Making, using and interpreting design probes: how subjective is participation?

The wealth of participatory methods in human-centred design adheres to the notion of a democratic process and solutions that respond to the experiences and needs of users and stakeholders. However, as human-centred design philosophies permeate the landscape of design education and research, the designer’s role as both an objective facilitator and creative decision-maker suggests their impact upon stages of data collection and analysis. This paper advocates tools and techniques to support design students in initiating user engagement and insight-gathering whilst simultaneously recognising and utilising their own subjective experiences and knowledge. Drawing comparisons between our practice-led masters and PhD research, we discuss how an interactive activity pack is used to gather community members’ perceptions of fear and safety in the urban environment before examining how observational illustrations are employed to examine the multiple functions of an art school. In this, we consider how the designer’s creation, use and interpretation of design probes can establish an empathic and inter-subjective dialogue in participatory design exploration. We propose that the application of a reflexive methodology can strengthen students’ critical awareness of sociocultural issues and promote authenticity and rigour in human-centred design

Triumphs and Tensions in Informal Design Interactions: Confessions of a Designer

The contemporary landscape of design practice, education, and research is in a constant state of flux. Cox (2005) underlines how designerly creativity can propel innovative business strategies and help to revive the British economy, whilst Norman and Verganti (2012) distinguish between incremental and radical forms of technological innovation. Framing human-centred design as a philosophy, they set out its iterative qualities of observation, ideation, testing, and 'getting close to users' (2012: 2, 11). Designers engage with societal complexities on a local and global scale, embracing increasingly collaborative ways of working. Many attempts have been made to demystify the human-centred designer's role and responsibilities within interdisciplinary relationships (Julier, 2007; Manzini, 2009; Inns, 2010). Kelley (2008), for example, presents ten diverse personas commonly adopted by designers, such as the anthropologist, the set designer, and the storyteller. These multiple roles evoke Steen’s discussions of two tensions arising from human-centred design approaches: the decisions that designers must make when balancing user needs with their personal expertise, knowledge and intuition; and their aims to understand contexts as they currently exist, with the goal to inspire innovative change. Steen poses reflexive practice as a means of navigating these tensions and engaging in mindful and socially inclusive design practice (2011: 46–48). The proposed workshop will create a space for a discussion of how practitioners and researchers intuitively mediate diverse cultural settings, artefacts, users, stakeholders, and collaborators. We aim to elicit and understand the triumphs and tensions inherent in everyday design practices

Designing Empathy: Ritual Respect

Design approaches have been developed to establish empathy between practitioners, researchers, collaborators, and participants in human-computer interaction (HCI) in the context of health, care, and wellbeing. Unpacking nuances of empathy, in this position paper we discuss our exploratory research into bereavement following miscarriage and consider how our visual practice has enhanced communication and comprehension within an interdisciplinary team. We propose that such accessible visualisations can stimulate a shared, compassionate understanding of user needs, and thus inform the development of empathic services, systems, and solutions

Visualising human centred design relationships: a toolkit for participation

As human-centred philosophies continue to permeate the landscape of design practice, education, and research, a growing body of literature concerning creative methods corresponds with a democratic process that addresses the experiences, needs, problems, and aspirations of users and stakeholders. It can be argued, however, that making tools to gather and evaluate the insights of others contributes to fluctuating perceptions of the designer as a creative auteur, visual communicator, observer, facilitator, analyst, and problem-solver. In turn, human-centred design's overarching neglect of practitioner and researcher reflexivity has resulted in insufficient reasoning and reflection surrounding subjective methodological choices and the impact these have on the direction of the process and the designer's agency. In this practice-led research, I investigate how human-centred designers collect information and build relationships with participants by making, using, and interpreting visual and participatory tools and techniques. Examining approaches including personas, scenarios, and design probes, I assert that rather than being objective and neutral in seeking participants' input, human-centred designers are inherently reflexive, yet the practical benefits of this researcher trait remain broadly unrecognised and abstract within the discipline. Situating human-centred design in the context of environmental, community, and organisational placemaking, I undertake three case studies to examine localised sociocultural issues. In these, I draw from my position as an illustrator, designer, researcher, PhD student, and participant in the process to provide intimate, immersed, and critical narrative accounts of human-centred design in its initial exploratory stages. Simultaneously, I develop, test, and critique my participatory-reflexive methodology. Conceptualised as an arrangement of people and artefacts interacting through various creative phases and activities, this structures the process as stages of orientation, participation, evaluation-in-action, tool response analysis, and reflexive analysis. I assess how the content, format, and tone of my methodological tools and techniques helped me to gather participants' drawn, written, and verbal insights, generate ideas, and make decisions whilst instigating understanding, empathy, rapport, consensus, and dialogue. These findings reinforce the designer's multifaceted reflexive role as an ethnographic explorer and storyteller, visual maker, strategic and empathic facilitator, and intuitive interpreter. Flexible and inclusive enough to navigate designers' and participants' intersubjective insights, I present the five-stage participatory-reflexive methodology as my original contribution to knowledge. I propose that this transferable framework will support designers as they engage with settings to elicit information from user and stakeholder participants, develop their own experiential and critical perspectives, and utilise their intuitive and expressive expertise to establish, manage, and sustain productive human-centred design relationships

Visualising practice-led relationships: a toolkit for dissemination?

As research into, through, and for art and design (Frayling, 1993) becomes increasingly commonplace, practice-led PhD contributions have advanced the acceptance of embodied knowledge in creative processes and outcomes (Biggs and Karlsson, 2011). However, guidelines and recommendations surrounding the components of PhD submissions range from broadly abstract accounts that draw from existing theoretical research (Frankel and Racine, 2010), to specific instances of practice (Gray and Malins, 2004). It can therefore be argued that these overlook the joint presentation and interpretation of the portfolio and thesis, and the consequences these have on how practice-led research is disseminated to varying audiences (Engels-Schwarzpaul, 2008). In this paper I discuss the relationship between the content and format of my PhD research. Situated in the field of human-centred design, this explores the visual and participatory methods that designers use to stimulate dialogue with users and stakeholders surrounding their experiences, needs, and aspirations. My practice raised questions surrounding the human-centred designer’s multifaceted role as a visual maker, facilitator, and analyst, and their impact on the direction of the design process. In turn, I devised a five-stage participatory-reflexive methodology to orient myself in three sociocultural case study settings, engage with participants, and collect and analyse intersubjective insights. Conceptualised as the original contribution to knowledge, I explain how this framework informed my decisions when delineating visual, material, and written components within my submission. Acknowledging initial iterations and their shortcomings, I consider the implications of the dissemination of knowledge through combinations of images, artefacts, and text in practice-led research. References Biggs, Michael and Henrik Karlsson, eds (2011) The Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts, Oxon: Routledge Engels-Schwarzpaul, Anna-Christina (2008) ‘At a Loss for Words? Hostile to Language? Interpretation in Creative Practice-Led PhD Projects’, in Working Papers in Art and Design, vol. 5., available from accessed 20/01/14 Frankel, Lois and Martin Racine (2010) ‘The Complex Field of Research: for Design, through Design, and about Design’, in Proceedings of Design and Complexity: Design Research Society International Conference, July 2010, Montreal, 518–529 Frayling, Christopher (1993) 'Research in Art and Design', in Royal College of Art Research Papers, London: Royal College of Art, vol. 1. no. 1, 1–5 Gray, Carole and Julian Malins, eds (2004) Visualizing Research: A Guide to the Research Process in Art and Design, Aldershot: Ashgat

Understanding Participation Requests: Informing User Experience, Guidance, and Legislation

This report presents findings from the Understanding Participation Requests: Informing User Experience, Guidance, and Legislation research project, conducted by the School of Innovation and Technology at the Glasgow School of Art from August 2023 to January 2024. Commissioned and funded by the Scottish Government to contribute to the review of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act (2015), the research aimed to enhance understandings of the impact of Part 3 of the Act, Participation Requests. Participation Requests were introduced in 2017 as a policy mechanism to enable people and communities to shape decisions and services that affect their lives. In response to reviews and evaluations of the legislation, the School of Innovation and Technology carried out research funded by the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland from 2020 to 2022 through Social Studios (https://socialstudios.org.uk/) that enabled communities to co-design a suite of interactive tools to enhance meaningful local decision-making in Scotland. This research builds on Social Studios by exploring opportunities to enhance the experiences of communities and organisations engaging with the Participation Request processes, the content and format of the supporting guidance, and the efficacy of the underpinning legislation. The research was framed by phases of quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis, and the visualisation and presentation of findings. Data collected from Annual Reports submitted by Public Service Authorities were quantitatively analysed to identify patterns and gaps in Participation Requests, with consideration to a range of socioeconomic and geographic factors. The research then carried out a series of eleven semi-structured interviews with fourteen representatives from Public Service Authorities and Community Participation Bodies with experience of Participation Requests. Aiming to provide in-depth insight into the implementation of Participation Requests, interview data was subsequently analysed to define key themes and insights. The research findings highlighted challenges and opportunities surrounding Participation Requests, emphasising the importance of effective communication, inclusive engagement, and meaningful outcomes. The findings also provided insights into the distribution, evaluation, and impacts of Participation Requests, shedding light on the effectiveness and sustainability of the legislation

Materiality Matters: Exploring the use of design tools in innovation workshops with the craft and creative sector in the Northern Isles of Scotland

This paper presents initial reflections regarding the use of bespoke design tools within a series of innovation workshops carried out with practitioners and stakeholders active in the craft and creative industry sector in the Scottish Islands of Orkney and Shetland. We argue that by emphasising such bespoke material tools located in and inspired by the local landscape, history and culture, we encouraged engagement, provided space for innovation and enabled creative collectives in their goal of enhancing and sustaining the creative economy in rural geographies

Craft, textiles, and cultural assets in the Northern Isles: innovation from tradition in the Shetland Islands

This article explores design innovation approaches in the creative economy in the Northern Isles of Scotland, specifically, the Shetland archipelago, focusing on the textiles sector. Shetland has a rich history of craft work, including Fair Isle knitting and lace making. We contend that the value of cultural assets in contributing to the creative economy is underexamined and that there is a paucity of understanding of the innovative potential of craft and creative practitioners in the region. The insights presented are derived from Innovation from Tradition workshops, which aimed to reframe the creative economy within an island context, elicit knowledge surrounding local cultural assets and explore the innovative capabilities of creative practitioners. We reflect on how a design innovation approach allowed us to garner the collective wisdom held in communities and foreground the focal themes of practice, place and people

Leapfrog Summer School 2017 Report: Exploring Community Engagement for Research: Power, Impact, & Collaboration

In July 2017 nineteen Early Career Researchers from across the Arts and Humanities participated in the second Leapfrog Summer School at Lancaster University. This event offered an opportunity to exchange insights on broader aspects of research and career development, including approaches to generating research questions, and engagement with diverse public audiences both for research and sharing ideas. Featuring presentations and workshops from the wider Leapfrog team, the Summer School also welcomed a series of international speakers including Lady Rachel Cooper OBE, Dr Tom Wakeford, Stéphane Vincent, Lilas Ozanne, Ken Barnsley, Dr Cath Larkins, and Sue Flowers, who delivered keynotes and lightning talks across the event. Areas for discussion included: • Participation and co-production with communities • Methods and tools for community engagement • Engaging with diverse and minority communities • Approaches for capturing the value of effective community engagement • The challenges of evidencing the impact of effective community engagement The Summer School offered an inspirational and supportive space for a select network of ECRs to develop a collective understanding of various aspects of community engagement, and to consider how they might work together in the future. This report sets out the presentations and activities that took place across the three days and provides reflections on the discussions that took place

Contextualising Citizens: Design-Led Approaches To Visualising Community Ecologies, Building Interventions And Mobilising Citizen Participation

This paper uses three cases of the authors’ research working with rural communities in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland to reflect on the methods used to mediate between various groups and community members in citizen-engaged projects. We highlight the effects of making visible, with communities, the assets and relationships that exist in each context. Taking a combined ethnographic and participatory approach, we explain how in each of the cases we worked to contextualise a situation and collaboratively form a detailed picture of these community ecologies. In this we consider the question: by uncovering the context of communities with communities themselves, are designers more able to position themselves in the particular situation and account for their own agency? Through our reflections we discuss how our approach contributed to a deeper understanding of contextual issues including individuals, groups, roles, skills, and relationships. This allows us to propose a speculative frame to support designers to reflexively work with communities to collectively build representations of existing social networks, position themselves as active participants within these community ecologies and provide the foundations for together planning future interventions – approaches and activities that aim to enable positive change