Filed under: master of design | Tags: design ethnography, london, masters of design
I am off to London for a few days with my class mates and Design Ethnographers…
Looking forward to paying a visit to the ThinkPublic studio and having dinner at Dans Le Noir
Be back soon :)
Filed under: service design | Tags: local, nico morelli, service design, video sketching
This draft video was presented at “Changing the change” conference in Torino, July 2008. It focuses on the question:
How people with low employment capibilities organize a service to connect workers in urban central areas with their favourite food?
The visualisation is very detailed and conveys ’scenarios’ well. It is also a nice example of a system and interaction diagram.
Although, I think the message would be easier to grasp with less text and complimentary audio…
I particularly liked “A working day of the delivery man.”
Check out one of the creators Nico Morrelli blog.
Filed under: reading and writing, service design | Tags: deborah szebeko, health care journal, healthcare, social design, thinkpublic
Deborah Szebeko, director of Thinkpublic has written an article for the Health Service Journal to talk about the service design in healthcare environments.
This article describes in detail how “The design process and methods can help identify what people think about public services.”
I think it is really interesting Deborah has highlighted the importance of the processes and methods we use. This ties in with my recent Masters work on research methodology and strategic processes.
Deborah predicts “the understanding of and demand for designed services will grow significantly.”
Filed under: design studies | Tags: critical thinker, design studies, dundee, teaching, visual listener, workshop
Today was the introductory session with first year design studies students. It went really well! I hope the students went home today with a stronger understanding of what a designer is, and an awareness of social and cultural issues.
We introduced the term ‘critical thinking’ which I interpret to be a quality of thought. It is training your mind to think with direction, and encourages us to challenge our own ideas and put ourselves under scrutiny.
To outline some key points from the session:
We discussed what does it means to be a ‘visual listener’? One student proposed the definition: an expansive creator! Impressive :)
After explaining to shy away from thinking about the phrase in the literal sense of listening: sound, hearing etc…they opened up to the idea it is about being sensitive to your surroundings, being alert and sharp minded… using your brain and senses the way you would if someone was whispering a very important message to you!
We ran a little workshop focusing on answering the question “What is a designer?”…looking at the questions from various perspectives:
- Problem solver
- Story teller
- Artist
- Imagineer
- Entrepreneur
- Journalist
- Critical thinker
- Articulate communicator
Asking questions such as:
- “Can anyone be a designer?”
- “Is it a vocation or an occupation?”
- “Is everyone a designer?”
A big mistake young designers make when evaluating their career options is they are too focused – too narrow minded on the obvious craft skills i.e sketching, software.
Hopefully, now the students realise that companies like to hire people who have changed fields at least once. We need to think about skills we as unique designers can do: interpret, synthesize, make things tangible and make connections.
The trick is to spend less time thinking about what we are doing now, and more time thinking about what is changing out there in the world and what we can do about it.
The change that it happening around us means huge opportunities and challenges for designers!
The first book of reference is “We Think” by Charles Leadbeater. Click here to read my thoughts and opinions on the book.
The second book is “Future Files” by Robert Watson.Click here to see some mind maps and watch a video of the author discussing the themes of the book.
Filed under: reading and writing, service design | Tags: public, signage, the guardian
This article from the Guardian is asking the public to send in photographs of “dodgy signs”
Signage is a very important issue in design, particularly in the design of public services. I spent time in Amsterdam mapping out customer journeys – in locations such as Amsterdam Centraal station, Sloterdijk Bus station and Schipol airport. I photographed each stage of my journey including the signs I followed. The common outcome was signs in the wrong position, unclear and no consistency in the graphics of signs throughout one area.
“Britain’s baffling collection of ungrammatical, misspelt, out of date and plain wrong public signs is to have a national audit, with the public recruited as error spotters.”
For those of you who get wound up at silly signage read more here about join the SPAG facebook group (Spelling, punctuation and grammar)
Filed under: master of design, reading and writing | Tags: book club, muti-disciplinary, reading
Filed under: master of design, service design | Tags: aptide, blueprinting, david townson, design management, livework
The masters class spent Friday with David Townson; David focused on design and design management in the morning and then spent the afternoon with us exploring blueprinting.
David, who trained in Product Design and has a Masters in Design Management, set up the Newcastle Livework office and has recently set up his own design management company: Aptide.
That familiar question “what is design?” was at the forefront once again. This is a question that I have been answering and asking myself and others for years and reading opinions and insights from creatives.Yet it still fascinates me.
David showed us this little sketch by Charles Eames, drawn with “conviction and enthusiasm” the darkest area highlights overlapping interest.
His talk was full of optimism. Indeed, there are too many design graduates and the reality is there are not enough jobs. Even when working, design is competitive and complex. Surely, that is what makes it interesting? and it means those who get where they want to be get there from passion and hard work (and a little bit of luck:)
This takes me back to a question Jonathan once asked me: is design a vocation or an occupation? The answer comes easily to me; a vocation.
An interesting point raised was “design being a commercial act” and the intense level of detail that the design of a service requires.
Design consultant Dean Brown questioned David on how he gets/finds work?
The response was the advice to “write down a list of everyone you know”. Be aware of the power of word of mouth.Make connections. Ask yourself what can I offer people? How can I add value to this business/company/life? Also, in the North East of England you can join a ‘Service Provider Register’ although I can’t seem to find an equivalent for Scotland?
David described Jamie Oliver as a design thinkist…an opinion I completely agree with. The way he engages with people, integrates himself into their lifestyle etc. is admirable.
When asked to define value in the public sector – he interpreted value as time, effort, a new approach – help in dealing with particular situations- making things easier for people.
All designers are researchers of some form. Therefore, there is no hierarchy to “who does the research?” Importantly there is a structure and people cluster around specific themes of research.
If you only read one book this year let it be this: The Brand Gap
I interpreted the main themes of the talk to be : looking at the bigger picture, understanding design is all about other people, spotting connections and collaboration.
Indeed these themes are a strong focus of the Design History Theory and Practice module at Dundee. This module is taken by a wide range of disciplines: jewellery, textiles, graphics, product and media. Students are encouraged to be worldy aware, collaborative and open-minded.
Sadly, this connection was lost on one particular jewellery student who flippantly voiced Davids talk was irrelevant as he was not a jeweller. This narrow-minded attitude is primarily what is wrong with design education and the attitude of young designers. Of course, disciplines vary…teams of architects sketch outdoors, lone jewellers solder in workshops, graphic designers collaborate with web designers BUT the underlying commonality is curiousity. This means asking questions about how other designers work, learn and think…all the while eager to apply the advice and lessons from the experienced to your own field…
An example of a tool that can be used by all designers is blueprinting: a tool that has become more talked about since being adopted and applied by service designers.
It structures and categorizes thinking – an iterative tool that can be used at the early stages of the design process. David talked about ‘verbing’ – take an object and service-ize it – make it a doing word.
My group created a rough blueprint from the question: What service might clean air enable? To very briefly summarize – The inevitable first thought was plants/trees but we focused on the physical community behind the service, the park. A participant of the service immediately became a stakeholder in the park. The ‘leave behind’ was interesting as we were keen to adopt the notion of passing on knowledge. So if you were moving to a new area you had to pass on your little section of the park to a friend.
The Hand Drawn Map Association (HDMA) is an ongoing archive of user submitted maps and other interesting diagrams created by hand.
Filed under: made me think, reading and writing | Tags: facebook, family, new york times, relationships
This article from the NewYork Times is written by a mother who is hurt her children won’t friend her on facebook. The author receives mixed feedback, I was really surprised by the number of parents who have joined facebook purely to keep tabs on their kids. I can’t help thinking this is another example of technology eating away at our relationships and fundamental social skills. Surely if you have a good relationship with your children and frequent conversations…facebook should be the least of parents worry?
The comments got me thinking about family life: a core aspect of life which is being explored at Participle. I often think about how tough it must be to be a parent and a friend at the same time. Trust is developed over years and a cherished part of any relationship…parents shouldn’t be spying on thier kids online?!
However, my thoughts trail to the positive when I discover a reader is friends with his 87 year old grandfather on facebook…
Another interesting one “Not on Call”, the author, Lisa Belkin, discussing one of the many disconcerting parts of raising a teen, is that your home phone doesn’t ring. In my teens, the phone ringing and mum getting to chat to the caller for the four seconds it took me to fly downstairs was important. It was an insight into my social circle.
Boys in their twenty-somethings are the last generation who will have to call a house phone to talk to a girl, coping with the fear that her dad may answer…when my dad was younger the phone box across from their house rang and the ‘picker-upper’ chapped their front door. Back then, everyone in the street could monitor your social life.
With all this in mind I am alarmed at the autors revelation:
“My children talk with their fingers.”
Filed under: service design | Tags: agent of change, participle, public service, social design
Very excited about the launch of Participle’s new site…I have been keeping an eye on it for a while now. The team are “working to design the next generation of public services.”
It is not very often you come across influential people writing in a journalistic style about their research and work. Design success stories are often left to the glossy magazines, who have a somewhat superficial perspective of design practice.
Participle are producing a series of essays exploring the future public realm. Public access to these stories is likely to increase the understanding of social design, hopefully demystifying the process. Perhaps, resulting in the public developing more respect for designers and their role in society
It is endeavours such as this that have the ability to change reality.
Filed under: master of design | Tags: contextual review, critical thinking, design process, notes, sketches
I learned about ‘Contextual Review’ today…it is all about exploring your field and placing it in the context of history and the present. Jeanette Paul spoke about ‘key words’. The words that you would use in an abstract or a piece of writing etc. I think the way people ‘tag’ on blogs must train your mind to recognise key words quicker?
Critical thinking is a skill. It is an important asset to a designers skill-set and this is what I will be trying to get across to the first year design students. I learned today that the term has been around for a long time – with Francis Bacon quoting:
“For myself, I found that I was fitted for nothing so well as for the study of Truth; as having a mind nimble and versatile enough to catch the resemblances of things and at the same time steady enough to fix and distinguish their subtler differences; as being gifted by nature with desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and as being a man that neither affects what is new nor admires what is old, and that hates every kind of imposture.” in 1605
To learn more visit the Critical Thinking website. I recommend this little (20 page pocket size) book to anyone who would like to learn more about the subject:
I have been asked to create a visual representation of my design process. I don’t think my process is ever the same…sometimes I’m thinking, sometimes I’m making, sometimes I am in-between…
“Why too much homework doesn’t work” is an interesting article from TimesOnline.
The comments are worth a read, in particular from the Year 10 GCSE student:
Many of the briefs I got in first and second year required me to ‘design a poster’ and I must admit I still have a reaction similar to James. I find I learn much more writing an essay or talking to others about a subject, than creating a poster. I often think leaving the poster making to the experts is best, unless you know your stuff about graphics and typography etc. posters generally look pretty awful. Although, it’s not about the visuals is it? it is about the content and what you learn? The Wikipedia movement is really interesting…How can we show students how and when to use Wikipedia for their own benefit?
I liked this pupils idea for an assignment for English : Look up emotive words to do with ‘culture’.
Filed under: made me think | Tags: future flies, richard watson, rsa, the future
The first time I heard the term ‘futurist’ was last year at Intersections, when Richard Seymour was talking about designers looking at the present to interpret the future. This is an idea that is explored by various authors; William Gibson who said in 1999 “The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed.” and Neal Stephenson in his book Snow Crash “The future is encoded in emergent behaviour”
I listened to Richard Watson, author and futurist, via the RSA’s Vision Video Webcasts, which includes many video lectures from inspiring thinkers.
I found it fascinating…see my notes below. Watsons history of the next 50 years gave me lots to think about. Check out his publication Now and Next. He is also the author and publisher of What’s Next and Future Files, Chief Futurist at the Future Exploration Network.
What really got me thinking was the way Watson described human needs. ‘Needs’ is a word designers use often…perhaps to flipantly. Ask yourself what the most important human needs are? Throughout history the answer has never really changed – we need love, recognition, security, repsect and control…
Filed under: made me think, reading and writing | Tags: 2020, cnn, ericsson, imagine, the future
CNN and Ericsson are looking at the future in 2020.
This site contains information on the future of nature, cities, space, living spaces, community, health, transport, and education.
The future of community looks at internet mums, virtual worlds, viral web crazes, with interviews from World Changing’s Alex Steffen. The future of education looks at e-classrooms, virtual learning and wikipedia.
“Where classes take place in cafes and record shops — and anyone can be a teacher …”
Try out the online tests, go and explore the future. These future scenarios are full of design responsibility and opportunity…
