Dori's Moblog

Swin lecture notes: Methods of Investigation Week 04 Ethics

R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Find out what it means to me
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Take care, TCB

- Lyrics by Otis Reading, sung by Aretha Franklin

A Scenario
A group of young multidisciplinary designers read about a remote town that does not have adequate electricity to run its water pump. The group of students decide they want to help. One of them has a cousin of a cousin who knows someone in the town who says, "Sure, come on down." The students raise money for the trip through bake sales and car washes. The cousin of a cousin begins to send pictures of the water pump, the town, and some of the people in it. The design students begin sketching out solutions to the problem. The industrial designer sketches ideas for a solar battery connector to the water pump. The interior designer sketches ideas for an enclosure for people getting the water. The interaction designer lays out a website to monitor water use in the town. The communication designer prepares posters to announce the solar powered water pump. Finally the students raise enough money and get to the town. They attend a town meeting where people share how the water pump is a place of communal sharing, but because the water levels are so low they need the pump to get at the water, but don't have reliable electricity.

Over the one week in the town, the students refine their ideas based on what they have seen and heard. The industrial designer makes sure the solar connector is child-proof because the kids like to play around the pump. The interior designer chooses to build a reed enclosure to protect women from the heat yet use local materials. The interaction designer realizes that he needs to simplify the layout of the website so that those with only 4th grade education can read it. The communication designer uses more graphics to explain key messages. Before they leave, the cousin of the cousin is taught how to repair the solar connector and is given a computer to monitor the water use.

After a few months the designs are executed in the town, the student designers return. The cousin of the cousin ceremonially cuts the ribbon on the new water pump station to lukewarm clapping. Later at the town meeting, the people angrily complain about the new solar connected pump and all the designs. Devastated, the students ask, "But why? Don't you have reliable energy to get the water from the pump in the shade?" "Yes, yes we do," the town people reply, "But now the [cousin of the cousin's] wife charges us $1 to get through the door of the enclosure to use the pump. The [cousin of the cousin] is the only one with the computer so he monitors our water use and charges us each week. We have this posters everywhere telling us how great the water pump is, but all it brings to us now is misery." 

Question: Was this an unethical project? 
Answer: Yes, because by focusing on only the technical solutions, the students ignored the wider social context by creating an individual with greater knowledge and access to the new system. Thus the designs disrespected the value of the water pump as a place of communal sharing. So while the project was technically competent, it did not demonstrate Respectful Design.

Respectful Design

In 2010, the Swinburne Faculty of Design decided that one of our strategic priorities would be producing students who engage in what we call, Respectful Design. In other words, every Swinburne student can clearly demonstrate respect for people, respect for other living creatures, respect for the environment, and collective self-respect in every design decision that he or she makes. As a reflection of the human "remade" world, design impacts people, other creatures, and the environment in fundamental ways. Respectful Design is about changing the underlying values on how humans "remake" the world so that it design works in harmony with people, other creatures, and the environment. Because research is an important part of all phases in the design process [Discovery, Concept, Development, Execution, Evaluation], we will address in this lesson both ethics in research and ethics in design practice.

Ethics in Research: The Belmont Report of 1979The history of developing formal codes of research goes back to end of World War II when the world had discovered the medical and scientific experiments conducted by the Nazis. The first ethics code was the Nuremburg Code of 1947 (US NIH 1949) which outlined the "Do no harm" priority for the medical experimentation. The document that defines contemporary code of research ethics is the Belmont Report of 1979. The report outlines the boundaries between practice and research, the three basic ethical principles, and their means of application.

Practice versus Research
First, we must start by untangling the concepts of research versus practice.The Belmont Report of 1979 describes how research and practice have different intentions, outcomes, and expectations. Practice has as its core intention the generation of a specific solution to a problem. For example, a client asks a designer to create an interior environment that makes them feel connected to nature. The designer comes up with specific design concept that the client recognizes as meeting his needs. Thus the outcomes of practice are solutions or evaluations with a final expectation of success. Research on the other hand is focused on the creation of general knowledge. A client might ask a designer, "What would be the effect of natural lighting on the mood of my employees during winter months?" The designer is not being asked to come up with a solution but rather gather general knowledge about lighting and mood. Thus the outcomes of research are principles or statements with unknown final expectations. For a summary of differences see Table 1. The distinction between practice and research is important when one seeks University approval for research projects because practice projects may not fall under review. But as design research begins to create more general statements to inform specific solutions, the boundary between research and practice as it relates to ethics will blur.

Table 1: Comparison Practice vs. Research

	Practice	Research
Intention	Specific solution	General knowledge
Outcome	Evaluations, solutions	Principles, statements
Expectations	End in success	Unknown outcome

The Basic Ethical Principles of Research and their Applications

The three ethical principles of research are (1) Respect for Persons, (2) Beneficence, and (3) Justice (US NIH 1979).

Respect for persons requires that people have the self-determination (e.g. autonomy) to enter the research voluntarily and with enough information to make that decision. If a person has limited capability for self-determination through "illness, mental disability, circumstances that severely restrict liberty (ex. prisons)," then ethically greater protections must be put in place (US NIH 1979). You apply respect for persons by gaining informed consent where you provide details about the research and as people to verbal express or sign a document giving their consent.

Beneficence refers to the obligation of to "do no harm" and to demonstrate clear benefits to the research participant (US NIH 1979). This is achieved through the assessment of the risks and benefits of the research project. In 2007, I developed the following chart of categories of ethical consideration based on the categories in a general research ethics form--physical, emotional, financial, and psychological-- and adding the social, spiritual, and environmental categories, See Table 2:

Table 2: Ethics Risk and Benefits Matrix

	Benefits	Risks
Physical	Repair of injury, extend life	Injury and/or death
Emotional	Happiness, joy, bliss	Guilt, shame, sadness
Financial	Gain money, improve livelihood, pay for transportation and parking	Loss of money, livelihood, opportunity, have to pay for transportation or parking
Psychological	Better adaptation skills, reduction in stress	Trauma, stress, anxiety, depression
Social	Embraced by community, higher social standing	Ostracization, loss of face, shunning
Spiritual	Reconfirm faith, draw closer to spiritual entity	Loss of faith, go against tenets of faith
Environmental	Improvements to land, buildings, etc	Damage to land, building

It is these social, spiritual, and environmental categories of respect that are discussed in the Purga Project (Sheehan and Walker 2001) on Indigenous Knowledge Research.

Justice refers to the question of "Who ought to receive the benefits of research and bear its burdens?" (US NIH 1979). It is about making sure there is a fair selection of people for research to prevent injustices that result from biases about class, race, gender, sexuality, culture, religion, etc. It is achieved through the careful and fair selection of research participants. It often results in the close scrutiny of projects where vulnerable populations have been selected for research (e.g. children, prisoners and institutionalized individuals, pregnant women, those of low economic status, and some indigenous communities).

A summary of the ethical principles and their applications are below, see Table 3:

Table 3: Ethics Principles and Applications

Principle	Application
Respect for Persons	Informed consent
Beneficence	Assessment of risks and benefits
Justice	Selection of research participants

Ethics in Practice: the Living Principles for Design

As I stated before, the Belmont Report of 1979 distinguishes between research and practice. Yet, the design field has come to embrace a similar set of principles that relate to design practice. Partially, this is the effect of design research on design practice, such that the boundaries between research and practice have blurred. The latest and most highly endorsed initiative is the Living Principles for Design and their framework and road map of Four Streams of Integrated Sustainability: Environment, People, Economy, and Culture (The Living Principles 2010). The road map ask designers to address specific questions about how their design thinking, processes, and outcome can lead to greater sustainability in these four areas. For example, it asks designers to think about how projects can minimize overall energy use, fulfill society needs, assess value beyond financial profit, or promote cultural diversity.

What is important is that while a different language is being used, the design field draws from the same deep principles of Respect for Persons, Beneficence, and Justice. User-centered design methodologies are the design application of the principle of respect for persons. By including them in every step of the design process (e.g. Discovery, Concept, Development, Execution, and Evaluation), people have the opportunity to consent to the design and the impact it will have on them. The notion of Cost-Benefit (Lidwell, Holden, and Butler 2010, 68) relates directly to the risk/benefit assessment process required by the principle of Beneficence. The concepts of Accessibility (Lidwell et.al. 2010, 16) and Normal Distribution (Lidwell et.al. 2010, 166) are the design practice applications of the principle of Justice. If you are designing just within normal distributions then others who require different modes of accessibility would not benefit from your designs. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs could be used to determine levels of vulnerability in the selection of research participants (Lidwell et.al. 2010, 124).

Conclusion

As emerging practitioners of Respectful Design, we expect you to know and apply the Principles of Respect for Persons, Beneficence, and Justice to your design research and your design practice. The scenario that began this discussion demonstrates how it is not Respectful Design to create technical solutions that lead to social or cultural problems. The challenge will offer you in tutorial discussion is to take your understandings of the readings and discuss how you would approach the same scenario in a Respectful Design way.

References

Lidwell, W, Holden, K & Butler, J 2010, Universal Principles of Design, Rockport Publishers, Gloucester, MA.

Sheehan, N, & Walker, P 2001, 'The Purga Project: Indigenous Knowledge Research', Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 29, 2, pp. 11-17, ERIC, EBSCOhost, viewed 26 February 2011.

US National Institute of Health, 1949, Digital Reprint of Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10, Vol. 2, Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, pp. 181-182, viewed 25 February 2011, <http://ohsr.od.nih.gov/guidelines/nuremberg.html> 

US National Institute of Health, 1979, Digital Reprint of The Belmont Report: Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research, Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, viewed 25 February 2011, <http://ohsr.od.nih.gov/guidelines/belmont.html#goa> 

Citation

Tunstall, E 2011, 'Respectful Design and Ethics', HDC002 Methods of Investigation, Learning materials on Blackboard iLearn, Swinburne University of Technology, February, viewed [insert date].

Swin lecture notes: Methods of Investigation Week 01

Note: If you haven't noticed, I've been neglecting my blog as of the past year. This is mostly due to the fact that while I've been writing quite prolifically, I am having to write lecture notes, accreditation documents, journal articles, grant proposals, and committee proposals. I've probably written two books worth of texts this year. Currently, I am teaching several classes, the undergraduate Methods of Investigation, and the two postgraduate units in the Design Anthropology program, Intro to Design Anthropology and Research Methods for Design. What I thought I would do to make up for my blog neglect is to post my lecture notes on my blog.

This one is for the introduction to the Methods of Investigation course aimed at first year undergraduate students. I paired it with a video of David Butler from the 2009 AIGA Make | Think Conference. I think the students got the message.

Intro: the Changing Landscape of Design

A scenario:

Once upon a time, there was a sole genius designer who would be asked by a client to design something for her (ex. a poster, a room, a product, a website, or even a service). This designer would go into his and her studio and begin sketching and brainstorming, only leaving the studio to go to a museum for inspiration. Maybe, the designer would go out for dinner with friends where they discuss the horrible state of design aesthetics today. Several months later the client would return and be shown a beautiful design, which they would be to intimidated by the designer to ever say she did not like it.

Today, a designer is likely to work with a team, perhaps even an interdisciplinary team. This requires that there be a shared process, so they create a model of a design process as Discovery, Concepting, Development, Execute, and Evaluate. They may do sketching and brainstorming in concepting, but this is preceded by interviews and observations in discovery. They may ask people, including the client, to participate in sketching and brainstorming and even final development with them. When the design is executed, they know it will be successful because they will have conducted evaluations on how it met the needs of the client, who is confident that she has hired the right team for many projects in the future.

QAME, a Framework for a New Theory of Design

In the book the History and Theory of Anthropology (2000), Alan Barnard talks about theory as consisting of a set of questions, assumption, methods, and evidence, QAME. Everyone has a set of questions they seek to answer, make assumptions about how the world works, has methods or a process to answer the questions, and provides evidence to convince other people that one knows what one knows. Design practice has had its own theory, which we can use QAME to make clear:

Q: The question used to be, "How can I [the designer] design a successful communication, object, environment, or interaction?"

A: The assumptions were that the client would provide the brief and the designer would use his and her technical skills, creativity, and pure gut instincts to meet the design challenge. A prime example of this assumption playing out is on the show Project Runway. Henry Roth provides "the brief" or challenge for the week. The designers primarily have only their talent (e.g. technical skills, creativity, and pure gut instinct) to come up with an inspiring design that meets the brief. They create their final design which is evaluated by the panel of judges.

M: Methods would consist of reading or listening to the brief, brainstorming ideas, maybe doing some visual research for inspiration, doing some sketches, and then working on the final layout, prototype, or model.

E: Evidence of success would be winning design awards and/or the client making lots of money off the designs.

Now what has changed in the design landscape today is the definition of success. It is no longer about just winning design awards or making lots of money off a design by any means necessary. Today, a designer has to pay attention to the potential positive and negative impacts of your design decisions on the environment, on society and culture, as well as the economics of the client. Thus the assumptions, methods, and evidence has changed.

New Assumptions: The designer has a client's brief, but now has to reframe it so that he or she makes sure it takes in account what Paul du Gay and others call the "circuit of culture" (1997)-- processes of production (how things are made), consumption (how things are purchased, used, and disposed), regulation (how governments create rules), representation (how things come to symbolize ideas), and identity (how things help shape our understanding and communication of who we are).

The complexity of having to take in account all aspects of the circuit of culture means that the designer can not just rely on technical skills and gut instincts anymore. He or she may be an expert on how things are made, but has to now work with the consumers or users to understand how things are purchases and used, work with lawyers and politicians to understand regulation, work with social scientists and communities to understand how things come to symbolize ideas and shape our senses of who we are. The designer now needs to know how to investigate the aspects of the design brief (who, where, when, how, and what for) so that he or she can justify the design decisions made not just to the client, but to all the other stakeholders who may be affected by those decisions, including the end customer or users, as well as the environment and society.

Methods: Brainstorming and sketching is not enough. The designer has to know how to conduct interviews, observe people, environments, and interactions; use self-documentation and participatory games to include users and clients in the design process. The designer needs to know how to analyze the information gathered and synthesize them into compelling stories, visuals, and performances that convince the client and other stakeholders that the designs will be successful to the client's economics, to principles of sustainability, and to social and cultural respect for peoples. In this unit, you will be exposed to various methods of interviewing, observation, self-documentation and participatory games, analysis, storytelling, visualization, and performance to met the challenges of the new landscape of design.

Evidence: One may still win design awards or make the client lots of money, but today's designer will also need to provide evidence that the design does not harm the environment, that consumers and users will buy, use, and properly dispose of what one has created, and that it enriches the cultural experiences of many people. This unit will help you convince your various clients that your design ideas can accomplish all of those things.

References

Barnard, A 2000, History and Theory of Anthropology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

du Gay, P, Hall, S, Janes, L, Mackay, H, and Negus, K 1997, Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.

Vote for the USNPI's question for the President

Wow, someone tried to sabotage our question by having it removed as inappropriate. I have posted a new question. Search under "economic competitiveness"

The White House is offering the opportunity for The People's questions to be answered two days after the State of the Union address based on popular vote.

I have submitted the following question for Obama:

Given your focus on economic competitiveness, many European and Asian nations have established national design policies for this exact purpose. How could the US design community work with the Government to establish a National Design Policy as well?

Help make this the most popular question (the leader is at 561 votes).

How?

01   Go to http://www.youtube.com/worldview
02   Search for "economic competitiveness" to find our question.
03  "Like" the question by clicking the thumb up symbol.
04   Send this message to friends to do the same.

We have about 48 hours to make this happen. I trust we can do it.

NOTE: We are prepping for Summit 2011 from Sept. 23-24.

AAA opens up the kinds of inquiry in its Long Range Plans

I love being part of the anthropological community in that there are always very active debates and eruptions on the nature of the field. The current eruption surrounds the replacement of the term science with that of public understanding in the AAA's Long Term Plan. The debate brings up painful memories of the divorce at Stanford when I was a graduate student circa 1997-1999. The department split into the Anthropological Sciences and the department of Social and Cultural Anthropology. They are back together again, but I here it is not a good marriage. But anyway, here is my response to the flurry of emails about the change on the Anthrodesign Yahoo Group listserv.

The Psychology Today "article" reminds me that sometimes blogging is not the equivalent of journalism. The blog post is misleading and grossly unfair. The NYTimes article provides a somewhat more measured view, but it still frames the change as a negative "deepening rift." By replacing the word "science" with the term "public understanding" in its long-range plan, the AAAs is expanding its mission such that it no longer mandates a single form of knowledge production (e.g. science) but rather a uniform intention in terms of the outcomes of research. This is not the same as "ditching" science. There is nothing in the statement that says scientific inquiry cannot take place. I still assume that scientific inquiry has something to contribute to public understanding and will continue to do so. What perhaps the shift is indicating, which is causing the consternation, is that scientific inquiry is no longer the only privileged mode of knowledge production in anthropology, in which the change reflects merely the reality of the world today. 

I am currently reading the book, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples by Linda Tuhawia Smith (Zed Books: 1999). It should be required reading for anyone interested in this discussion. The relevant points from the book in relationship to the AAA's decision are how positivism, as part of scientific research, is interested in the "measurement of things" and the procedures of validity and reliability to guarantee their measurement (Smith 1999: 42). Epistomologically and ontologically, Smith argues that these processes, as embedded in research regardless of the specific discipline, inflicts violence on indigenous peoples because it set up "rules of classification, rules of framing (representation), and rules of practice (evaluation)" in which indigenous societies have been brought into the Western system of knowledge as inferior (Smith 1999: 43).

She notes that anthropology is the most hated of disciplines among indigenous peoples because of its theft of indigenous knowledge, artifacts, even bodies. This is in spite of the relationship indigenous communities may have with individual anthropologists. The AAA has made great efforts to engage indigenous peoples as active participants, not just subjects, of anthropological inquiry. The establishment of the Association of Indigenous Anthropologists section in the AAA in 2007 has been a major step.

Again, in my view, this change is not about excluding scientific inquiry, as sometimes you need to measure things depending on the kinds of questions you are asking, but rather about leaving an opening in the kinds of inquiry that takes place in the field as long as it addresses the main goal to "...advance public understanding of humankind in all its aspects." I belive this is a positive direction for the field.

Keeping Hope Alive

Reading the newspapers about the U.S. lately has left me tired and depressed. When Obama was elected, I remember writing to my young nieces and nephews that we will not betray their futures again by the politics of self-centredness and greed. Lately, I've felt on the verge of a dispair for the US and relief that I have somehow escaped it. But then I remembered the words of Cornel West about hope and his claim, "I cannot be an optimist, but I am a prisoner of hope." In a 1997 interview in The Progressive, West borrows his notion of hope from Vaclav Havel:

Cornel West: You have to draw a distinction between hope and optimism. Vaclav Havel put it well when he said "optimism" is the belief that things are going to turn out as you would like, as opposed to "hope," which is when you are thoroughly convinced something is moral and right and just and therefore you fight regardless of the consequences. In that sense, I'm full of hope but in no way optimistic.

In his 2008 Hope on at Tightrope, he states that “When you’re optimistic, you can stand apart to see how things are going. But when you’re full of hope, you’re in the midst of the muck.” Things are so "shitty" because I am in the midst of the muck. This realization is enough to in the words of Jesse, "Keep Hope Alive." 

Academic Speak: Filling in the knowledge blanks

The other day someone hinted that I needed to get some media training because many of the things I say went over the person's head. Today, I was sharing a research question that I am interested in exploring with my partner to see if it could be simplfied. In our discussion, I had the petite epiphany that the "problem" with academic speak is not the use of "big words" but the fact that your knowledge claims have to be specific not general. What do I mean? Let me provide an example.

This is the original research question that I am thinking about exploring:

How can the alignment of high-speed ICT systems and the comparative cultural value systems of Australian Indigenous, white-settler farmer, and Horn-of-Africa migrant communities lead to culture-based innovations in technology platforms that support semi-formal knowledge sharing?

After getting a scratched head, I then eliminated all the adjectives and "big words" to get this more simplifed question:

How can technology be matched with values in order to lead to innovations that support their sharing?

Now in the context of a media interview, the host might ask, "Which technologies? Which kinds of values? What kinds of innovations?" But, I would be expected to answer with some witty anecdote, for example, about some indigenous community using moble phones to teach tracking skills to semi-rural youth. [NOTE: This is just an example and if nobody has done this work, then I claim the idea. Grin.] Then, the show would go to commercial and that would be the end of the story.

In the context of an academic performance, the other scholars would definitely ask, What technologies? What values and whose values? What do I mean when I say values? Which innovations? To benefit whom? What is being shared in context and content? They would expect me to provide definitions with sources on how I came to the ideas behind that simple question and what would I contribute through the question.

Now, because I am making knowledge claims, it is better for me to be clear about those claims the opening question, even if it makes things more convoluted: What technologies? High-speed ICTs. What values? Cultural values. Whose values? Those of Australian Indigenous, white farmer, and Horn of Africa migrant communities. What kinds of innovations? Culture-based ones. What are they sharing? Semi-formal knowledge. Why all the adjectives? Because I are required to make my knowledge claims very narrow to avoid looking ignorate and getting attacked. It may seem to be jargon but that is because the modifiers must flag certain domains of knowledge to which I am contributing.

So the "problem" of academic speak is one of how you fill in the blanks. In the media, it requires a story to fill in air time. In the academic context, it requires a specificity of definitions in order to narrow the bounderies of your knowledge claims against that of others. I think I am pretty adept at both.

Students Wanted: Swinburne Design Anthropology FAQ

Swinburne Design is actively recruiting students who seek to engage in a design praxis based on the understanding the various human value systems and focused on designing tangible conditions for better ways of being with communities, companies, and the environment. Courses begin in late February 2011. Please feel free to contact me via email but also fill out a Enquiry form. But here are a few FAQs that I thought I would address:

What kinds of Design Anthropology programs does Swinburne Faculty of Design offer?

In its Design Anthropology programs, Swinburne offers (1) an onsite Masters of Design in Design Anthropology CRICOS: 073083K, (2) an online Graduate Diploma of Design in Design Anthropology through Swinburne and Open Universities Australia CRICOS: 072750K, and (3) the ability to take individual courses through OUA as well. You can apply for a PhD with an emphasis on Design Anthropology through the Indigenous Knowledge and Design Anthropology research group.

What are the programs' structures?

The Masters program consists of a three unit Core, five Discipline units, and selective four unit Specializations in Indigenous Knowledge, Cross-Cultural Brand Identity Design, and Sustainable Design. The structure recognizes that a grounding in Design Anthropology can lead to many different career paths among the non-proft sector, the governmental sector, or the industry/business sectors.  Visit the Swinburne MDes Design Anthropology page for more information on individual units. 

The online Graduate Diploma program consists of a three unit Core, three Discipline units, and selective two unit Specializations in Indigenous Knowledge, Cross-Cultural Brand Identity Design, and Sustainable Design. Visit the Swinburne or OUA GradDip pages for more information on individual units.

What is the philosophy behind Swinburne's Design Anthropology programs?

The programs are based on the idea that "Design translates values into tangible experiences." Whether in a community, company, or for your own professional practice, one should understand the value systems of the people with whom one engages directly or indirectly. Anthropology has always been a discipline seeking to understand people's value systems and continues to develop a wide range of theories and methods to accomplish those goals. Yet value systems are not experienced in the abstract, but are rather through the interaction with the things, messages, environments, and processes created in the world. Today, these things, messages, environments, and processes have become the knowledge domain of design. Thus, the Swinburne Design Anthropology program focuses on hybrid "designerly" and anthropological knowledge and practices that while has had their origins in industry, are being expanded in academia in order to create new practices for both fields. In the Swinburne Design Anthropology equal focus on developing skills in both thinking and making within every course, with an understanding that both create the conditions for better ways of being.

What are the career opportunities in Design Anthropology?

Employment may be found in areas such as marketing, user experience designers and researchers, branding and consumer insight specialists, government, and social and product innovation consultant. But this is a program designed to help you create new career opportunities.

Why should I enroll in Swinburne's Design Anthropology MDes Program, online GradDip, or take individual courses?

Over the last 10 years, Design Anthropology has become highly professionalized. Even the most entry level positions are asking for credentials and experience in the field. All the programs provide the credentials to demonstrate your knowledge of the field and ability to communicate the value of that knowledge to employers.

Of course, I encourage everyone to come to lovely Melbourne, Australia to gain the full experience of all the units the MDes program and share in building a strong cohort of diverse practitioners. The first cohort will have a special role to play in shaping the future of the Design Anthropology programs. But I do understand that some may have family or work obligations that prevent a 1.5 year move to Australia.

For those, I recommend that you engage in the online Graduate Diploma in Design Anthropology. Offered through OUA for those anywhere in the world (except international students onshore in Australia on student visas), you can complete the courses day or night and at your own pace.

Not ready for a full degree and just wanting to top up your skills? Open Universities Australia OUA offers the option of taking individual units in the Design Anthropology graduate diploma. These include courses on:
HDG530z  Research Methods for Design
HDG531z  Fundamental Design Studio
HDA650z  Introduction to Design Anthropology
HDA651z  History and Theory in Design Anthropology
HDA653z  Designing for Cultural Groups: Kin, Tribes and Communities
HDIK670z Indigenous Knowledge in Global Contexts
HDIK671z Indigenous Approaches of Designing for Cultural Wellness
HDCC670z Introduction to Cross Cultural Brand Identity Strategy
HDCC671z Design Strategy for a Global Context
HDSD670z Principles and Theories of Sustainable Design
HDSD672z Building Sustainable Design Practices

What are the requirements and how do I apply?

Successful completion of a bachelor degree program with the equivalent of an Australian system 60% grade average (or better) from a university recognised for social science or design education is required. Candidates with other tertiary qualifications and relevant industry experience will also be considered. An entrance essay and design/design strategy portfolio is required for all applicants to the program. A design strategy portfolio consists of a series of 1-2 page project case studies that demonstrate the applicant’s holistic approach to formulating and solving social challenges through anthropological and design thinking.

The normal requirement for admission to the Master of Design (Design Anthropology) program and the Graduate Diploma of Design (Design Anthropology) program is a bachelor degree with the equivalent of an Australian system 60% grade average (or better) in a design, social science (especially anthropology), humanities, information science or human-computer interaction discipline.

The Master of Design (Design Anthropology) and the Graduate Diploma of Design (Design Anthroplogy) also provide an entry point for applicants who do not hold a degree but have at least eight years relevant industry experience demonstrating potential to undertake work at this level.

Candidates for the MDes can apply via Swinburne. GradDip candidates can apply via Swinburne or OUA.

What are the costs for 2011?

The per unit indicative course tuition fee for 2011 is $2100 Australian Dollars. The indicative course tuition fee is $16800 Australian Dollars for 2011, based on one year full time load (or 1 EFTSL). The total tuition fee is dependent upon the combination of units of study selected by the student. Fees are reviewed each year and may increase.

Why should I apply now?

Honestly, the viability of the Design Anthropology programs at Swinburne depends on having a strong cohort of students engaged in it. This is important to the University, who has taken a risk in establishing the program. It is important to our industry partners who want to hire our future students. It is important to those of you who want to grow the praxis of design anthropology.


Dori

Eschewing the politics of fear

A few weeks ago, I got involved in a neighborhood effort to stop some high rise development. Yesterday, I officially unjoined the group because of a matter of principle--I eschew the politics of fear. At the center of this decision was the making the flyers for group, which was an exercise in how design makes values tangible to people. In this case, it was my values versus those of the group's leadership.

My values are to approach people from a position of what is best in them. This means their empathy, sense of caring, etc. I also believe that you should give people the facts, indicate your bias, but then let them decide for themselves. This was the approach I took to developing the flyers for the group.

As part of my process, I had read through all the documents and gathered the facts about the development, which had changed from the original group meeting one week before. I realize now that this was not appreciated by the leadership as they kept saying that the facts do not matter (I assume because it was no longer their facts). I then developed two flyers and one poster that took a measured tone and laid out all the facts of the development (980 new residents, 480 dwellings, 10 towers, and 2400 new vehicular movements per day) which was scary enough given it was on only 2.5 hectares.  This is not what the leadership wanted. In fact, although I had volunteered to make the flyers and provided the deadline for when they would be done, a member of the leadership had gone ahead and made his own flyer, which had lots of fear-mongering language, "Fight the Towers" "Kiss your parklands goodbye" "Kiss your property values goodbye." This raised a red flag for me because it broke the cardinal rule about the management of a volunteer labor force: do not waste their time.

My participation blew up when the leader had asked me to misrepresent the facts about how many residents there would be to make it more scary, 1500 new residents  instead of the listed 980. I tried to explain that anyone who would have access to the facts would mistrust the group if they exaggerate their claims. This is where I was told the facts don't matter, that it was more important to get people agitated.

So their values lay in inciting pure NIMBY fear among the residents regardless of the facts and ignorant of the process by which they could really change things: putting more constricting language into the zoning document, not just focusing of the visual plan. The fact that they sent out the leader's fear-mongering flyer confirmed my sense that our values were not aligned. It also confirms the discomfort I felt  in the first meeting because there was a lot of "stranger danger" language about all these new people moving into the neighborhood. As a person of color, I am always on high alert for this kind of language, which does not have to be racist per se, but is definitely zenophobic. So while I am for appropriate development anywhere, I am not for fear mongering, which means this is one fight I will not join.

Beyond this incident, I have come to an ethical decision to not involve myself in agendas that seek to persuade through the politics of fear. Fear is such a base emotion and to use it for any "noble" goal besmirches its nobility. All the political shenanigans in the U.S. and Australia has to do with politicians engaging in the politics of fear, especially when their rational arguments will fail under scrutiny. So many people operate on a platform of fear, but a platform of hope has to be the value system of any group with whom I get involved in the future.

Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in 2011: Design Anthropology and Indigenous Knowledge

Here is the press release on our invitation to host a Bellagio Center Conference in 2011:

Associate Professors Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall and Norm Sheehan have been invited by the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center to host a conference on Design Anthropology Indigenous Knowledge, and Culture-Based Innovation in March 2011.

CIKADA, the Faculty of Design’s Indigenous Knowledge and Design Anthropology research group, will be the first Swinburne group to be honored with such an invitation. Swinburne joins other Australian universities (e.g. Australian National University, Queensland University of Technology, Monash University, University of Sydney, and University of Western Australia, La Trobe University) in winning this honor.  

Aligned with the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center's spirit of innovation to solve social problems, the five-day workshop will bring together 19 participants representing a global network of design anthropologists, Indigenous Knowledge experts, and industry innovation consultants. The workshop will embody the methodologies of design anthropology (e.g. experience grounded ideation and prioritization) and Indigenous Knowledge (e.g. respectful engagement, deep listening, emergence and knowledge tracking) in order to (1) create and disseminate both theoretical and practical knowledge on the methodologies of design anthropology, Indigenous Knowledge, and culture-based innovation, (2) develop collaborative projects demonstrating its value among global communities, and (3) establish a network of scholars/practitioners to scale its ideas. The Rockefeller Foundation intends to observe CIKADA’s process as a best practice for future Bellagio Center conferences. The Rockefeller Foundation treats all Bellagio meetings as part of an ongoing learning process for effective convenings, and CIKADA’s innovative approach will help advance the Center’s legacy of creative and impactful techniques for problem solving.

About Swinburne Faculty of Design’s Indigenous Knowledge and Design Anthropology Research group.

The focus of CIKADA, the Faculty of Design’s Indigenous Knowledge and Design Anthropology Research group, is advancing culture-based innovation. This is defined as a process by which strong cultural values aligned with communities are used to generate innovations in products, services, environments, and processes that are beneficial to those cultural communities.  Because of its focus on groups in contexts where social cohesion is of greater value than individuality, culture-based innovation is a more appropriate approach for generating cultural, industrial, governmental, and social innovation among Indigenous communities, minority communities, migrant communities and communities living in contexts of social and/or environmental disruption.

 

Fave Video: New Spice Scholar, Scholar

Swin Design Anthropology versus U of Dundee Design Ethnography

As some people know, who follow me in FaceBook, I am in the process of getting a Masters of Design in Design Anthropology program accredited at Swinburne for a 2011 launch. Right now, my Course Advisory Committee is reviewing the program. One of the reviewers asked what is the difference between what we are offering at Swinburne and what is offered in the University of Dundee Design Ethnography program. I think the U of Dundee program is great, but the Swinburne program will be focused on something quite different. So I thought I would post my reply to the question, because it helped clarify my thoughts about what the Swinburne program is really about.

The distinctions I make between University of Dundee and Swinburne's programs are related to both programs' QAME, questions, assumptions, methods, and evidence (outcomes in terms of types of students).

Questions

The Dundee program has as its main question how "to gather and represent data and insights on design requirements, and to leverage these into industry design processes." It sets up an instrumental relationship between ethnographic research and design practice, whereby research's value is how it leads to better design. Swinburne's question is "how do the process and artifacts of design help define what it means to be human." The intersection of the fields of design and anthropology are seen as having intrinsic values for exploration of their theories and practices. This exploration can get leveraged back into design processes. Yet by doing so, it actually attempts to change the design process, not just in terms of including users, but by challenging some of the underlying values and principles of the design process in various forms of practice (business, government, and social systems).

Assumptions

The Dundee program conflates ethnography with anthropology, design ethnography with user-centred design, and has a strong high technology focus. The Swinburne program operates under different assumptions for strong ontological reasons coming out its engagement with Indigenous Knowledge. While there is a strong ethnographic focus--as a philosophy of trying to understand and represent knowledge from the perspective of the people engaged in the study--the program explores the wide range of anthropological challenges:

1. The nature-nurture problem (ex. Is it biology or environment that causes humans to respond to something in a particular way?)
2. The evolution problem (ex. How do things expand and change over time?)
3. The internal-external problem (ex. What are the ways in which behaviors are influenced by values or environmental conditions?)
4. The social facts or emergent properties problem (ex. How are people influenced by social forces that emerge from the interaction of humans, but which transcend individuals?)

The user-centred design approach assumes that the subject of design interaction is an individual. This is represented through the use of personas and other methods that focus on individuals as key actors. Swinburne DA is more open to other modalities of being that emphasize the relational group identity as the key way of operating in the world, such as those found in IK. So it will by nature operate differently.

Lastly, the DA Foundation is field-of-application agnostic, meaning it serves as a basis not just for those who want to engage in sustainable design practices, or define institutional values through branding, but also seek to design social systems through indigenous methods. The DA foundation sees all human made objects and processes as technologies for shaping human values and actions. Thus whether it is high tech or low tech, tangible or intangible, the student will know how to analyze and redesign "technologies" with greater alignment between intentions and outcomes.

Methods

Dundee program is focused on ethnography as a method in the UCD process including usability. The Swin DA program engages in a wide variety of anthropological and design methods depending on the specific question one is seeking to answer. If it is a nature/nurture question, one might need to approach it from a biological measurement approach which is not indigenous to the group studied and thus not ethnographic, but it might be how you have to answer the question in the Multisensory Design Anthropology unit. Probably because of my four-fields training, I do engage in Anthropology from its widest range of the scientific to the humanistic without too much bias. I'm pretty poly-vocal.

Student Outcomes

The Dundee program wants to produce user researchers. The Swin DA program wants to produce "big-D" Designers. Meaning, the intention of the Swin program is to create those who can design new human systems of interaction and engagement with business, government, and society, through the design of communications, objects, environments, interactions, and/or experiences. As you state (the reviewer asks that we make sure that students come out prescriptive with great critical thinking skills), the students will be equipped to be prescriptive, yet their prescriptions for future states will be deeply informed by a inclusive, iterative process that respects multiple visions of what could be and ethical in its mitigation of harmful effects and optimization of its benefits to the weakest in network. The Swin DA student will not just want to feed into industry, but will want to revolutionize industry.

What makes me happy is that I know from my teaching at UIC that this approach produces these type of students. I think about the outcomes of my MFA students at UIC and they are changed creators of human interactions. So I am excited about the idea of developing a formal program that will produce a lot more of these students.

VA-Bib Infomercial Video

A Great Bit of Silliness performed by Stella Tan (the TEACHER) and myself.

Script for VA-Bib Infomercial

Today, we are discussing performance as a method of investigation in design research. Here is the script for my Infomercial to demonstrate how you can answer the questions required of any proposal, but do so in an engaging form.

The five questions are:

1. What is your question, concept proposal, or hypothesis?
2. How does it fit within the existing field of design?
3. What are your methods or approach?
4. What are your qualifications to conduct the project?
5. What is your project's contribution to the field of design?

As long as the students answer the five questions in a compelling way, they can express themeselves in any form.

VA-Bib Infomercial

Script by Dori Tunstall

HDC002 Methods of Investigation

17 May 2010

DISCLAIMER: This program is/has been a paid presentation for VA-Bib, Visual Annotated Bibliography and is brought to you by Go-Diva Industries.

TEACHER

Teacher is clearly frustrated marking students’ papers. She marks an exaggerated N on one paper, then another, then another.

Why won’t these design students ever cite proper references?

She puts her head in her hands and drops her head on the table.

VOICE OVER

Wonder how you can get your design students to read and do proper citations?

TEACHER

Teacher looks up to see where the voice is coming from.

 Yes, yes, yes. They make me want to tear my hair out.

 She begins to tear her hair out.

VOICE OVER

 Don’t tear your hair out. I have just what you need.

The Hostess enters the frame. She removes the teacher’s hands from her hair and stands her up. 

HOSTESS

What you need is the VA-Bib?

 TEACHER

The Teacher looks puzzled.

The VA what?

HOSTESS

The Hostess turns to the audience.  

 The VA-Bib or Visual Annotated Bibliography. Invented by Dr. Dori Tunstall in 2006. The VA-Bib is a method of investigation that gets design students reading through designing.

 TEACHER

The Teacher turns to the audience.  

 Reading through designing? How does it do that?

 HOSTESS

Let me tell you how. The Visual Annotated Bibliography combines the scholarly activity of reading/viewing lots of text with the form making activities of design in four easy steps.

 The Hostess holds up a paper listing the steps and the instructions for each.  

 Step one: The student has to collect a list of references and skim them.

Step two: On a business-size card, the student has to write out an annotation for each reference, which includes a descriptive paragraph and an evaluative paragraph. 

Step three: The student has to select an image that visually explains the content of the reference.

Step four: The student has to map the references on a matrix made up of the top two themes and their opposites in the readings.

 The Hostess holds up four fingers and mimics a student enjoying reading and writing.

 So in four easy steps, your design students will get hours of enjoyment reading their texts in order to design the beautiful, handy-dandy VA-Bib.

TEACHER

The Teacher jumps up and down and clasps his or her hands. The sits staring at the hostess when the hostess is talking and then at the audience when she or he is talking.   

Wow, that is really awesome! How and why was the VA-Bib invented?

HOSTESS

Let me show you how.

The Hostess mimics grading and tearing out his or her hair.

Dr. Dori Tunstall had the same problem you had: getting design students to cite proper references or even read books and articles. But she wanted to know why.

 First, she read articles on the challenges of academic writing in the art and design context. 

 The Hostess holds up blank papers as if they are articles.

 She looked at the 2004 writings on the projects of Lockheart, Edwards, Raein and Raatz on Writing Purposefully in Art and Design at the Royal College of the Arts. She followed the 2005 work by Susan Orr, Margo Blythman, and Joan Mullin about how art and design students feel a lack of control or personal connection to writing. She realized that the act of creating scholarship had to recognize what Nigel Cross  (2005) called Designerly Ways of Knowing.

 The Hostess holds blank books (e.g. books wrapped in white paper).

 Then, she looked at the ways in which experts performed knowledge. Inspired by the work of Pierre Bourdieu on the Role of Intellectual in the Modern World, she thought about his ideas on diminishing expertise of the expert and thus how designers can fit within the world of expertise. Their designerly visual orientation can be a form of expertise with the written-verbal.

 This led her to look at the field of visual rhetoric in the book, Defining Visual Rhetoric by Charles Hill and Marguerie Helmers, and articles on C.S. Peirce’s Systems of Decorative, Indicative, and Informative visual rhetoric.

 The Hostess holds paper with C.S. Peirce’s system from article. 

 This helped her to think through how to combine the textual rhetoric with visual rhetoric in an exercise.

 The Hostess holds paper with light bulb.  

This exercise became what is now known as the VA-Bib, the visual annotated bibliography.

 TEACHER

Designerly Ways of Knowing, I had never thought about that. So how will I know that it will work for my students?

 HOSTESS

 The Hostess holds paper with sign says: Only $499.99   

 Besides our money back guarantee, for only $499.99 more we will throw in a series of investigations on how your students might respond to the VA-Bib.

 The Hostess mimics conducting a survey with pen and paper at the door.  

 Our first method will be a survey on how many of your design students like or do not like to read and write in classes and why.

 The Hostess mimics packing a bag of materials (paper balls in plastic bag) and throws it out to the audience.  

 Based on that survey, we will ask about 24 students fill out cultural probes as developed by Gaver et.al in 1999. From that we will get a sense of the creative culture of design students and how they feel about specific types of writing.

 The Hostess mimics following someone and then interviewing.

 From the cultural probes, we will select 12 students of different genders, international/national profiles, and comfort with writing for shadowing and in-context interviews. These more intimate techniques will take us deep into the students thoughts, actions, and feelings about doing the VA-Bib.

 The Hostess mimics counting and moving post it notes.

 We will use a combination of frequency analysis for the survey and affinity diagramming analysis with Hanna’s Post It Note Manifesto for the cultural probes, shadowing, and interviews.

 The Hostess plops down in front of the teacher a bunch of papers.

 Then we will develop a report on the student’s experience of the VA-Bib for you to use as a benchmark against your Student Feedback Survey data each year.

TEACHER

Wow, the VA-Bib, and the studies for only $499.99 more. What a deal! How do I know that I can trust you?

HOSTESS

The Hostess tries to look honest.

 We at Go-Diva Industries have worked in the field of Edutainment for over 25 years. The VA-Bib has been tested globally among a variety of undergraduate and postgraduate studies, here and in the U.S. Dr. Dori Tunstall is a well-recognized expert in the field of Design Anthropology, which combines social science with designerly ways of knowing. And we offer a money back guarantee.

TEACHER

Okay, I’m convinced. But what will be the benefits of the VA-Bib for my students and the world of design in general?

HOSTESS

 The Hostess mimics the actions: being bored, cutting and pasting, and feeling happy.

Do your students find reading and writing boring? The VA-Bib can change that by turning reading into a fun, engaging design-making project. Cutting and pasting, selecting images and words, the VA-Bib makes reading feel like coloring with crayons as a child.

 The Hostess holds her head like she is confused, but then mimics making out the grid with the cards.

 Do your students have a hard time organizing their thoughts? The VA-Bib can change that by showing them how to map their complex thoughts into a simple 2 X 2 grid for easy communication. 

 The Hostess looks sad and humiliated and then proud.

 Have your students ever felt like the world of academia does not respect the way they express themselves? The VA-Bib can change that by showing that visual content has the same conceptual interpretation and communication power as textual content.

 The VA-Bib has provided many benefits for other design students all over the world, and will provide these benefits to your students as well.

TEACHER

The Teacher looks at the audience

 Ok, I’m sold on the VA-Bib. How do I get some for my students?

HOSTESS

The Hostess holds up the phone number.

 Just call 03 5555 5555 and order your VA-Bib kit for only $49,999.99. That’s right, for only $49,999.99 you get the instruction booklet, business cards, and poster board with pre-drawn matrix for over 500 students.  Just call 03 5555 5555.

If you act now, you also get for only $499.99 the VA-Bib student evaluation package.

Just call 03 5555 5555.

That’s right for less than $50,500 you get the VA-Bib Kit and student evaluation package. So call 03 5555 5555

Operators are standing by.

Dori's Commencement Address Swinburne FoD 24 March 2010

The graduation speech I gave Tuesday is getting rave reviews from parents, the graduating students, and my fellow colleagues. Thought I would share with you.

******************

When one hears graduation speeches, they are often full of lofty clichés about paths, journeys, dreams, wishes, steps, achievement, bright futures, etc. You will hear none of that from me.  But the question remains of what to say to all of you who graduate tonight. What to say to your family and friends who celebrate with you? For the past few months, I have been reading all of the famous authors to draw inspiration: Shakespeare, Confucius, even Dr. Seuss.  I knew I wanted to say something about how one designs not just objects, communications, environments, or interactions, but how one designs a life worth living. Finally, I came upon a meditation on youth in Deng Ming-Dao’s 365 Tao Daily Mediations. His words expressed simply that which I wished people shared with me at my university graduation. So here are his guidelines for young people.  There are seven of them, which I will now share with you.

Number 01: “Remember that you are always your own person. Do not surrender your mind, heart, or body to any person.”

This one is very challenging to put into practice because we often want to please other people: our family, our friends, our bosses and colleagues, our lovers and spouses, and children. But if you are not your own person then there is no YOU to like, love, respect, or honour. To be able to quote some Shakespeare, “To thy own self be true.” Out of the seven, this one is the most important because the design of a life worth living requires that the designer understands and stays true to his or her intentions, although the form or medium of expression changes.

Number 02: “Maintain your health with sound diet, hygiene, exercise, and clean living.”

It is so easy to allow the stresses of the world or the ease of things to stop us for doing the most basic thing in life: taking care of oneself. If you are not healthy, then it becomes harder for you to help other people, to give your gifts and talents to the world, because you have to focus all your energy on just being well.  Design requires the connection of the mind to the hand. If your physical tools are not in working, then it is more difficult to design a life worth living.

Number 03: “Money is never more important than your body and mind, but you must work and support yourself.”

There is a wonderful old song, sung by Billie Holiday that I grew up listening to. Don’t worry I’m not going to sing it. “Mama may have. Papa may have. But God bless the child that’s got his own. That’s got his own.” The greatest security in the world is the knowledge that you can take care of yourself in any situation. The fact that you decided to study design, a somewhat practical field, means that you understand that to some extent. You want to be able to take care of yourselves, even take care of your families. But that doesn’t mean selling yourself out. Here you need to go back to number 01 again. But it means that you should feel able to rely upon yourself to provide for your needs, for this provides the materials for designing a life worth living.

Number 04: “Choose your friends and living situations carefully, for they will influence you.”

A friend is someone whom you like because you like yourself when you are with him or her. If some one makes you not like yourself, they are not your friends. Get rid of them.  Go back to number 01: be your own person. You now have the opportunity to develop new living situations, make sure it is around people who are kind, active, happy, and caring, so that you will remain kind, active, happy, and caring people that I know you all are.

Number 05: “A good education is always an asset.”

As an Associate Dean and an Associate Professor, let me repeat that, “A good education is always an asset.” Your graduation here today means that you already know that one, but remember your education does not stop tonight. You must continue to educate yourself in order to be able to face new challenges with new knowledge.  Hmmm…that sounded a bit like a cliché.  Let me keep going.

Number 06: “Everyday, make your own decisions. Everything you do will have irrevocable effects upon your life.”

Please, please. I say pretty pretty please, do not let other people make decisions for you. You will always regret it—not because their decisions might be bad, or that the outcomes will not be positive, but because to develop your own sense of judgement you need the praise of a good decision and the wisdom of a bad decision.  You wouldn’t let anyone else make a decision on your final design, so why would one do so with the design of something as important as the final design of your life.

Number 07: “Know evil, but do not do evil yourself. Remember, there is a way out the delusions of life.”

Some people think it is best to go through life innocently shielded from the bad in the world. But how can you protect others if you are not able to recognize evil? How do you not do evil if you don’t know what it is? If you remain true to yourself and your own purpose in life, you will avoid the delusions of life, or at least won’t stay deluded for a long time. 

So, you are now continuing the journey, on a path, of dreams, wishes, and desire in order to create a bright future full of achievement. Oops… sorry, it’s like the graduation speech virus that makes you say that.  Swinburne has helped provide you with some of the things necessary for you to design a life worth living. And remember that it is YOUR LIFE that you are designing. It is you who has to find meaning in the “worth” of it. You now face the greatest design challenge that you will unfortunately continue to face for all of your life—that is designing of a life worth living.  If we at Swinburne have done anything right of these past few years, we know that you are up for the challenge. So go and design a life of stunning beauty for you to enjoy and for others to be inspired.

Thank you.

Dori Tunstall

24 March 2010

---

[1] Ming-Dao, Deng 1992, 365 Tao Daily Meditations. Harper San Francisco: New York, p. 239.

Dog poop trash can in Tivoli park, Ljubljana. There is even a storage for trash bags under the 'ears' of the bin so there is no excuse for cleaning after you dog.

The Social Nudge: Pick It Up Poop Campaign

In the book the Nudge (Penguin 2009)  by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, they discuss how to nudge people into making better choices through better choice architecture. In the third chapter called "Following the Herd," they provide an example of how public officials can possibly change behavior by "emphasizing the statistical reality" of how many more people tend to do the right thing, in this case related to the number of smokers. They explain a case in Montana:

Montana applies the same approach to cigarette smoking with an advertisement suggesting that "most (70 percent) of Montana teens are tobacco free." The strategy has produced big improvements in the accuracy of social perceptions and also statistically significant decreases in smoking (p. 74). 

From their book and my own thinking about how to tackle my own public menace, people not picking up their dog's poop in the park. I've decided to see if I can nudge my neighbors into doing the right thing. So I will launch tomorrow (for it is raining tonight and will ruin the posters), the Pick It Up Poop Reduction Campaign. Using the power of graphical images, statistical reality, and panopticon paranoia, I hope to shame my neighbors into picking up their dog's poop.

Each day when I walk my dog, I will document the poop left by my neighbors. I will then update the poster with an image of their poop and post it around the park where dog owners congregate (i.e. the park trash cans, plastic bag stations that the Council provides for free so you don't have to buy your own, fence doors, and water fountains). Luckily, the parks all had their maintenance this week, so I have a relatively clean slate to work with. I will I could do a more scientific approach by counting all the poop before the campaign and then following up in a week or two weeks, and then doing a guerrilla survey with dog owners, but I have no time or graduate students to do it. So stay tuned to hear my anecdotal results.

Danish design education 02: U of Aalborg

Then next stop on my Danish Design education tour was the University of Aalborg with whom Swinburne has an official relationship. My visit was focused on the Service Design course in the School of Architecture and Design. The course is led by Nicola Morelli. Nicola and I go way back to the 2006 Wonderground Conference in Lisbon. He is one of the most informed and articulate proponents of service design.

Anyone who reads my blog knows of my skepticism of service design. Not so much with the idea that designers should be involved with the design of service systems as well as objects, but with the underlying conceit that they are better at it than anyone else, especially someone with an MBA. I just find this pose very disrespectful and naive of the fact that you can have the most brilliantly designed service concept, but without a feasible business plan, it doesn't mean anything.  And I have yet to meet a designer who can produce a better business plan than someone with an MBA.:)

But in this case I suspended my skepticism because we have courses in Service Design at Swin and so I want to find partners to boost our capabilities in this area. I am glad I did because what I experienced was amazing.

I had the pleasure of attending the half-day final presentations of the one of the Service Design course student teams. The project was to design services that enable multidisciplinary collaboration within the design school. The students did not give a boring Powerpoint presentation, but rather the students acted out both the challenges of collaboration and their service solutions with lo to mid-fidelity prototypes as props (i.e. a set of collaboration skill posters, a collaboration website which allows people to book a physical play room, and a set of collaboration games in boxes and with instructions that teams can use to work through collaboration issues). It was a brilliant performance followed up with a more formal presentation of the team's reflective learnings from the process. It seems that the biggest challenge in creating Schon's reflective practitioners is getting them to reflect during the process, not just afterwards.

The students then left the room and were brought in one-by-one to answer questions in front of the review panel of Nicola; Marianne Stokholm, who is one of the most brilliant women I've met, and  Sven Nielsen. This part was a bit rocky because of the different styles of questioning used by the panel, but it was an interesting process to observe. When the individual interviews were done, the entire team was brought in and told what their group grade would be. 

I was really impressed by the systemic thinking of the student team who weaved together solutions based on an understanding of what the core product was (i.e. to build greater collaborative capacity within the students who will get jobs in collaborative environments), the markets (ex. design schools although they missed the opportunity to expand it to other collaborative environments), the technology (i.e. both low tech and high tech, both tangible and virtual), and the organization (i.e. how all this relates to the objectives of the University, Danish education policy, and how you engage both students and faculty in collaboration). I was impressed by the faculty members on their ability to set up evaluative criteria around such complex projects and be fair in those evaluations.

Nicola and I both discussed the desire to have more exchanges between the two universities, perhaps, during their four-week mini projects. The best area for exchange will be doctoral students as an opportunity for shared research but also teaching opportunities. Again, I look forward to future collaborations.

Danish Design Education: Part One SPIRE

As many of you know, I traveled quite extensively in 2009 (US, China, Denmark, Australia). I did about four continents in three months, which did give me Premier Executive status on United Airlines. :) One of the great pleasures of travel (on University business) is that I get to find out what other design schools are doing exciting things. In Denmark, I got to visit SPIRE at the Mads Clausen Institute at the University of Southern Denmark and the Architecture and Design department at Aalborg University. First, I must say that Jacob Buur and Nicola Morelli were perfect hosts in Denmark. When you are extremely tired from travel (this was the last trip of my global tour) and in new two a town where you don't speak the language, having a perfect host makes all of the difference. So thank you Jacob and Nicola, I promise to extend the same welcome when you visit in Melbourne.

First, I will say that I was truly impressed by the work at SPIRE and Aalborg, where there is a lot of cross-pollination. I hope to be able to structure the curriculum at Swinburne so that we have the opportunity to conduct more exchanges between students and faculty at both institutions. One of the things that I realized is that the scale of Swinburne is off the charts compared to any Danish design education institution, so any exchanges would require that we scatter our students among many institutions.

SPIRE

Jacob Buur is the quietly dynamic leader who came from Danfoss to run  SPIRE . I first encountered SPIRE at the 2008 Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference in Copenhagen. At first blush then, I thought that their work felt very ID@IIT or D-Schoolish. But now having had the opportunity to have a closer look, there are some significant differences, which makes their work more exciting. SPIRE is a "participatory innovation research centre" that brings together the Danish tradition of participatory design, with design anthropology, user interaction studies, and user innovation studies. Three things makes SPIRE unique and very appealing to me.

The first is their emphasis on the importance of the tangibility of knowledge. They have this wonderful project on the tangible business model, where students create these games/models that outline the possibilities of business. I assume this comes from the Danish craft/engineering culture where the knowledge gained through the hands is still valued.

I always make the statement that "Design translates values into tangible experiences." The fact is that business models are value statements and the ability to translate them into tangible forms serves two purposes. First, as Jacob describes, the tangible model allows for iterative discussions on the "prototype" of the business itself. Second, and most importantly to me, the making of the business model into a tangible game allows more people to participate in its formation. Business models are always approached in the distancing language of economics. By giving the key aspects of the business an interactive form, you could engage people who are economically illiterate into the process of defining the values of a business.

The second thing is their advancement of the use of video in the design process. Having come to user-centered design through E-lab/Sapient, which had at the time, in my opinion, one of the most sophisticated use of video in the ethnographic research/design process, I have generally been unimpressed with how design institutions have used video. As side note, Jacob and I had this wonderful conversation about how both coming from leading UX/PD companies like Danfoss and E-lab/Sapient, the work that we are doing in the education sector seems so far behind what we did in industry, yet at the same time, industry (mainstream) is not ready for the types of students that we are producing, whose thinking and practice is far beyond what company managers are wanting. But I digress, I was impressed by their Video Design Specs project, which seeks to develop video as "design material" for action, not just for user observational insight or design inspiration. I recommend getting Salu Ylirisku and Jacob Burr's Designing with Video (2007, Springer Press) to read more on the topic. 

The third thing is their truly transdisciplinary focus. When you meet the "employees" at SPIRE, they are truly a mix of designers, engineers, linguists, anthropologists, and business managers. The projects at SPIRE reflect in the conceptualization and their final output the hybridization of perspectives and attempts to find a common language beyond those of the "home" disciplines. It helps that many of the senior leadership are really quire transdisciplinary figures themselves (official shout out to Jacob, of course, Christian Claus, Wendy Gunn, and Ben Matthews). Any design institution that collaborates with a theater group, Dacapo, understands transdisciplinarity

Again, I am deeply impressed with the work at SPIRE and intend to establish forms of collaboration with them in the near future. Next is part two: Aalborg University and Service Design

Happy Holidays

We have not gotten to New Years resolutions yet, but my main task will be to write the In Design We Trust book for next year. In order to not get too behind on my blogging, I will post some of the ideas here for comment and consideration, beginning next year. Before the New Year, I have one post I want to do on my visit to Denmark to visit the SPIRE center at the University of Southern Denmark, run by Jacob Buur, and the University of Aalborg's School of Architecture and Design, where I hung out with my friend Nicola Morelli. They are doing some wonderful work at both places that I wish to highlight. But until then, here as a photo that looks like Christmas, unlike the rain here in Melbourne.

It is the Holiday Square in the Danish town of Aalborg

U.S. Design Policy Summit on Tuesday

I'm facilitating the U.S. National Design Policy Summit on Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2009. I'm really excited about the program. I hope that you will watch live from 9:30am to 3:30pm via http://www.ustream.tv/channel/us-design-policy

Program

09:00am–09:30am    
Breakfast reception  (Sponsored by IIDA and SEGD)

09:30am–10:15am    
Greetings, introductions, overview of 2009 accomplishments

10:15am–10:45am    
Guest speaker via video, David Kappos, Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and a policy adviser

10:45am–11:45am    
Design policy activities assessment exercise

11:45am–01:00pm    
Lunch and the People’s design policy Q&A (Sponsored by IIDA and SEGD)

01:00pm–02:00pm    
2010 Design policy activities prioritization exercise

02:00pm–02:15pm    
Break and the People’s design policy Q&A

02:15pm–03:15pm   
Sharing of triple bottom line design case studies

03:15pm–03:30pm    
the People’s design policy Q&A

03:30pm–04:30pm    
Discussion of activities stewardship and commitments (Closed session)