Brief: Get to know the domain we’re designing for in a rapid research exploration across users, precedents and objects.
Due: November 3rd. Each group will present for 10 minutes.
In this phase, we’re going to very quickly build a shared understanding of the current landscape of distance learning and remote collaboration technologies. You’re going to coordinate three rapidly implemented strands of research, that will do this quickly.
You’ll work in groups of three who will quickly gather, assess and evaluate knowledge that will be useful for the project, and report back to the remaining vision lead who will integrate and present findings.
Within your group you should assign one or more individuals to do the following:
You should also assign a group member(s) as responsible for coordinating, synthesising and presenting the outcomes.
You may wish to plan ahead of time to direct these activities to a specific context (e.g. exploring different types of design studio, going to a space on campus that has technology for distance learning), group (student, faculty, external stakeholders) or activity (lecturing, collaborating, studying, brainstorming, in-class versus, out-of-class remote collaboration, etc.) within the connected classroom scenario.
As part of the exercise, students will:
Details for each follow in the next sections
Each group is assigned to a sub-area: broad scale interactions, understanding context, and up-close interactions.
The analysis performed should relate to and inform a design proposal for this sub-area.
Ethnographic research usually involves observing target users in their natural, real-world setting, rather than in the artificial environment of a lab or focus group. The aim is to gather insight into how people live; what they do; how they use things; or what they need in their everyday or professional lives.*
Typically ethnography is performed where a design team will observe users in real contexts to learn about their behaviors and inform the solution space. However, it can sometimes be equally valid to describe and systematically analyze personal experience *. This process is known as autoethnography
As begun in class, continue to document your own experiences of collaborating across two campuses. At a first level, think about and record how communication is facilitated (or not as the case may be) and the tools, technologies and processes that support it. What are you using to talk to one another, when, and why? Next, go deeper and think about the social and cultural components of how you are collaborating? How is it different from face-to-face collaboration and why? What is your personal response? Do you have the same level of engagement or empathy with your remote teammates? Why?
To help, capture this, I highly recommend doing the following: - During the next meeting, each person should keep a note of their own observations, experiences, and responses - After the meeting takes place, write a short narrative. - Share this with the group - At the start of the next meeting, compare notes and discuss.
If you’d like to learn more, you can read about the process of autoethnography in this article.
Conduct a rapid user inquiry by interviewing two to four individuals who are engaged in either remote collaboration, studio based learning or distance education.
If possible, use ‘contextual inquiry’ to understand the experience while it is taking place. The goal will be to develop a deep sense of the user’s needs, desires and wants around specific activities in the learning context.
To do this, you interview the person on-site while the do their normal activities there. As the subject goes about their tasks, observe and note what they are doing, but more importantly, see to understand why they are doing them. Learn by watching, but gather insight by asking them about what it is you see, and why they are done in a particular way. From these observations you should be able to see the flows and sequences within particular tasks as well as the motivations for them. You should also pay close attention to the objects and tools that they use during these tasks and how they help them achieve the desired outcome. Based on what you observed and what you heard, interpret that information and develop an understanding of what the task means for each person. Note that you should verify your interpretations where possible while on-site.
Each person should do the interviews independently, then you should meet to compare notes and develop some shared findings i.e. what similarities or differences did you find? what did you learn? what was surprising and why?
You should summarise your findings in accessible and useful forms. This might include:
highlighting particularly useful quotes
creating a diagram or mind map of ideas and desires covered
developing a persona based on the interview, or an empathy map
Find out more:
The first deliverable has explored user desires, behaviors and routines, but wouldn’t it be nice to think about the objects and artefacts in the learning space in more depth. After all, these are what we’re going to try and imbue with technology!
And this is exactly what this group will do. Each member of this group should go to a learning space (a classroom set up for distance learning, a studio, a smart space, etc.) and develop an inventory of all the objects found there. You’ll want to
Photograph the landscape of the classroom, both from a broad view and up-close
Describe the objects found within the learning environment and their role (these could be simple things like push pins for pin ups to more complex A/V infrastructure)
Map their locations and placements
If possible, observe who, when and how they are being interacted with
First, move through the space and photograph everything -capture a record what you see and develop a record of the object landscape.
Next systematically analyse and decompose the objects you’ve found in terms of their material, aesthetic, functional, locative, and interactive qualities.
Material - what is the materials used? what are the qualities of these materials (hard, soft, cold, warm, etc.)? how durable are they? is the worn or what are the patterns of wear? is it disposable? portable? etc.
Aesthetic - a subjective visual assessment - is it pleasant or ugly? how old does it look? does it have any emotive signifiers? what is it’s meaning?
Functional - what it does - what activity or role within the space does it support? how does it communicate this role?
Locative - where in the space does it exist? is it public or private? is it accessible to some or all in the space? is it shared or owned?
Interactive - what are the behaviors the object affords? is it used for simple or complex tasks? it is multitasked? is it social, shared or collaborative? is there evidence of misuse or adapted use or adjustments?
Relational - what other objects in the space does it relate to? is it used before, after or in conjunction with another object? is there a sequence to its use?
Create a matrix (table) of the objects/products/artefacts in the space which explores these features.
In addition, sketch a map of the objects you uncovered i.e. show the spatial arrangement of the objects. On this map, diagram the connections and relationship they have to one another.
Don’t forget to plan ahead with your team (and with other teams too!). Don’t all go to the same place at the same time. For example, you could perform the same mapping task at different times of the day, only adding objects which someone interacts with during that time. Or you could divide up the space so that you each do a deep dive on an area of interest.
Just like we did in week one, each member of this activity is going to research, find and examine a series of related precedents. You should develop a set of approximately 15 exemplars relevant to your sub-area.
Each person will identify and rigorously review five precedent projects (consumer products, creative projects, research papers, theory, ideas, methods, etc.) that relates to the theme
The goal is to broaden your understanding of the project’s theme (knowledge relating to the distance learning or distance learning technology) as well as deepen your knowledge of prior work that’s relevant to this project.
The emphasis here is on discovery. Explore news sites, blogs, aggregator, as well as conferences, journals and scientific papers to find exciting examples that could inform the project. This could equally be a historical example which informed the kinds of products and scenarios we encounter today, a breakthrough product which has had impact or influence, a current and state-of-the-art consumer device, a cutting edge research prototype, a speculative proposal for a future device. There’s no constraints on the sources or places you can look but some starting points are listed below.
For each project, write a short critical reflection on the project (about 200 words) in which you:
Briefly describe the project (a couple of sentences) and who made it.
Describe why you selected the project (what is interesting, inspirational, etc. about it)
Critique the project - what are its shortcomings; how could it be made better, what did they get right and what didn’t they get right and why, etc.
Draw relationships to other work: What inspired or informed it? Compare this project with related work, precedent projects.
Draw relationships to your work: How does it relate to your ideas for your project?
Finally, you should synthesise the themes and trends that you see emerging from this research.
Now you have
documented your own experience of collaborating over distance
interviewed 2-4 people
gathered 3-5 space/object inventories
researched and described 15 prior projects
Awesome, you’ve got a tonne of knowledge to work with. Now you need to make it useful.
Now you’ll oordinate each of the three sub-explorations (users, precedents and objects) and integrate their outcomes. (Visual representation of these outcomes is highly encouraged!)
Synthesize, aggregate, and summarise major findings and present them in class. This should conclude with 1-2 design / technology opportunities you would like to pursue a solution for.