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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