Reach: design-led customer research
"What Reach does can be described as 'design-led customer research', which we abbreviate to design research. To achieve this we combine two approaches:
Understanding the people and situations you design for is crucial for successful innovation. These insights only come from spending time with your customers, and developing empathic conversations with them. When presented in an inspiring, visual way such insights are a strong driver of innovation.
Design skills such as generating, modeling and prototyping new ideas are crucial for successful innovation. If these skills are already used in immersive field work and insight creation, the resulting innovative ideas are rooted strongly in the markets your company innovates for."
(Global Design Research Network)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Revisiting Craft 2: Tools of Craftsmanship
"To McCullough, computer animation, geometric modeling, spatial databases – in general, all forms of media production or design – can be said to be 'crafted' when creators 'use limited software capacities resourcefully, imaginatively, and in compensation for the inadequacies of prepackaged, hard-coded operations' (21).... Again, as Sennett suggests, we 'assert our own individuality' against the prepackaged, predetermined processes and limitations of the tools we're using. Craftsmanship, says aesthetic historian David Pye, is 'workmanship using any kind of technique or apparatus, in which the quality of the result is not predetermined, but depends on the judgment [sic], dexterity and care which the maker exercises as he works' (45).
'Workmanship engages us with both functional and aesthetic qualities. It conveys a specific relation between form and content, such that the form realizes the content, in a manner that is enriched by the idiosyncrasies of the medium' (McCullough p.203). '[E]ach medium,' McCullough says, 'is distinguished by particular vocabulary, constructions, and modifiers, and these together establish within it a limited but rich set of possibilities' (McCullough p.230). Similarly, each methodology, or each research resource, has its own particular vocabulary, constructions, modifiers, obligations, and limitations. We need to choose our tools with these potentially enriching, and just as potentially debilitating, idiosyncrasies in mind. Do we need advanced software, or will iMovie suffice? Do we need to record an focus group in video – or will the presence of the camera compromise my rapport with my interviewee? Will an audio recording be more appropriate? Do we need to conduct primary interviews if others have already documented extensive interviews with these same subjects? Do we need to conduct extensive, long-term field-work – or can we accomplish everything in a short, well-planned research trip? How do I match my problem or project to the most appropriate tool?"
(Shannon Mattern, Words in Space)
Malcolm McCullough, Abstracting Craft: The Practiced Digital Hand (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996).
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Nina Wenhart's blog on the prehysteries of new media
"this blog is nina wenhart's collection of resources on the various histories of new media art. it consists mainly of non or very little edited material i found flaneuring on the net, sometimes with my own annotations and comments, sometimes it's also textparts i retyped from books that are out of print.
it is also meant to be an additional resource of information and recommended reading for my students of the prehystories of new media class that i teach at the school of the art institute of chicago in fall 2008.
the focus is on the time period from the beginning of the 20th century up to today."
(Nina Wenhart, 26/06/2008)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Effective and evocative research: difference through the form and outcomes of the iterative cycles and the type of feedback that informs the reflective process
"From the differences we have described, it might be assumed that the distinction between effective and evocative research is between the analytical and intuitive. However, it is important to note that, while analysis of the problem and context tends to come first in effective research, as in all research, it is intuition that leads to innovation. And, on the other hand, while evocative research may evolve intuitively through the interests, concerns and cultural preoccupations of the creative practitioner, it is rounded out and resolved by analytical insights.
Because of this combination of the intuitive and analytical, both ends of the spectrum may draw on bodies of theory such as Donald Schön’s (1983) theories of reflective practice and principles of tacit knowledge and reflection-in-action, to frame an iterative development process. However, differences can be identified between the form and outcomes of the iterative cycles and the type of feedback that informs the reflective process.
In effective research, an iterative design process may involve an action research model and prototyping (paper prototype, rapid prototype, functional prototype and so on). Each iterative stage is evaluated through user testing by a representative group of end users (through quantitative or qualitative surveys or observations of use, for example). The purpose of this testing is to gauge the artifact’s functionality, usability and efficacy. The gathered data informs changes and refinements in each cycle.
On the other hand, an artist might stage a number of preliminary exhibitions, but these are not staged to gather ‘data’, or to obtain successively closer approximations of a solution to a problem. Instead, they are part of an exploration of unfolding possibilities. Feedback might be sought from respected colleagues, and gathered in an informal setting (in the manner of a peer ‘critique’). The purpose of gathering such insights is to allow the artist to reflect upon the project and its evocation and affect and to see their work through the insights of others, which may shed new light on the practice and its possibilities."
(Jillian Hamilton and Luke Jaaniste, 2009)
2). Hamilton, J. and L. Jaaniste (2009). "The Effective and the Evocative: Practice-led Research Approaches Across Art and Design". ACUADS: The Australian Council of University Art & Design Schools, Brisbane, Queensland, Queensland College of Art, Griffith University.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Human Media Lab, Queen's University
"The Human Media Lab (HML) is one of Canada's premier multidisciplinary media laboratories. Inventions from our lab include the eye contact sensor, attentive user interface technologies (Google TechTalk), the first foldable paper computer, and the use of audience metrics in digital signage.
We are currently working on the design of Organic User Interfaces (Oui!), computers in any shape or form (see www.organicui.org for a special issue on the topic).
HML is directed by Dr. Roel Vertegaal, Associate Professor at Queen's University's School of Computing. Working with him is a number of graduate and undergraduate students with Computing, Design, Psychology and Engineering backgrounds."
(Human Media Lab)
Fig.1 Roel Vertegaal (7 May 2007). 'Selling Interest by the Eye Ball', Google TechTalk
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
