Dynamics Power relations Interactions

1. Dynamics Power relationsInteractions

2. Structure of today • Sum up from lecture on ethnography • A designer perspective on PD and workshop: Rehearsing the future • A performance perspective: Quality of conversations • An ethnographic perspective: SilenceCase: SeniorInteraction

3. The interpersonal aspect of co-design • BILLEDE

4. Ethnography in design • Last lecture: Analyze and discuss application of ethnography in design from an ethnographic point of view • Today: Use ethnographic approach to analyze and understand the social interaction in co-design processes

5. Literature • Rehearsing the future • Quality of communication • Silence and discursive power

6. RehearsingResearchingThe Future DAIM project Danish Design School

7. RehearsingResearchingThe Future • Co-design as social drama • Envisioning future practices • Enacting possible use situations • Performance of imagined everyday practices

8. ’Get all stakeholders on board!’ • Original Participatory design demand: ’exclude management!’

9. Methods and techniques • Perform scenarios, doll scenarios • Prototyping • Estranging the familiar • ’What if’

10. DAIM Project http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1Zadsis8Pw

11. Quality of conversations: Using theatre to investigate the collaborative processes of creating new products. – to understand when co-design becomes innovative. Focus more on facilitation and communication than on methods

12. Quality of conversations: The quality of communication is the key to innovation

13. Innovation as conflict • Innovation emerges from crossing intentions • Facilitation as participation in conflicts • Important to focus on the quality of conversations instead of on reaching consensus

14. Quality of conversations: • Crossing intentions areallowed to surface • New themesemerge in the interactionsbetweencrossing intentions • New, vigorousconceptsemergethatresonatewith participants ownexperiences • There is a spontaneitythatallows participants to imagine new roles • There is an ongoingdiscussion and readjustment of goals • Facilitation is exercisedwithin the circle of participation

15. Important point: Focus on facilitation! • Facilitation not just moderating • Engaging, • creating a secure atmosphere • Sensitivity • reflection in action…

16. Ellen: ”What are you thinking Ole, if you should be on this trip”? Ole: ”(long pause, mumbling) I have so many other things right now, so i can’t quite imagine it at the moment” Ellen: ”No, but wouldn’t you, I mean, consider going if others had planned the trip?” Ole: ”Yes, I would (pause) If I had time for it”

17. Quality of conversations: • How can we facilitate for letting crossing intentions surface? • Empirical data: PhD students and professional designers • Methods and approaches should be tailored to the actual co-design context, the participants cultural, and social background • Not all negotiations are articulated or taking place in the collaborative setting

18. Silences and sensibilities • Focus on tacit aspects of communication • Not all decisions made in collaboration • Invisible decision processes

19. Silences and sensibilities • ”Silence can be caused by the tacit parts of communication or by someone being brought to silence. Silences can be used as power to control how actions are performed, to manipulate, and strategically in different ways that articulated strategies. Silence can both create power and can be the issue of powerlesness”

20. Silences and sensibilities • Communication is not just words and phrases, but also silence • Tacit aspects of communication • Invisible decisions that happen outside of articulated communication or even outside the design collaboration.

21. Implicit comment to PD ideals: democratic, empowerment, equal participation… • Conceptualizes co-design as a power arena • Users are not per se empowered by participating

22. Silences and sensibilities • Silence related to power – tool to exercise power or as a consequence of powerlessness • Designers should be sensitive towards tacit parts of communication • Reflections upon silence to understand and improve communication

23. Silences and sensibilities • Deconstructs design and the designers role • PD not per se democratic • Silence has implications for the equal collaboration • Design results are product of methods, categories and interpretations • Designers’ responsibility to reflect critically on the design process • Design as a discursive practise

24. Ethnographic approach • Deconstructs PD • Designer/researcher not neutral • Design as potentially supressing participants = Need for reflective practitioner

25. Project Senior Interaction • Multidisciplinary project • Participatory design events – workshops • Goal: develop concepts to improve quality of life for seniors

26. The workshop format • Part one: high facilitationmaking collage about ’a good day’ • Part two: more collaborativenegotiating an activity based on collagesperform a doll scenario of ’a good shared experince’

27. Collage: ’A good day’

28. Negotiating a scenario • How is the activity negotiated and selected? • Who is being empowered in this exercise? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8IBmynEKuE

29. Performing the doll scenario • How do the seniors engage in the scenario? • Can we identify incidents of silence/resistance? – what do they mean? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zj95dSfRJEM

30. Challenges and advantages of this approach?

31. What have we learned today? Different perspectives Rehearsing the future Communication and conflict Discursive/Invisible power Different approaches Methods Facilitation, articulated communication Critical reflection and analysis of tacit communication

32. Practical lessons • Sometimes not enough to focus on what participants say, but also what they don’t say • You are active participants, reflect on how your presuppositions become embedded in methods, categories etc, and how they influence the results • Methods is not all! Adjust your methods and style of facilitation to the particular participants and purpose