Too Soon To Tell

I just returned from the graduate design conference at North Carolina State University on Sunday night and spent yesterday recovering from my inability to get away from people for 4 days. I really enjoy being around people and having the opportunity to engage in stimulating conversations, but I'm drained. I also haven't had a single night where I have gotten more than 6 hours of sleep or didn't have to wake up to an alarm. I'm not sure why, but the need to allow myself to wake up naturally from time to time is critical in order for me to maintain a positive disposition. So... I spent last night reading trashy fiction, taking a bubble bath, and sleeping 10 1/2 hours without an alarm.

I'm ready to go.

Now I just need to figure out what "go" means. I didn't have time before the conference last week to write about my thesis committee meeting, so I'm hoping that doing so will kick start me into action…

Wednesday, January 20, Committee Meeting

With the conference swiftly approaching and us still not having any clue what we were doing for our presentation, I felt extremely ill-prepared for this meeting. I know it showed and considering that I've only got a couple of meetings as a whole group, I think this was a missed opportunity.

I handed out hard copies of the background documents that were requested last meeting.

I handed out an updated form of my research question that reflects that my sub-questions will be re-evaluated over the next few weeks. I had also included the issues discussed at the last meeting of transformational mediation style and empathy/sympathy. We talked about these elements and the idea of whether or not I can/should include “empathy” in my design may be addressed with my justifications for why a “tool as mediator” as opposed to a “person as mediator.”

I handed out my “detailed” research plan. This was “fleshed” out that morning and didn’t really reflect the complexity of my research steps. There are things that can be granulated and things that overlap, cycle, etc. Of course, Lee immediately saw through it and called me out on it and nicely suggested that I Gantt chart my research plan to reflect the complexity of steps. (After the meeting, he also discussed with me the need to structure the agenda and the meeting itself so I can get more out of it... yeah, I know, this one was just a big-ol' rushed fail.)

I presented my cultural probes for evaluation and got a pretty positive response. (Someone kept one of my TKI profiles!! :-p) Helen said that she wanted to discuss questions I chose to put on the cards, but then we never did.

I’m not sure if it came out of the research plan conversation or the cultural probes conversation, but Lee told me that I need to be ideating about the tool during this week that the VC4 class is working with my probes. He said that I should identify what is possible and create a matrix/visualization/list of everything that my tool could be. To this end, he recommended that I look at Adrienne’s “variables to explore” matrix (ironically, this is one of the things I helped her create). Once I analyze my probes, I should let that data than identify where in my existing ideas would be appropriate to focus. I was kind of uncomfortable with this, but I’m going to let it stand for now and come back to this later in this post.

I brought up that Marcia conducts what she calls 360 evaluations once a month with the VC4 students. I asked whether looking at these evaluations from previous years was worth using/engaging with. There were some reservations as to whether or not these evaluations were sophisticated enough to offer me much insight, but that I should look into it.

Another point that came up was what relationship I wanted to focus on. In my previous entry, I diagrammed the three levels of interaction that I’m dealing with: (designer with self, designer with team, team with client). We had a fairly robust discussion about which of these I should be working within and how I should make that decision. One factor for deciding is need—Marcia already identified that from her many years of experience, the relationship that needs the most help is amongst the design team members.

John made a really great statement about how my tool needs to balance between being “vanilla” and “brain surgery,” but I don’t remember what the context was that he said it in. Proof that I need to write blog posts more frequently rather than waiting a while and trying to do it from distant memory.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Returning to the ideation of what the tool could be…. The nature of cultural probes is to serve as inspiration for designers to innovate, so the idea that my ideation serves as the map and their data only serves as the push pin feels a little too shallow of an exploration. I don’t say this to get out of doing my own ideation, but I really want to recognize that my Stakeholders may come up with something that I could never even conceive of—that’s the beauty of a people-centered design process. So, I will do the due diligence and ideate about all the things I can think of that pertain to my tool, with the understanding that the stochastic variable is any additional inspiration I may receive from my Stakeholders’ imagination and insights as gained through the cultural probes.

So, I need to (in no particular order and including everything on my plate just to impress upon myself a sense of urgency):

• Take care of the mounting migraine that is currently threatening you with the loss of yet another day (alright, so there is some order to this list)
• Read up on Andrew Blauvelt
• Attend meeting about Blauvelt engagement (tomorrow @ 11:30a)
• Read the articles Lee and Adrienne gave me (weeks ago)
• Work on shortening the time between someone giving me something to read and me actually reading it
• Fill out paperwork for my IRB exemption
• Unpack my suitcase
• Clean the bathroom
• Write follow-up e-mails from the conference
• Gantt chart my research plan
• Check the tracking numbers for my teaching applications
• Log the last two weeks of MediFast (oh god how travel is horrible for diets)
• Ideate tool variables
• Download, record, cull, and grade Design History assignments

Another Brick In The Wall

I set up a conversation session with Adrienne I work and think best when I’m talking at/to/with a sounding board as opposed to simply thinking in silence or isolation. (Does that make me an extrovert, Meyers-Briggs?)

I came up with the following list of “what we know” about the qualities of the tool:

• Visual and spatial modeling
• Solutions given imperfect information
• Iterative process
• Not “co-design,” but isolated “client” style interaction
• Clear “designer” and “client” roles
• Roles within design team are more fuzzy
• There is an ongoing relationship among the designers
• They are designing tangibles (1.0/2.0 design)
• How do they work together (in-studio, physical, virtual)

Variables Vomit:

• Location
• Role
• Point in process
• Degree of conflict
• Conflict vs. decision-making
• Relationship
• Communication
• Evaluation of success
• Interest specific (personal, designers, argument styles)

Note on levels of interaction:

Design team + Client (project)

/\

Individual designer + Design team (process)

/\

Individual + Self (interest)

I want to explore the following topics:

1. Location
2. Communication format
3. Roles/relationships
4. Conflicts/decisions
5. Success (I’m still unsure if/why I care about this)
6. Interests/styles

(1-3 address Form track, 3-6 address Function track)

Methods of collecting information:

• Probes (cameras, diaries, maps, etc.)
• Scenarios
• Object triggers
• Interview
• Observation
• Generative tools (collage, mapping, etc.)
• Surveys
• Panels
• Focus groups
• Confessional

Given the amount of time I have to conduct research and the degree of invasiveness and richness of information gathered, I am going to develop 2 probes—a camera and a set of cards.

The camera will be used as a group and have the following prompts (#’s indicate which topics prompt addresses):

• Where you work ¹²
• Where you relax ¹²
• Who you interact with when you work ²³
• Your group “working” ¹²³
• Your group “not working” ¹²³
• About your client ³⁴
• Accomplishments ⁴⁵⁶
• Frustrations ⁴⁵⁶

The cards will be used by individuals. One side will have a prompt with lines to answer in a narrative and the other side will have a border framing the space for them to answer visually.

The prompts will be (#’s indicate which topics prompt addresses):

• What positive qualities do you believe your team members and/or clients will bring to this design project? ³⁵⁶
• What difficulties do you think you will encounter in working with your team members and/or clients on this design project? ³⁴⁶
• What is important to you to accomplish with this design project? 6
• How does your group make decisions? ¹²³⁴⁵⁶
• Describe a time when you have been unhappy with the results of a group project—what happened? Why were you unhappy? ²³⁴⁵⁶
• Describe the last disagreement you had—what happened? How did you act? Was it resolved? Were you happy with the outcome? ²³⁴⁵⁶
• Do you think your clients understand what you do and what they will get from you? ³⁴⁵⁶
• Describe the last time you feel like your group accomplished something—what was it? How did it happen? ¹²³⁵

Each group will receive a package that contains one camera with prompts, eight cards with prompts, four argument style surveys, and one instruction sheet. Each package will be color-coded—eight colors, one per team. They will be instructed to complete the camera probe as a group and select two cards per person to complete individually. They will each complete a survey and return all materials to the package for me to collect a week later (is that too much time?).

For my next steps, I need to (sorta in order):

• Design cards
• Design camera cases
• Evaluate and select survey
• Design survey
• Package probes
• Meet with Marcia and Paula to explain process
• Read article Lee gave me
• Read article Adrienne gave me
• Re-think thesis sub-questions
• Prepare meeting materials for thesis committee (probe package, e-mail link to this blog, action plan/schedule, question page)
• Distribute probes

Getting to know you, getting to know all about you

I spent the beginning of the week preparing for my thesis committee meeting. This meeting would be the first time Helen and Lee meet John and I was really nervous about how everyone would get along. Would John think we’re all kooks? Would Helen and (especially) Lee hear the design thinking underneath John’s tweed and policy? Would we all be able to talk at the same levels of abstraction and nuance that mark my great conversations with Lee?

It went really well. I gave them my plans for the semester and we sort of backtracked into “getting to know you.” After talking about generalities and scheduling, we got into a discussion about my thesis via my questions.

The first point we really worked thorugh was the nature of ‘neutrality.” Lee questioned my emphasis on it and suggested that it was inherent to the nature of an inanimate object. I argued (and Helen really jumped on board with this) that the way you phrase something, or the method if interaction could be biased in some ways. I ultimately recognized that I could acknowledge my point without “neutrality” needing to be the focus of one of my questions?

John then moved on to my selection of “facilitative” style of mediation. This was a pretty involved conversation in which I finally started to feel good about my committee’s ability to speak and listen in languages that are similar enough to each other that we will be successful and productive. The result, content-wise, of this conversation is that I have been operating under the assumption that my tool will affect both facilitative and transformational mediation styles as necessary and appropriate. I just need to articulate that on my question page.

Note on styles of negotiation:

• Evaluative—content expert giving an opinion about how participants need to proceed
• Facilitative—focused on aiding participants in solving a transactional dispute on their own
• Transformative—focused on repairing, maintaining, or improving a relationship

Lee brought up the need for me to explore the qualities of my tool more. He suggested that I give my question page more levels of hierarchy and depth. I could/should insert reasoning for “interactive, visual and tangible.” (Designerly Ways of Knowing, visual and spatial methods of understanding/modeling/communicating, Conley, etc.)

Given all that, what other attributes do I need to be considering for this tool? When those ideas get fleshed out, my sub-questions #2 and 3 will then transform from “how can the tool” being the subject focus to the fleshed out qualities informing the subject.

This, in turn, informs the fourth question and gives me a foundation for establishing criteria for more robust evaluation. Doing so will pump up my “flaccid” 4^th sub-question that addresses evaluation.

I think John is having difficulty imagining how an inanimate tool could/would/should supplant a mediator. He brought up the issues of empathy and sympathy that mediators should have. I’m not really sure how/if I should address this issue at this point. Part of me feels like it might be a symptom of discomfort with ambiguity. However, sympathy and empathy are important qualities of a human mediator, so I can’t simply dismiss the issue altogether. I think, for now, that this is a “duly noted” moment that I file away to be reconsidered/revisited throughout the process.

John brought up the “argument styles” and seemed to be reading it as a vague sort of placeholder. Lee pointed out that he hasn’t really been 100% comfortable with it all along. I explained to John that I meant something very specific by it and told him about the Crucial Conversations’ Style Under Stress test. He validated for me that it is, in fact, a critical factor of negotiation. He also reminded me of the one we took in his class and I think that one may provide a more… valid(?) source than Crucial Conversations. Maybe Lee won’t poo poo that one as much.

Walking back from the meeting, Lee and I discussed the nature of my preliminary investigation. We agreed that I am working on two not-mutually-exclusive tracks, which I am calling “Form” and “Function.”

For “Form,” I am looking into the nature and affordances of the thingy and how it is specific to or how it has implications on/from 1.) designers working with each other 2.) designers working with stakeholders 3.) level of design problem, complexity, etc. For example, what specifically about “designers working together to decide a color palette” lends itself to “tangibility” or “visual” or any other attribute. For “Function,” I am looking into what role/service/etc. is this thingy actually performing. This is where I start probing into the nature and feel of conflicts/decisions.

I was really excited that Lee brought up both of these points and a.) we saw eye-to-eye on them and b.) I had already thought of them. Gold star for Susana!

The only point he made that was different than the direction I was already headed in was that they need to be parallel tracks of research as opposed to sequential. He felt that working on them at the same time would provide a more sophisticated and symbiotic (that’s my word, not his) inquire. Oh. Ok. Will do.

Say Hello Wave Goodbye

I have decided to start a blog to keep track of my Spring semester thesis exploration. The greatest advice I received is that keeping a diary of things throughout the semester will really help when it comes to writing my thesis at the end of the semester. I hope to keep track of events, emotions, thoughts, insights, discoveries, etc.

The image below should provide the basic background of where I'm starting--it is a visualization of my problem space:

This image is my Thesis Research Question and Sub-questions:

Is that enough of an intro? :-)