Systemic inquiry as a form of qualitative Inquiry

Chapter 1 in boo

Humour processes for creative engineering design

Humour has long been associated with creativity, however the link has rarely been applied to engineering design. This paper highlights analogies between humour creation and engineering design, and discusses opportunities to develop new processes and methods that could reinvigorate engineering concept design. Idea generation methods have been explored within the realms of improvised comedy and the visual medium of comic strips. The structures and principles of these creative humour processes present opportunities to view complex engineering problems from new and surprising perspectives

A study of the experiential service design process at a luxury hotel

This thesis explores the process of designing experiential services at a luxury hotel. These processes were surfaced by means of a methodology that used the principles of jazz improvisation. Due to similarities between experiential service design and elements in jazz improvisation, representing experiential service design through the jazz improvisation metaphor leads to a new framework for exploring the process of experiential service design that is iterative in nature. A gap in the service design literature is that experiential service design is not operationalized in organizational improvisation, and one contribution from this study will be to fill that gap. This study contributes to the field of knowledge by exposing a new perspective on how experiential services can be better designed by adapting some of the design tools from this luxury hotel; a second contribution is a recommendation for how the improvisational lens works as an investigative tool to research experiential organizations. In the process, some new dimensions to understanding complexity are contributed. The research process utilized qualitative research methods. Frank Barrett (1998) identified seven characteristics of jazz improvisation which I have used as a heuristic device: 1) provocative competence (i.e., deliberately creating disruption); 2) embracing errors as learning sources; 3) minimal structures that allow for maximum flexibility; 4) distributed task (i.e., an ongoing give and take); 5) reliance on retrospective sensemaking (organizational members as bricoleurs, making use of whatever is at hand); 6) hanging out (connecting through communities of practice); and 7) alternating between soloing and supporting. This research is grounded in the body of literature regarding complexity, organizational improvisation, service design and experience design. The role of heterogeneous minimal structures that are fluid and optimize uncertainty is central to this investigation. Themes such as sensemaking and the role of story, meaning-making, organizational actors' use of tangible and intangible design skills, and embracing ambiguity in efforts to design experiential services are explored throughout the dissertation. The anticipatory nature of experiential service design is a principle outcome from the data that is incorporated into the new conceptual framework highlighting a "posture of service"

Serious Fun: The Perceived Influences of Improvisational Acting on Community College Students

Research in extracurricular activities and arts education demonstrate how experiences in those areas contribute to the well-being and ongoing development of students in higher education. Although practiced and performed across the United States, theatrical improvisation, as an art form or extracurricular activity, lacks investigation within the context of higher education. Without an understanding from the student perspective, higher educational stakeholders miss an opportunity to incorporate experiences that address the institutions\u27 mission and learning goals or worse, inadvertently produce student disenfranchisement. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore and describe the experience of improvisational acting training, practice, and performance of 7 college students who participated in an improvisation group. Huizinga and Caillois\u27s theories of play and Csikszentmihalyi\u27s theory of flow served as the conceptual framework for the study. Data collection occurred at a community college in the mid-Atlantic region through 2 interviews with each participant and 1 focus group until reaching saturation of data. Data were analyzed through iterative coding of significant statements through which themes emerged. Themes included attraction to the activity, practice of the craft, applications of skills to life, and a continuance of improvisation in the participants\u27 lives and at college. The findings lend credibility to other research supporting arts and extracurricular activities and provide educational stakeholders with insights from students on what they value in their educational experience. Positive social change can come from providing students with an education that includes fun, creativity, and socialization for a successful future

The Translocal Event and the Polyrhythmic Diagram

This thesis identifies and analyses the key creative protocols in translocal performance practice, and ends with suggestions for new forms of transversal live and mediated performance practice, informed by theory. It argues that ontologies of emergence in dynamic systems nourish contemporary practice in the digital arts. Feedback in self-organised, recursive systems and organisms elicit change, and change transforms. The arguments trace concepts from chaos and complexity theory to virtual multiplicity, relationality, intuition and individuation (in the work of Bergson, Deleuze, Guattari, Simondon, Massumi, and other process theorists). It then examines the intersection of methodologies in philosophy, science and art and the radical contingencies implicit in the technicity of real-time, collaborative composition. Simultaneous forces or tendencies such as perception/memory, content/ expression and instinct/intellect produce composites (experience, meaning, and intuition- respectively) that affect the sensation of interplay. The translocal event is itself a diagram - an interstice between the forces of the local and the global, between the tendencies of the individual and the collective. The translocal is a point of reference for exploring the distribution of affect, parameters of control and emergent aesthetics. Translocal interplay, enabled by digital technologies and network protocols, is ontogenetic and autopoietic; diagrammatic and synaesthetic; intuitive and transductive. KeyWorx is a software application developed for realtime, distributed, multimodal media processing. As a technological tool created by artists, KeyWorx supports this intuitive type of creative experience: a real-time, translocal “jamming” that transduces the lived experience of a “biogram,” a synaesthetic hinge-dimension. The emerging aesthetics are processual – intuitive, diagrammatic and transversal

Beyond simulations : serious games for training interpersonal skills in law enforcement

Serious games can be used to improve people's social awareness by letting them experience difficult social situations and learn from these experiences. However, we assert that, when moving beyond the strict realism that social simulations offer, techniques from role play may be used that offer more possibilities for feedback and reflection. We discuss the design of two such serious games for interpersonal skills training in the domain of law enforcement. These games feature intelligent virtual agents with which trainees have to interact across different scenarios to improve their social awareness. By interacting with the virtual agents, trainees experience how their behaviour influences the course of the intervention and its outcomes. We discuss how we intend to improve the learning experience in these serious games by including meta-techniques from role play. We close by describing the current and future implementations of our serious games

Effects of improvisation techniques in leadership development

Studies show that improvisation in leadership decision making is on the rise, and it transpires in organizations 75-90% of the time, yet very little research has explored this skillset. No other leadership skillset that is applied two thirds of the time has ever been so underdeveloped. The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of a pilot workshop applying a Holistic Improvisational Leadership Model as developed by the researcher and based on the latest improvisation research. The study employed a mixed methods design to gather qualitative and quantitative data for a descriptive evaluation of the pilot training workshop. Nonproportional quota sampling and triangulation were used to maximize cross verification and validity of the data. This study explored the skills leaders acquired and applied during, immediately after, 1 month after the workshop, and in 3 months. The study was pilot-tested on 6 different groups and a total of 67 leaders from various regions, industries and organizations. Primary findings revealed that participants gained the highest benefits in working with others and their ability to lead. Executive and educational leaders gained the awareness that 79% of their decisions at work were made spontaneously as opposed to 71% for all leaders. 100% of executives and senior leaders indicated acquiring more effective listening skills. Moreover, the concept of competent risks and celebrating failure appeared to have the most transformational impact on the participants\u27 sense of self, willingness to take risks, and acquire new skills. The workshop seemed to bring participants\u27 stress level down to an optimal level and enhance mindfulness. Ultimately, it was concluded the study\u27s workshop was most effective as a continuous 3.5 hours. Learning to improvise experientially includes a process of unlearning old routines of decision making and re-learning more effective skills. Hence, the researcher recommends follow-up learning sessions to complete the cycle of learning. Utilizing grounded theory, the findings from the study led to the revision of Tabaee\u27s Holistic Improvisational Leadership Model. The researcher recommends following the model by teaching the competencies not only to leaders but to all employees for achieving OPTIMAL strategy and performance for the organization

A Standardised Procedure for Evaluating Creative Systems: Computational Creativity Evaluation Based on What it is to be Creative

Computational creativity is a flourishing research area, with a variety of creative systems being produced and developed. Creativity evaluation has not kept pace with system development with an evident lack of systematic evaluation of the creativity of these systems in the literature. This is partially due to difficulties in defining what it means for a computer to be creative; indeed, there is no consensus on this for human creativity, let alone its computational equivalent. This paper proposes a Standardised Procedure for Evaluating Creative Systems (SPECS). SPECS is a three-step process: stating what it means for a particular computational system to be creative, deriving and performing tests based on these statements. To assist this process, the paper offers a collection of key components of creativity, identified empirically from discussions of human and computational creativity. Using this approach, the SPECS methodology is demonstrated through a comparative case study evaluating computational creativity systems that improvise music

Improvisation and Leadership Development: Understanding Improvisational Theater Arts as Leadership Skills

Leadership development is immersed in a philosophical struggle. Past efforts at developing leaders have missed a set of skills important to the role of today’s leaders. Since Frederick Taylor invented the practice of scientific management, the study of management and leadership has largely focused on traits, practices, and behaviors that conform to this model such as planning, analysis, control, and monitoring. Missing in this focus, however, are less transactional leadership skills like intuition, improvisation, and creativity. As a result, organizations have begun drawing on improvisational theater skills as one answer to fill this leadership development gap. This case study focuses on a single cohort group attending an introductory level of training at an improvisational theater. Based on observations and interviews, the relevance of the content is analyzed and compared to selected leadership theories and the pedagogy is evaluated for underlying philosophies and critical curriculum design components. By observing the student experience with this learning, the applicability of improv theater arts to personal and professional lives outside of the theater context is also explored. Further research should focus on the efficacy of improvisational theater skills in a professional setting and on additional comparisons between the skills taught in an improv curriculum and leadership theories

Ludic Learning Lab: Serious Games for Nurses. Theatre Training Reimagined

Theatre improvisation supports the development of interpersonal skills, building verbal and physical imagination, whilst enabling compassionate interaction between people to enhance connections. Improvisation is emerging in health care as a pedagogical tool that can enhance human to human connections such as the interaction between a nurse and patient enabling experiential learning. This thesis argues that the ludic nature of improvisation exercises stimulates enhanced interaction skills (Toivanen, 2011). The ancient body-mind practices that improvisation draws on offer valuable skills to the learner, contributing to the andragogy of nurse practice and pre-registration education and training. Nurses require unique cognitive capabilities to multi-task, problem-solve and prioritise urgent needs in a fast-paced hospital environment. Human factors such as communication and situational awareness are essential to maintaining high-level patient care across a challenging environment (Eisenhardt, 2021). The World Health Organisation (WHO, 2019) and The Australian Commission for Quality and Safety in Health Care (Report The State of Patient Safety and Quality in Australian Hospitals, 2019; Fotis, 2010) found that deficiencies in human factor skills in hospital settings are affecting patient safety; fifty per cent of adverse events are preventable. Communicating for safety in training is a number one priority to reduce preventable adverse events. This thesis explores the principles and theories of theatrical improvisation through engaging with the work of Viola Spolin, Rudolph Laban, Augusto Boal, Jacob L Moreno, David Kolb and Howard Gardner. It comprises both a theoretical/critical component and a creative component which is a digital toolkit, the Improv-e-toolkit designed to be used in blended delivery, face-to-face and digital mode. The Improv-e-toolkit is a prototype that aims to unite important clinical nursing skills such as situational awareness, decision making and relationship management. I argue, drawing on the work of Hager (2004) that improvisation training develops team-based trust and effective communication to support positive nurse-patient connections which deliver favourable patient outcomes