Making Exhibitions, Brokering Meaning: Designing new connections across communities of practice

New media museum exhibits often see designers representing the research of expert content providers. Despite perceptions that such exhibits provide museum visitors with a greater depth and range of experience, differences in knowledge and practice between designers and content providers can see content development become an unruly, competitive process in which audience experience, digital mediation, visualisation techniques and meaning become contested territory. Drawing on Etienne Wenger’s theory of “communities of practice”, this paper argues that designers’ advocacy for audiences and distance from exhibition content well positions them to broker interdisciplinary goal setting so that exhibitions observe the representational objectives of content providers and meet the needs and preferences of museum visitors. A wide range of design literature already discusses the pragmatic benefits and ethical importance of user-centered design, while the literature on co-design suggests that designed outcomes are more successful if the design process considers the interests of all stakeholders. These discussions can be compelling, but the inherent challenges in engaging others’ perspectives and knowledge in the design process are less acknowledged, Wenger’s ideas on the social dynamics of group enterprise offering designers valuable insights into the actuality of negotiating designed outcomes with non-designer stakeholders. The paper has two main aspects. The first outlines the theory of communities of practice, focusing on the brokering of knowledge and practice between disciplines. This discussion frames an analysis of the design process for two museum exhibitions. Representing an original application of Wenger’s ideas, the discussion recognises the unique role of the designed artifact in brokering information visualization processes, transcending the actions and intentions of individual stakeholders. While accepting there are successful examples of interdisciplinary exchange in various areas of design, the interpretation of examples via Wenger contributes useful principles to the theorisation of co-design with non-designer stakeholders. Keywords: Information visualization; New media museum exhibits; Multidisciplinary projects; Communities of Practice; Brokering; User-centered design; Co-Design; Etienne Wenger</p

Designing Sugaropolis:digital games as a medium for conveying transnational narratives

In this paper, the authors present a case study of ‘Sugaropolis’: a two-year practice-based project that involved interdisciplinary co-design and stakeholder evaluation of two digital game prototypes. Drawing on the diverse expertise of the research team (game design and development, human geography, and transnational narratives), the paper aims to contribute to debates about the use of digital games as a medium for representing the past. With an emphasis on design-as-research, we consider how digital games can be (co-)designed to communicate complex histories and geographies in which people, objects, and resources are connected through space and time

Co-evolving problems and solutions: The case of novice interaction designers in Botswana and the UK

This paper establishes that problem-solution co-evolution is observed in novice interaction designers in the UK and Botswana. However, in the majority of Botswana protocols we could see a new type of co-evolution, which we termed solution-problem co-evolution. Solution- problem co-evolution uses ‘off the shelf’’ solutions to structure the problem space. Both types of co-evolution are described and discussed in this paper. The findings are drawn from the analysis of 18 (5 UK, 13 Botswana) 1-hour design protocols from two cohorts of students studying the same undergraduate Open University Interaction Design module, one in Botswana and one in the UK. Participants were required to complete a medical interaction design task under controlled conditions. We based our analysis on a coding scheme that was developed specifically for this protocol study. The coding scheme is based on Schön’s seminal work on reflective practice. It visually represents activities in the problem and solutions spaces

Co-designing co-design. Shifting the culture of practice in healthcare

To date design applied in the context of health care has generally focused on the design of products. This paper describes a project ‘frailsafe’ and suggests that in the future design will play a new and increasingly important role in shifting the culture and the way that particular practices in health are performed. frailsafe is a project that aims to improve measured quality of care for frail older patients admitted to NHS hospitals with medical emergencies. The project provided a platform for multidisciplinary working and enhanced communication on what constitutes good care for older patients. The research exemplified the concept of ‘all teach, all learn’ where the design team engaged in the co-development with the frailsafe network of effective prototypes of frailsafe. Ultimately the objective was to empower hospital improvement teams to adopt a co-design culture for creative local implementation of frailsafe

Participatory design facilitates Person Centred Nursing in service improvement with older people: a secondary directed content analysis

Aims and objectives: To explore, using the example of a project working with older people in an outpatient setting in a large UK NHS Teaching hospital, how the constructs of Person Centred Nursing are reflected in interviews from participants in a Co-design led service improvement project. Background: Person Centred Care and Person Centred Nursing are recognised terms in healthcare. Co-design (sometimes called participatory design) is an approach that seeks to involve all stakeholders in a creative process to deliver the best result, be this a product, technology or in this case a service. Co-design practice shares some of the underpinning philosophy of Person Centred Nursing and potentially has methods to aid in Person Centred Nursing implementation. Research design: The research design was a qualitative secondary Directed analysis. Methods: Seven interview transcripts from nurses and older people who had participated in a Co-design led improvement project in a large teaching hospital were transcribed and analysed. Two researchers analysed the transcripts for codes derived from McCormack & McCance's Person Centred Nursing Framework. Results: The four most expressed codes were as follows: from the pre-requisites: knowing self; from care processes, engagement, working with patient's beliefs and values and shared Decision-making; and from Expected outcomes, involvement in care. This study describes the Co-design theory and practice that the participants responded to in the interviews and look at how the co-design activity facilitated elements of the Person Centred Nursing framework. Conclusions: This study adds to the rich literature about using emancipatory and transformational approaches to Person Centred Nursing development, and is the first study exploring explicitly the potential contribution of Co-design to this area. Implications for practice: Methods from Co-design allow older people to contribute as equals in a practice development project, co-design methods can facilitate nursing staff to engage meaningfully with older participants and develop a shared understanding and goals. The co-produced outputs of Co-design projects embody and value the expressed beliefs and values of staff and older people

Designing a complex intervention for dementia case management in primary care

Background: Community-based support will become increasingly important for people with dementia, but currently services are fragmented and the quality of care is variable. Case management is a popular approach to care co-ordination, but evidence to date on its effectiveness in dementia has been equivocal. Case management interventions need to be designed to overcome obstacles to care co-ordination and maximise benefit. A successful case management methodology was adapted from the United States (US) version for use in English primary care, with a view to a definitive trial. Medical Research Council guidance on the development of complex interventions was implemented in the adaptation process, to capture the skill sets, person characteristics and learning needs of primary care based case managers. Methods: Co-design of the case manager role in a single NHS provider organisation, with external peer review by professionals and carers, in an iterative technology development process. Results: The generic skills and personal attributes were described for practice nurses taking up the case manager role in their workplaces, and for social workers seconded to general practice teams, together with a method of assessing their learning needs. A manual of information material for people with dementia and their family carers was also created using the US intervention as its source. Conclusions: Co-design produces rich products that have face validity and map onto the complexities of dementia and of health and care services. The feasibility of the case manager role, as described and defined by this process, needs evaluation in ‘real life’ settings