How was it for you? Experiences of participatory design in the UK health service

Improving co-design methods implies that we need to understand those methods, paying attention to not only the effect of method choices on design outcomes, but also how methods affect the people involved in co-design. In this article, we explore participants' experiences from a year-long participatory health service design project to develop ‘Better Outpatient Services for Older People’. The project followed a defined method called experience-based design (EBD), which represented the state of the art in participatory service design within the UK National Health Service. A sample of participants in the project took part in semi-structured interviews reflecting on their involvement in and their feelings about the project. Our findings suggest that the EBD method that we employed was successful in establishing positive working relationships among the different groups of stakeholders (staff, patients, carers, advocates and design researchers), although conflicts remained throughout the project. Participants' experiences highlighted issues of wider relevance in such participatory design: cost versus benefit, sense of project momentum, locus of control, and assumptions about how change takes place in a complex environment. We propose tactics for dealing with these issues that inform the future development of techniques in user-centred healthcare design

Investigating situated cultural practices through cross-sectoral digital collaborations: policies, processes, insights

The (Belfast) Good Friday Agreement represents a major milestone in Northern Ireland's recent political history, with complex conditions allowing for formation of a ‘cross-community’ system of government enabling power sharing between parties representing Protestant/loyalist and Catholic/nationalist constituencies. This article examines the apparent flourishing of community-focused digital practices over the subsequent ‘post-conflict’ decade, galvanised by Northern Irish and EU policy initiatives armed with consolidating the peace process. Numerous digital heritage and storytelling projects have been catalysed within programmes aiming to foster social processes, community cohesion and cross-community exchange. The article outlines two projects—‘digital memory boxes’ and ‘interactive galleon’—developed during 2007–2008 within practice-led PhD enquiry conducted in collaboration with the Nerve Centre, a third-sector media education organisation. The article goes on to critically examine the processes involved in practically realising, and creatively and theoretically reconciling, community-engaged digital production in a particular socio-political context of academic-community collaboration

My boy builds coffins. Future memories of your loved ones

The research is focus on the concept of storytelling associated with product design, trying to investigate new ways of designing and a possible future scenario related to the concept of death. MY BOY BUILDS COFFINS is a gravestone made using a combination of cremation’s ashes and resin. It is composed by a series of holes in which the user can stitch a text, in order to remember the loved one. The stitching need of a particular yarn produced in Switzerland using some parts of human body. Project also provides another version which uses LED lights instead of the yarn. The LEDs - thanks to an inductive coupling - will light when It will be posed in the hole. The gravestone can be placed where you want, as if it would create a little altar staff at home. In this way, there is a real connection between the user and the dearly departed

The mythological power of hospitality leaders? : a hermeneutical investigation of their reliance on storytelling

Aims to explore how senior leaders in the hospitality industry use storytelling to disseminate their vision to employees. To illustrate how hermeneutics can be used as a method for the interpretation of qualitative data in hospitality management research. A purposeful criterion based sample design was constructed and after a period of sensitisation to their organisations, twenty phenomenological interviews with high level international hospitality industry leaders were conducted. These interviews are analysed using a hermeneutical framework. Storytelling is being used as a strategic method of communication and is fundamental to leadership in the contemporary commercial hospitality industry; stories are used to strengthen and revitalise current norms and values. Stories penetrate organisations and tap into the emotions of employees in order to inspire action and understanding.Hermeneutics is applied clearly and concisely and the paper demonstrates how hermeneutics could easily be adapted for other projects. Clear direction for further research is suggested, exploring the efficaciousness of stories from the listeners' rather than narrator's perspective. This paper does not teach managers how to tell stories, or even make them better storytellers; however, it highlights how storytelling is used by leaders at the apex of the commercial hospitality industry to develop and enhance organisational culture. Within hospitality management research, storytelling has mostly been ignored both as a management tool and as a form of data collection; similarly hermeneutics as a means of data analysis does not feature in the hospitality management literature

Innovative collaborative design in international interaction design summer schools

[About the book]: Design is changing, and to educate the next generation of designers, these changes need to be addressed. In light of the growing role research and interdisciplinary collaboration play in contemporary design performance, Design Integrations calls for an innovative shake up in design education. Poggenpohl asserts that design research is developed through a typology within academic and business contexts, and follows different research theories and strategies. Such issues in design collaboration are explored in-depth, with essays on an inter-institutional academic project, cross-cultural learning experiences, and a multi-national healthcare project, demonstrating the importance of shared values, interdisciplinary negotiated process and clear communication for tomorrow’s designers

Knowledge Transfer Needs and Methods

INE/AUTC 12.3

Their memory:exploring veterans’ voices, virtual reality and collective memory

This paper focuses on the virtual reality (VR) project Their Memory and details the development and evaluation of virtual reality environments and experiences with respect to its impact on young people (14-35 demographic) with the narratives of veterans in Scotland. As part of the AHRC Immersive Experiences program, Their Memory was created to explore how game design techniques and immersive technology could be used to enhance existing historical research and enrich narratives to bring expansive experiences to hard-to-reach audiences. The project worked directly with the veterans’ charity, Poppyscotland, to create an environment and experience that would resonate with new audiences, and explore documentary and storytelling techniques for the commemoration of war and conflict. The design of the project evolved through co-design sessions with veterans and young people and culminated in the creation of a short, thought-provoking, narrative-driven experience. The VR experience enabled players to connect with the memories of veterans in Scotland and exploring the different conflicts or situations they experienced and how they make sense of them. The project brought together cross-sector expertise to research how immersive experiences can help memory-based organizations in engaging with wider audiences, raise awareness, and diversify current learning outputs. The paper details the design and development of the Virtual Reality project, through co-design, and how this engaged the audience and evolved the experience created. The paper includes a summative evaluation of events conducted with schoolchildren to assess the project and concludes with how the project evidences impact upon audiences and the potential for both technology and the experience

Design Fiction Diegetic Prototyping: A Research Framework for Visualizing Service Innovations

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.Purpose: This paper presents a design fiction diegetic prototyping methodology and research framework for investigating service innovations that reflect future uses of new and emerging technologies. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on speculative fiction, we propose a methodology that positions service innovations within a six-stage research development framework. We begin by reviewing and critiquing designerly approaches that have traditionally been associated with service innovations and futures literature. In presenting our framework, we provide an example of its application to the Internet of Things (IoT), illustrating the central tenets proposed and key issues identified. Findings: The research framework advances a methodology for visualizing future experiential service innovations, considering how realism may be integrated into a designerly approach. Research limitations/implications: Design fiction diegetic prototyping enables researchers to express a range of ‘what if’ or ‘what can it be’ research questions within service innovation contexts. However, the process encompasses degrees of subjectivity and relies on knowledge, judgment and projection. Practical implications: The paper presents an approach to devising future service scenarios incorporating new and emergent technologies in service contexts. The proposed framework may be used as part of a range of research designs, including qualitative, quantitative and mixed method investigations. Originality: Operationalizing an approach that generates and visualizes service futures from an experiential perspective contributes to the advancement of techniques that enables the exploration of new possibilities for service innovation research

Mosaics of Meaning Handbook : a guide for health improvement practitioners to tackle stigma of mental health with BME communities

Mosaics of Meaning was launched in 2005 to research and address the stigma associated with mental health problems in partnership with Scotland’s largest black and ethnic minority communities. Its unique programme of research and community action has involved training community workers in research skills and mental health issues, and using community development principles to address stigma and raise awareness at ground level. In the process, a powerful, evidence-based model of community engagement has been developed, a model which can be confidently applied in many other community settings

A Critique of Personas as representations of "the other" in Cross-Cultural Technology Design

A literature review on cross-cultural personas reveals both, a trend in projects lacking accomplishment and personas reinforcing previous biases. We first suggest why failures or incompleteness may have ensued, while then we entice a thoughtful alteration of the design process by creating and validating personas together with those that they embody. Personas created in people's own terms support the design of technologies by truly satisfying users' needs and drives. Examining the experiences of those working "out there", and our practises, we conclude persona is a vital designerly artefact to empowering people in representing themselves. A persona-based study on User-Created Persona in Namibia contrasts the current persona status-quo via an ongoing co-design effort with urban and rural non-designers. However we argue persona as a design device must ease its implicit colonial tendency to and impulses in depicting "the other". Instead we endorse serenity, mindfulness and local enabling in design at large and in the African context in particular