Brick a Brick: Using Applied Improvisation to Build Empathy in Design Facilitators

The surge in design thinking and people-centered design worldwide has given rise to a new role for designers: design facilitator. A design facilitator is leading diverse groups of participants through the design process, providing opportunities for them to share their perspectives, and guiding them as they contribute to design solutions. These engagements require highly developed interpersonal skills, but few interventions exist to aid designers in cultivating these skills. Other disciplines have turned to applied improvisation, an approach derived from improvisational theatre, to improve communication, collaboration and other dimensions of social-emotional learning. This research examines how an applied improvisation approach might be utilized to cultivate empathy in design facilitators. To answer this question, participatory action research was conducted with design facilitators, applied improvisation facilitators, and an instructional designer. Interviews with facilitators from both contexts resulted in a model of empathy, evidence in support of the applied improvisation approach, and perceived barriers to implementation of applied improvisation in the design context. A participatory design session with facilitators from both contexts explored the specific actions that contribute to empathic facilitation and generated conceptual prototypes of an empathic facilitation training program. Finally, primary and secondary research were synthesized to create a solution prototype that was evaluated by an instructional designer and submitted to design conferences for peer review. The outcome of this research is a conceptual framework for a training program entitled, Improv for Empathic Facilitation. The solution is founded upon an experiential learning model and scaffolds learners through developing skills in four competencies: self-awareness, social awareness, collaboration, and facilitating with empathy. In addition to applied improvisation-based training, learners engage in simulated facilitation scenarios in order to practice their skills. Finally, the program utilizes a series of formative assessments by engaging in critical reflection throughout and culminates in a summative assessment at the conclusion. Criteria for the assessments is learner-generated throughout the program, honoring both their experience and expertise. This research provides a model of how to explore the cultivation of interpersonal skills in design facilitators. Additionally, by presenting its potential impact on interpersonal skills rather than cognitive skills, this research highlights a new dimension of how the fields of design and improvisation might positively impact each other

Creativity, play and transgression: children transforming spatial design

Spatial designers, who engage children in their design process, most often frame children in this context as experts in their own lives. Findings from a study based at the University of Sheffield, point to new understandings of this participatory role, in which children move towards the role of designer. Drawing on interviews including visual methods with 16 spatial designers and guided by phenemonography, the paper seeks to represent the designers’ perspectives on the under-explored area of child–designer interactions. Findings suggest that the designers understand these interactions to comprise a reciprocal and co-created space – a sphere of behaviours, actions and ways of being which together becomes an enabler of change. It is proposed that what Bhabha (The Location of Culture, 1994) refers to as a ‘Third Space’ in which the ‘dominant culture might be temporarily subverted and its structural systems of power and control renegotiated’ can be re-imagined in this co-design context. The paper weaves together theoretical discourse and empirical illustrations of perceived creativity, play and transgression, which – at their intersection – support a potential transformation of understandings of children as co-designers and of the design process itself

Deo Leadership: How Design Executive Officers Lead Creative Organisations in Korea

The purpose of this study was to investigate how Design Executive Officers (DEOs) manage creative employees. It differs from prior leadership research in creative industries in three ways; it focused on DEOs, specified their influences on organisational level, and discovered Korea-specific insights. We conducted in-depth interviews with the seven DEOs who have run their own design agencies for over ten years and hired more than 50 employees in Korea. Our thematic analysis of the 287 quotations collected revealed that 75% of the quotations fit the existing leadership framework and the remaining 25% are two unique attributes of DEO leadership: attitudes toward deeds and business growth. Our findings contribute to the academic discussion on design driven entrepreneurship by shedding light on the changing role of designers in the entrepreneurial landscape

Situated Sketching and Enactment for Pervasive Displays

International audienceSituated sketching and enactment aim at grounding designs in the spatial, social and cultural practices of a particular place. This is particularly relevant when designing for public places in which human activities are open-ended, multi-faceted, and difficult to anticipate, such as libraries, train stations, or commercial areas. In order to investigate situated sketching and enactment, we developed Ébauche. It enables designers to collaboratively sketch interfaces, distribute them across multiple displays and enact use cases. We present the lessons learned from six situated sketching and enactment workshops on public displays with Ébauche, and a controlled study with 8 pairs of designers who used paper and Ébauche. We describe how participants leveraged the place, and how paper or Ébauche influenced the integration of their designs in the place. Looking at the design outcomes, our results suggest that paper leads to broader exploration of ideas and deeper physical integration in the environment. Whereas Ébauche leads to more refined sketches and more animated enactments

SUPPORTING TEAM INNOVATION WITH DESIGN THINKING COGNITIVE STRATEGIES

Innovation is a 21st-century skill needed to design new systems, solve challenging problems, and develop novel solutions. Design Thinking (DT) is a tool used to support team innovation. In this experiment, 145 students (47 teams) used one of two DT methods during a semester-long project to come up with an innovative solution to one of the UNESCO 17 sustainable development goals. The key experimental manipulation was during the DT Ideate phase where teams brainstormed potential solutions. Teams either used a baseline DT Ideate strategy or an expanded one with additional prompts during a 10-minute period. Results indicated that teams using the expanded DT Ideate strategy generated 57% more solutions than those in the baseline DT condition. The solutions were content analyzed for innovativeness and the final proposed solutions were rated by other teams. Implications for implementing design thinking are discussed

How Engineering Teams Select Design Concepts: A View Through the Lens of Creativity

While concept selection is recognized as a crucial component of the engineering design process, little is known about how concepts are selected during this process or what factors affect the selection of creative concepts. To fill this void, content analysis was performed on student engineering design team discussions during a concept selection task. Our results indicate that student design teams typically focus on the technical feasibility of concepts during the selection process. However, teams that identified useful elements of ideas or continued to generate new ideas during this process had a tendency towards selecting creative ideas. These results add to our understanding of team-based decision-making during concept selection and highlight the need for encouraging creativity throughout the concept selection process

Pulling Back the Curtain on the Wizards of Oz

The Wizard of Oz method is an increasingly common practice in HCI and CSCW studies as part of iterative design processes for interactive systems. Instead of designing a fully-fledged system, the ‘technical work’ of key system components is completed by human operators yet presented to study participants as if computed by a machine. However, little is known about how Wizard of Oz studies are interactionally and collaboratively achieved in situ by researchers and participants. By adopting an ethnomethodological perspective, we analyse our use of the method in studies with a voice-controlled vacuum robot and two researchers present. We present data that reveals how such studies are organised and presented to participants and unpack the coordinated orchestration work that unfolds ‘behind the scenes’ to complete the study. We examine how the researchers attend to participant requests and technical breakdowns, and discuss the performative, collaborative, and methodological nature of their work. We conclude by offering insights from our application of the approach to others in the HCI and CSCW communities for using the method

Searching for design energy: re-visiting my generative process using selection, evaluation, and morphing to generate new ideas

My interests lie primarily with the energy behind the design of products. In pursuing the question of that energy and its potential, it has become clear to me that prior to any claims regarding transferability it is vital to first document and analyze the components that comprise the whole of design energy. Design Energy, in this case, is the creativity and intellect behind the process of design, from idea generation to production. I have focused on the creation of a method for documenting the design process that incorporates scans and images and other process data by utilizing AutoCAD, 3DMax, Photoshop, Morpheus, and various animation creating software. Through this method I re-visited my generative process in three phases; one by searching and selecting snapshots of my creative work, two by manipulating these found images using morphing software, and three by comparing and mimicking aspects of other design processes as explained by Nigel Cross. By looking back at my process I was able to reevaluate my steps through comparing them to other processes and through my analysis method of using morphing software which led to new idea generation