Professing Practice

LEWIS JUST | PPJ | 2015

PROFESSING PRACTICE G S A + W I D E N I N G PA R T I C I PAT I O N

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Brief

Patsy Meeting Methodology S6 Options Night Theme Planning Writing the Brief Final Brief User and Situations Testing the activities Workshop Activites

WORKSHOP Reflections

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Brief A collaborative project to design and deliver a one day user-centred design workshop to fifth year students from within the Focus West Programme

Glasgsow School of Art

Widening Participation

• Share aspects of your own expertise and educational

• Active involvement in creative activities and performances

experiences to motivate

• Tasks or performance opportunities, which require a

• Identify and communicate what the GSA educational

creative response

experience is

• Opportunitiy for students to present to an audience

• Guiding others in responding to our briefs

• Raising awareness of contemporary culture and connecting

• Identify points at which we can add value

with young people’s experiences

• Raise the pupils’ aspiration

• Appropriate, effective use of technology

• Collaborative working and mentoring you will introduce and

• Building on the principles of Assessment is for Learning

teach elements of your own design practice and approaches

• Both collaborative and independent learning

to support the pupils learning, skills development and growing

• Establishing links within the expressive arts subjects

awareness of the value and purpose of higher education.

• Opportunities to analyse explore and reflect.

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Patsy Meeting Throughout the course of Professing Practise we had two workshops with Patsy and a final workshop with Elizabeth and Kath. Our initial meetings with Patsy helped us to understand what we would be delivering and how we might go about planning this. Within the first meeting Patsy gave us some context as to who the workshop would be run for (Focus West schools) and what Widening Participations key roles are.

Patsy told us that the students we would be working with had a very low chance of going to GSA (less than 1%) so the idea was to focus on giving them a broader outlook on following a creative path. We would also be working to help them to develop their key personal skills as well as distilling some of the key transferable ideas of the design process; working in teams, critical thinking, awareness of others, empathy etc).

The main goal was to foster motivation and aspiration.

We talked in general about how we might deliver the workshop and Patsy asked us what we were most worried about. It came down to timing and disipline. To combat the timing Patsy offered to have another session with us later where we would break down the timing of the day from one activity to the other. She also suggested using a stop watch or timer to keep the day on track. Disipline was something that we were a little anxious about. We ended up brainstorming four key “creativity rules”.

1. Listen when others are talking.

2. Encourage and build on each others ideas 3. There are no wrong or right answers 4. Mistakes can help so don’t be afraid to fail

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Methodology Average Learning retention Rates

Within the preparation workshops Patsy discussed some of

Lecture

the methodology we may like to use in order to engage with

5%

the students and keep them on task. She talked us through

10%

Reading

20%

Audio Visual

30%

Demonstration

50%

Discussion Group

75%

Practice by Doing

90%

Teaching Others

Blooms Taxonomy (fig 1) and told us that the best way to get them learning is to get them moving, making and thinking at the same time. When we came to planning our day and the activities we tried to stay to the base of the pyramid, focussing on activities that would allow for experiential learning: learning by doing and thinking through making.

Fig 1. Blooms Taxonomy

The Kolb cycle (fig 2) suggests that it is not sufficient to

Concrete Experience

have an experience in order to learn. It is necessary to reflect

(doing/ having an experience)

on the experience to make generalisations and formulate concepts which can then be applied to new situations. The learner must make the link between the theory and action by planning, acting out, reflecting and relating it back to the theory. When we started to plan our workshop we kept this in

Reflective Observations

Active Experimentation

(reviewing/ reflecting on the experience)

(planning/ trying out what you have learned)

mind. Teaching the theory, implementing it and then reflecting upon it. The idea being that you reinforce the learning at each

Abstract Conceptualisation

stage of the process.

(conclusing / learning from the experience)

Fig 2. Kolb Cycle

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S6 Options Night Originally the plan was for us to be broken into two teams

using so that we avoided patronising the students, yet also

of two and visit a school for a day, running a workshop on

knew they would understand the process. We came up with

Product design at GSA. We were also scheduled to visit the

a quick questionnaire to try to understand the pupils more,

schools before we ran the workshops but due to factors

but quickly worked out that this was probably a bit too formal

out with our control this never happened. As a reaction to

for the setting, and so opted just to chat to some of the S6

this we decided to jump on an opportunity happening at

pupils informally about their experiences with Product design

the school: S6 options night. This gave us an opportunity to

and what they thought might help them to apply for further

interact with the rough edge group that we would be working

education, specifically within the art and design sphere.Â

with and get a feel for the level and pitch that we should be

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Theme Planning We decided to do brainstorm our potential themes for the day, being careful that it would be relevant for the fifth year students. Through discussion, debate and synthesising,

Analogue

three themes emerged. We then all went away an wrote a

Life

short brief for the themes and shared them with each other.

Food for Thought

We tried to identify the strongest briefs and merged them into one. Bellow are my short briefs.

Third Space

1. Analogue Life Life in the 21st century is full of technology. This helps us to work (make powerpoints, word doc), communicate (facebook ,snapchat and whatsapp), find love (tindr, okcupid, grindr) travel (google maps, trip advisor) and play (candy crush, gtaV). But does this mean we spend too much time looking at screens and not looking at each other?

We would like you to come up with a design intervention (explain) that will help people to stop looking down, and look up at one another. Be social, but not use technology to do so.

2. Food

3.Third Space

Everybody loves food. Weather it’s a fine dining experience

School. Home. School. Home. School Home. We spend a lot

of lobster and steak or simple chips and cheese. There are

of time in these two places. But where else do we go? What

so many different types of foods to experience and they are

third spaces do we go to and what do we do there? Shops,

each consumed in a different way. You use a poke to eat

parks, squares.

your chips, chop sticks to eat sushi, and a steak knife to eat a

steak. What if things were different?

Map the third spaces in your city and improve the environment

for a specific stakeholder group.

Choose a user and a meal (from the cluedo game) and design a new eating experience for them. (use the senses as a way to explore the food)

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Writing the Brief As a group we decided to drop the 3rd space so we could

8.00 - 10.00 10.00 - 10.30

concentrate on the other two as we felt that they were perhaps stronger and more prototyping could be incorporated into the workshop. (the third space was on too big a scale, and may have involved leaving the classroom which we were advised against). We then went on to develop the ruminating tow briefs and refine them, using language that the fifth years would understand. We sent the briefs on to Patsy, who gave us feedback to simplify the brief and days structure even more and then Patsy sent the briefs on to the participating schools.Â

10.30 - 10.40 10.40 - 11.00 11.00 - 11.30 11.30 - 12.00

We then spent another full day creating activities for the workshop. Originally we wanted to you the double diamond framework to guide the students through the day, so they could have a better understanding of the process. Within the day we had also built in a lot of time for user exploration and brainstorming of ideas. However when we took these

12.00 - 12.30 12.30 - 13.00

proposals to Elizabeth and Kath they said that the double diamonds would be too complicated to grasp within the day and that the day leaned too much to static, thinking activities.

They encouraged us to get the students making as quickly as possible. This would keep their attentions focused and would be be a more beneficial experience.Â

13.30 - 13.45 13.45 - 14.00 14.00 - 14.20 14.20 - 15.00

In order to understand how long activities would take, we also made a workshop strucutre with the help of Elizabeth and Kath. We found it hard to estimate the length of each activity we wanted to do, so talking it through with teachers who had gone through this process before really helped.

15.00 - 15.15 15.00 - 15.45 15.45 - 16.00

set up collect students introduce ourselves describe what is happening today schedule of day introducing product design mission of today creativity rules importance of documentation ACTIVITY 1: USERS what is a user? user exploration sheets guess the user ACTIVITY 2 explore situations ACTIVITY 3 define problems create potential opportunities pick one ACTIVITY 4 quick model making LUNCH prototype test role play what is a prototype?

Darth Vader example/ demonstration ACTIVITY 5 reflection sheet ACTIVITY 6 refinement ACTIVITY 7 think about sharing work with group final sharing session wrap up and summary

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The Final Brief

Using a given user, work as a team to describe what their eating habits are, and invent something to improve their eating experience within an unusual situation.

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Users and Situations

Homer Simpson’s Situation

The Queen’s Situation

It’s a hot sunny day in Springfield, and Homer is sitting in his

The Queen has an extremely busy schedule and finds it

back garden, in his favourite hammock, watching the Super

important to set aside a little time for herself. At the weekend

Bowl. He does not plan to move for the next four hours and

her guilty pleasure is having a night in to eat a take away

the kitchen feels so far away. Marge and the kids are at the

while watching TV. It’s crucial that even though she is eating

mall so there is no one he can ask to bring food to him.

fast food, she still gets the Royal treatment.

Backup (never used)

Usain Bolt’s Situation

Captain Hook’s Situation

Usain Bolt is the world’s fastest man and is in the middle of

The fearful pirate Captain Hook is at a grand buffet which is

training for the next Olympics. His training involves a series

being thrown in his honour. What nobody knows is that he

of sprints with short breaks in between, often meaning there

feels self conscious about his hook when eating, and he is

is no time for lunch. He wishes to maintain his record, but

confronted by mountains of finger food. He doesn’t want to

dislikes the usual energy gels he is supplied with.

look scared in front of his crew, but still wants to be able to enjoy the banquet.

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Testing the Activites Darth Vader’s Situation Darth Vader is hardly a social butterfly, but has taken a bold step and has organised his first date with a new love interest.

When the evening arrives, he is feeling rather shy and refuses to take his mask off which makes talking and eating pretty awkward.

Activity Four - Empathy Prototypes

Activity One - Understanding Users

Activity Five - Reflections

Activity Two - Situation exploration

Activity Six - Prototype Refinements

Activity Three - Problems to Opportunities

Activity Seven - Share

Workshop Activities

Activity One - Understanding Users Users where given to the groups in secret. They had four main topics to explore: the users favourite food and drink, likes and dislikes, hobbies and personality traits. These were captured in their groups (4 students). We then went round as a class and guessed the other groups user and added to the sheets.

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Activity Two - Situation exploration We then gave the groups a situation for the users. The situtaions were deconsturcted and used to fill in the question sheets, the context hopefully informing the later design opportunities.

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Activity Three - Problems to Opportunities From the situation, problems were then found and transfered to the problem capture sheets. This made multiple opportunities aviable for later exploration. Teams had to discuss amongst themselves the problem that would be most interesting to explore. They then wrote one opportunity sheet.

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Activity Four - Empathy Prototypes From defining the opportunity students went straight into making. We wanted them to focus on understanding thier user more by creating empathy tools and creating the environment in which their designs would live.

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Activity Five - Reflections This was a time for students to reflect upon what they had created. We gave the teams sheets to help prompt discussion on how they might improve their responces and prototypes.

Critical thinking also happened through the making process, with each new iteration bringer further clarity and better responcse to the defined opportunity.

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Activity Six - Prototype Refinements Further prototypes were made and tested with real food. This brought the project to life and spurred energy and enthusiasm in the room. It also helped to highlight where improvments could be made.

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Activity Seven - Share To conclude the days activities we wanted to the students to present their entire work back to the rest of the class. This meant summarising their process and then showing off the final prototype. Some groups were even bold enough to do a mini role play which was well recieved.

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Workshop in Action

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Reflections How did the day go overall?

at the end of the day that she had tried a couple of times to

I think that generally the day was a success. Careful planning of

get the student to participate but gave up in the end as “if the

the workshop meant that we were fairly confident in delivering the

student didn’t want to learn, then I wasn’t going to teach”. I

content and I think we reacted fairly well to the students needs.

wholeheartedly disagree with this approach. I believe it was our

That was perhaps one of the hardest aspects of Professing

failure, and that a better teacher would have been able to do

practise. Not knowing what the students would be like, and rarely

more, to know how to break through the silence. It was clear

if ever being in a position of authority meant that there was a

that the student was interested in what was going on around

slight anxiety for all the “teachers”.

them. I think there was a good amount of energy in the room but there was certainly I slump after lunch. It was hard to get

We had an impromptu reflection session at the end of the day,

the ball rolling again. (students where on their phones, talking

(Louise’s great idea) and the students told us just one thing

with each other) I took a bit more energy from us to get them

they had learnt. Some students made fantastic insights into the

refocused and on task.

process that we had just been through. I was taken a back by their ability to deeply understand. One of my concerns at the

Was the classroom a controlled and creative environment?

start of the day was that these activities was been seen as just

I think the “creativity rules” that we had said at the start of the

a bit of “fun” with no real purpose or point to them.

day where generally taken onboard. There were few moments when some of the students became visibly unrestful. There were

How was the engagement of the students?

times when I caught myself floating around the classroom when

Overall I think we were all impressed at the levels of engagement

the other “teachers” were presenting, standing near or close

we received from the students. At the start the students were

to students that looked like they might stray back on to their

fairly quiet but after a few activities they warmed up. All but one

phones. I was slightly surprised that my presence was enough

took of their jackets, a sign that they were there and wanting

for them to put away their phone, or stop whispering to their

to engage. One of the three groups seemed to need a bit more

mate. I consciously used this technique throughout the day. It

encouragement (due to quite personalities) but on a one to one

seemed to work more in the morning than in the afternoon. As

level those students had strong answers and engaged in the

the nature of the work is creative I felt it fairly easy to slip out

task. There was one pupil within that group that I found especially

of the teacher role, and into my preferred role as a designer. I

difficult to engage with. I think myself and the other “teachers”

was aware that this might damage some of the control/respect

tried a few times during the day but I felt a bit stumped when

that had built up in the morning but I didn’t notice any huge

all I got for my efforts was a shrug and lack of eye contact. I felt

behavioural differences from the pupils within the afternoon.

annoyed that I didn’t posses the social or teaching abilities to

Perhaps if I was teaching longer I would need to make a more

properly engage and integrate the student into the group, which

conscious effort of this.

left me feeling guilty for not trying more. Gemma confessed

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How was the timing?

discuss their ideas and iterate on the spot. To no surprise, they

I think there was overestimation and underestimation of the

also seemed to enjoy the making part more than the mornings

time we needed to complete certain activities. Elizabeth (WP)

thinking activities.

has warned us that it would take a while to get the day going (pupils would be late, hard to settle down etc) but all the pupils

How where the activities delivered?

where in their seats by 10.05 and so begun our presentation a

The morning was used for exploring users, scenarios and defining

lot sooner than we thought.

the problem/opportunity. These were thinking heavy activities and the groups needed a fair amount of help to get started. I

I found it hard to gauge the energy levels that the students might

think that we should have had a warm up game as originally

have and this seemed to be a critical measurement to keep

planned to get students engaged and speaking to one another

them focused and on task. It was fairly easy to tell when they

in their teams. This may have helped stimulate the conversation.

were getting tired, and the activities seemed to drag towards

Sometimes I felt like I had to push the students to answer and

the end. This is partly to do with the design process (its easier at

explore the questions more than I would have liked. I’m unsure

the start when you have lots of ideas, but once you have loads

if this was due to it being the first activity, the students being

written down, to push for more and to think divergently takes

unfamiliar with the style of working or they found the actually

more energy).

activity difficult.

We ended up giving the students a morning break around 11.20

Overall we could have been a bit sharper when it came to

and also a shorter afternoon break pause at about 2.30. This

delivering the activities though I think we tried to get home the

was a fairly reactionary move and only implemented when we

points of each activity. Our idea was to spend a few minutes after

were asked by a couple of the more vocal students when the

each activity explaining what we did and how that went but on

break was.

the day this seemed patronising and got in the way of the flow of work. Instead I tried to feed that teaching back into the work,

We expected it to be hard to keep everyone focused just before

so as I wondered round I would ask a specific student what they

lunch but luckily the students were up out of their seats and

where doing, and why they were doing this. I could then reinforce

making empathic tools which kept them busy and their minds

the learning outcome. In hindsight we agreed that our example

focused. When lunch came I think the food wasn’t particularly

should have been communicated in a much stronger way. This

well received and I was a bit concerned that the students didn’t

may have made each activity clearer and solidified the teaching

eat all that much ,meaning they might flag in the afternoon

objectives.

session. One student sat quietly not even approaching the food table. Luckily Elizabeth was quickly on hand and rallied a trip to

Generally the making activities seemed to engage the students

the shops to buy some sandwiches.

most. I think that most activities where comprehended and though it might have been the first time that the students had

We ended up closing the session at 3.30pm (30 minutes earlier

worked in such a manner, they had little doubt about how to

than expected). This was a conscious decision as we didn’t

complete the activities. I think if we ran the workshop again, we

want to slow down any of the activities any more than we had

would try to make things more visual from an earlier point in

done. During the making session, the majority of the students

the day. This would help with getting the students working and

were fully immersed, which meant we let the clock slip and

would take the emphasis off of spelling and writing down the

gave them around 20 minutes more on this activity. I think this

“wrong” answer.

was important as we could visibly see the students talk and

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lewismjust@gmail.com

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