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.