co-sketching (and the all important element of time)

Recently I sat down with the marvelous chris gaul for a co-sketching session, the aim was to work through visually some of the key concepts in my research into participatory methods and social technologies. I’d worked closely with cg before and knew he had a great talent for taking ideas, concepts and my random scribbles and translating in them into a visual language. In doing so he would identify key aspects that had been missing from the existing representations, but were central to the telling of the story.

In under two hours and in less than 2 beers, we had developed 3 draft concept sketches that conveyed the main points of my thesis well beyond my initial sketches. The catalyst to the breakthrough was Chris immediately introducing the concept of time, exactly the type of shift I hoped to make through a collaborative sketching session.

All of these sketches are start points, their role was to make available, capture and reveal key aspects of the concepts being discussed. I’ll be drawing on these to develop the concepts as well as guide how they are articulated in my thesis. (Thanks Chris!). I share here some our  cafe sketches and very briefly outline the points they were capturing.

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Mapping methods, techniques, tools and design values

Methods can be a bit like a black box. Embedded within them are particular assumptions about design and participation that can be unwittingly projected into our design process and outcomes. If we hope to privilege sociability, flexibility and openness in our designs, these values can be better supported through some tools and techniques more than others. In my thesis I have drawn attention to particular qualities and concepts relevant to design in the context of social technologies. I’m in the process of making these available to others in different ways such as maps, vocabularies and considerations.

mapping goals, experiences, enablers and qualities in early design research

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Seeding: prototyping ‘in the wild’

Over the last few years I’ve experienced a real change in the kinds of design services that might be needed by, or offered to, clients – especially working in the not for profit and community sectors. As we all know, more and more organisations are beginning to see the potential for social technologies to engage with new audiences, or engage with their audience in new ways.  In such cases the design work can become more about re-configuration of existing technologies than creating something from scratch. Design-time is often spent on developing strategies for extending a client’s online presence through existing platforms, tools and channels. While we may be moving away from an emphasis on actual building and designing pixels in this version of design practice, our responsibility to successfully seed participation and engagement is growing.

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