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DESN2002

Charlie Donald - c3398239 Assessment 3

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“The first phase of any human-centered design process is to understand the scope of the problem.” (Brown & Katz, 2019)

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PROCESS + DEVELOPMENT

In order to embody the above design idea, my group jumped straight into understanding the broader context of our ‘wicked problem’: Empowering Museums. 

“How can we encourage young people, ages 12-25, to engage with museums, specifically MAC.”

We started by doing research into the context of the problem. This was the start of our first design thinking stage: Empathy.

“Empathy is crucial to problem solving and a human-centered design process as it allows design thinkers to set aside their own assumptions about the world and gain real insight into users and their needs.” (Dam, 2022)

After extensive research, we started on an empathy map, user journey map and persona, to help us summarise our areas of research into feelings, thoughts, actions, emotions, etc of our target group.

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The summation of our ‘define’ stage was simply to research SDG’s, our stakeholders, our target audience, marginalised voices in art, and museums.

We did primary research, as we were able to attend a lecture with some of the key stakeholders in our ‘wicked problem’; one being the MAC curator herself. We used that research and insight to inform the beginnings of our ideas, and to generally gain a broader understanding/context.

After presenting our research in Assessment 1, we got a lot of really good feedback to further our project. Our main underdeveloped area was reaching out to our target audience, we needed more of their feelings/opinions.

To remedy this problem, we returned to the empathise stage. We conducted more primary research by visiting the MAC so that we could visualise the user’s possible experience. Going to the MAC allowed us to identify quite a few possible negatives in our ideas, and things we could improve on.

“It [empathy] brings innovative solutions to life based on how real users think, feel, and behave” (Dam, 2022)

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Another round of primary research that helped us a tonne was a survey. We put a Google Forms survey on our social media for our friends, as they are a part of the targeted age range. We got 16 responses, and some of the answers were really insightful, about things we hadn’t considered. 

After those simple research tasks, we had so much more material to work off, and so many quality criticisms to implement. This really impressed on me how much I overlooked in the initial empathise phase.

“[Primary research is] Perhaps the most important method in design research,” (Esposito, 2018).

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Evolution of Our Ideas

Here is the simplified evolution of our ideas, and how we adapted around problems as we discovered them:

Social Media

MAC needs someone to have full-time access and control over their social media, this is one of the only ways to market to young people. They need to be able to post events as they’re happening, and this can still be monitored by LMQ Arts.

Updated:

We still think that MAC would thrive from a much stronger social media presence, but we understand that the reason they aren’t already is because it’s controlled by LMQ Arts, not MAC. Needing control over their own media is something they are already aware of, but is out of their hands.

We knew they were already aware of it too, as the curator - Courtney Wagner - spoke on it:

“It’s frustrating how many hoops we have to jump through just to make a simple post.”

To work around this problem, we pivoted slightly to guest photo opportunities. These are to use and post on social media, which gets word out to young people about the MAC; it’s basically just to encourage free advertisement.

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Human Library - 'Hidden Voices Exhibit'

Human Library

A room of people, each of whom are part of an underrepresented minority group, the visitors are free to walk around and talk to anyone (room setup unclear) and have an open discussion. This is an engaging way to learn about the way these groups view the world, empathy is all about understanding perspective.

Updated:

We kept the same concept, but the execution is much more informed and thought out: Instead of just having an open room with people milling about, we’d have wayfinding.

Wayfinding

Lines and arrows on the floor creating paths to guide visitors through the room. Different minority representatives in different sections of the room outlined on the floor, with pamphlets, and artwork showcased around them/on the walls behind them. This was to help with direction and visitor confidence. When we visited the museum, we felt there was no indication of where we could go/where we were supposed to be. It made us feel uneasy, so we patched that issue by creating a clear path for the visitor to follow, a directed experience.

The second update to the Human Library set up was wristbands. Many of the people we surveyed said they’d be very apprehensive about how to approach the people working in the exhibit. To help with this problem, we have coloured wristbands:

Wristbands

The two colours indicate whether you’d rather ‘be approached’ or ‘approach’. The ‘approach’ is for visitors who feel uncomfortable having people come up and talk to them unprompted. They want to be the conversation instigator. ‘Be approached’ is for visitors who don’t feel confident enough to start and lead a conversation, and would rather have a little aid from the people at the event, so that the onus is not on them.

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Interactive Wall

A wall at the entrance of the exhibit room that has two marked sides, one on thoughts going in, the other on thoughts coming out. A small screen in the centre will have a short looping video to explain to visitors this concept. This idea never changed, as the reasoning was still valid. It’s another fun interactive element, as this is something that appeals to the younger audience.

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The Impact of Our Idea

Our ideas will hopefully inspire younger people to frequent museums and art galleries. This ties in with our first SDG:

SDG 3 - Good Health and Wellbeing: Encouraging young people to go to museums with friends promotes mental health well being through socialisation and preventing physical isolation. This traffic in turn will motivate governments to fund said museums and galleries, which brings in our other 2 SDGs.

SDG 4 - Quality Education: Specifically focused on the appreciation of cultural diversity. Places like MAC are a hub for cultural representation. By motivating the student-age population into these spaces, we are encouraging education on social issues presented by the exhibitions, which is a digestible and engaging way to learn.

SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities: Encouraging young people into museums and art spaces stimulates funding and motivates the protection of cultural and national heritage.  Also, inspiring interest in this age demographic safeguards future conservation, as they are our future advocates and leaders.

“Sustainability will therefore have to be based on a constant process of locally adapted, community based learning.” (Wahl, 2019)

All of these impacts align with MACs goals of more young visitors and interest, as our solution would draw an audience specifically in their gallery.

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Personal Responsibility

By a couple weeks in, I had been designated as the group leader. This design course unintentionally taught me quite a bit about how to lead a design team on a project. 

My responsibilities across both assessments: - Reworking our brief into a digestible summary, and compiling a list of tasks to complete, which I put in the group’s shared document. - Organising around everyone’s availability for group sessions.

I read through and reworded the brief with everyone at the start of each assessment, explaining everything as I rewrote. Even with this, I got asked lots of questions that made me feel like I wasn’t being listened to.

I felt like I was taking on a much heavier mental load for both projects, as no one else appeared to be keeping track of much. For the most part, if something needed to be done I either had to do it myself, or delegate it to a specific person.

For the first presentation, we did a couple of zooms to do the slides together. I didn’t feel like it was appropriate for me to assign them tasks, I didn’t feel my vague role as leader gave me that level of command - I felt like I would come across as bossy if I did that. However, there was little initiative with tasks, so I ended up just doing a good amount of the work, with the rest of the team just on the zoom call with me.

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Sections I took on (1st assessment):

- The SDG research and slides - The stakeholders slides

- The ‘Ideas’ slides - Editing all slides - Presenting all the slides Presenting alone was semi-agreed on before-hand. I was the only person in our group who didn’t mind public speaking, so I offered to do the bulk of the speaking. A couple of the other members were meant to speak on the slide that they filled out themselves, but in the moment when I paused for them, nothing was said, so I just kept presenting to keep the flow going.

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Sections I took on (2nd Assessment):

*I did most of it, but I definitely had some help, e.g someone else made the slide look good. - Survey results slides * - Presenting slides * - SDG slides * - ½ of the “Inspiration” slides - ½ of the “Ideas” slides - Making the prototype for the floor plan of the main exhibition room

- Editing all slides - The video:   - The script for the voice over (voice over said by another member)   - All the visuals (Aside from a mockup of the Instagram feed)   - Another member sourced the background music

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Overall:

I’m not blameless for my workload though.

When it became clear that they weren’t comfortable with claiming their own tasks and taking initiative, I should’ve adjusted my guidance style accordingly.

I ended up assigning myself a large workload when it became clear to me that others weren’t understanding the requirements of the project. Instead, I should’ve taken the time to sit everyone down and explain anything that wasn’t clear to them, to make sure we were all on the same page so that they could contribute equally.

Yes, some didn’t take the initiative to understand and take on work, but I also didn’t ask them to, and I was designated the leader, so this is my responsibility. On the other hand, we are all adults, and all had access to the same information in the shared documents. I was the leader, yes, but I think I was too heavily relied on at times.

When we were brainstorming, sometimes I felt like I was dominating the conversation. Often if I wasn’t speaking, no-one would. I would ask for opinions and encourage them to disagree with me, but more often than not, if I came up with an idea, that’s what we used for lack of any other alternatives.

One of the main benefits of being part of a creative team as opposed to being a lone designer is that  there’s multiple brains to pick, multiple perspectives, and I feel that we weren’t utilising that.

As Kelley said in an interview:

“Designers are more likely to build something and then refine it, rather than think they have the big idea all in one big jump.” (Solomon, 2012).

He perfectly highlights an important aspect of the design process that was underdeveloped. We needed to refine the ideas I was throwing out, criticise and inspect them, instead of just going with it.

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“Design Thinking is a process for solving complex, open-ended problems that don’t have a “right” answer.” (Dam, 2022)

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References:

Brown, T. (2019). Features - BUSINESS BY DESIGN. In B. Katz (Ed.), Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation (3rd ed., Vol. 179, pp. 92–95). essay, Fortune. 

Dam, R. F. (2022, June). The 5 Stages in the Design Thinking Process. The Interaction Design Foundation. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/5-stages-in-the-design-thinking-process 

Esposito, E. (2018, October 22). 4 Types of Research Methods All Designers Should Know. Inside Design Blog. https://www.invisionapp.com/inside-design/research-methods-designers/ 

Solomon, A. (2012, September 23). Design thinking for social good: An interview with David Kelley. Boing Boing. https://boingboing.net/2012/09/22/design-thinking-for-social-goo.html 

Wahl, D. C. (2019, July 24). Facing Complexity: Wicked Design Problems. Medium. https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/facing-complexity-wicked-design-problems-ee8c71618966