve the people they design for in their design research. One method almost all will use is interviewing people. In a workshop on the same day, we explored how these interviewed can be semi-structured conversations rather than an interrogation. With conversations I mean that interviewee and interviewer both contribute ideas, as opposed to the interviewer only absorbing stories and not adding to the conversation. This is another example of the design researcher not being neutral and aiming to remain invisible, but instead bringing her/his ideas into the exchanges with the people s/he designs for.
Below are some photos of how we worked with the stories told in the conversations. We made notes of little pieces of paper that we could sort to discover themes. These themes were then the starting point for creating insights, deep understanding of people's practices and motivations. These insights were consequently the starting point for generating ideas, which you see in the lower picture, as sketches.






Sketching is actually a nice way of working through this process. Adaptive Path have perfected this approach as a recent workshop they organised at the EPIC2008 conference demonstrated. You might find some approaches there that could be useful in your design research.