Master's thesis | Patrícia Lima, 2014

BACK & FRONT STAGE TRANSFORMATION

PAT R Í C I A L I M A

Master thesis in IT Product Design University of Southern Denmark Campus Sønderborg

Patrícia Lima May 2014

creativecommons.org

Review: Henry Larsen, Chris Heape, Stefan Veis Pennerup.

Graphic design: Patrícia Lima.

Pictures: Jakob Rubenson, Brendon Clark, Sara Reinholtz, Kajsa Davidsson, Paula Laborda, Nina Huijboom, Michelle Castañeda.

Fonts: Museo, Museo Sans Funding and collaborations: BHJ Foundation University of Southern Denmark Interactive Institute Swedish ICT

BACK & FRONT STAGE TRANSFORMATION

PATRĂ?CIA JORGE VIEIRA LIMA Supervisor: Henry Larsen

University of Southern Denmark in collaboration with the Interactive Institute Swedish ICT AB

ABSTRACT

This project is exploring how design iterations transform and are transformed by social interactions in the interplay between back and front stage of participatory practices mediated by tangible materials. Based upon an active collaboration with the Interactive Institute Swedish ICT AB, I reflect on three project cases: Smart City, ToD and UPSIDE.

Drawing on the concepts of participatory innovation and participatory design I suggest that the notion of participation may be understood from the perspective of the temporal dimension of involvement. I describe the performative quality of participatory practices as going on in an interplay between back and front stage, influenced by Goffman’s work. I am reflecting on the interdependencies between the involved in the three cases, drawing on Ralph Stacey’s work on the theory of complex responsive processes of relating.

I acknowledge the emergence of themes over time, which I come to see as key for the relevance of this work. The “tangible mediation as social negotiations” theme explores a particular momentum of interaction mediated by a tangible model, which has been developed by a dislocated collaboration between design teams in Denmark and Sweden.

Moving to a long time-frame perspective, the theme of “design iteration as complex responsive processes of transformation” focuses on the material transformation in the backstage of cross-project movement, which I find rarely explored by research agendas.

In the third theme “back and front stage interplay as interdependent relations” I navigate between the back and front stage of participatory activities concluding that, although we can benefit from a clear distinction between them, there is a need for a stronger awareness of their intermesh.

As the principal contributions of this work I come to suggest that: (1) tangible materials facilitate and are part of how rules of social dynamics are set in participatory activities; (2) social objects can be understood from a double perspective, in which tangibility and social acts are manifested in a negotiation of emerging meanings; (3) the concept of iterative design can be seen from a perspective that recognizes a temporal transformation through social processes of relating; (4) the backstage of participatory practices is a stage for another backstage, inhabited by design communities that can ultimately become part of it if the social relations allow them so.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT S

“Life is about the people you meet and the things you create with them.”

(Holstee Manifesto)

I have been lucky to build relationships with people who have constantly inspired me to move forward. During my time in Denmark (since August 2012) I have been equally challenged and motivated by my surroundings. Throughout these two years, some people have had a special importance in the continuous process of recognizing who I am and what this work represents. One of them is certainly Henry Larsen who, more than my supervisor, has been a person with whom I have found ways to understand my personal and professional identity. Whether helping to approach companies or to understand a particular theory, he has been crucial for most of the decisions I took during this period. Within different manners of influencing my identity there are my classmates, most of whom I am glad to call friends. They will be a part of me no matter where we go next.

I would like to thank Brendon Clark for giving me the opportunity to work with the Interactive Institute. I am really grateful for the time I spent in Stockholm and the people I met there.

Some of my colleagues there deserve a special thanks for warmly welcoming me to their country: Christina Ă–hman Kajsa Davidsson, Marie Denward and Sara Reinholtz.

Although with less moments of collaboration than I would have wished, I am also humble to thank Jacob Buur for the inspiring lectures and talks. I am also happy to thank all the professors who have guided me through the IT Product Design program, in special Robb Mitchell who has contributed to this work with challenging comments. Neither would this thesis have been the same without Dennis Day’s inputs at an early stage and Chris Heape’s rigorous refinements.

An important review and proofread also came from Stefan Veis Pennerup, who has supported me during the writing and the decision taking of this thesis. He has been the one that, besides inspiring and motivating me, went through my challenges and was always happy to help me face the unknown. Welcoming me to the Danish culture, he offered his cooking, language and engineering skills, besides love.

In a similar indescribable importance, there is my family in Brazil, who has set me free to follow my dreams without making the distance between us feel harder than it already is.

They have celebrated my achievements and believed in my ability to overtake challenges more than myself. My mother, my brother and my father offer me the exact combination of comfort and push I need to keep a healthy perspective between being realistic and positive.

They also drive my willingness to interweave the academy and industry perspectives in my professional decisions. In this mix of strong feelings there is also my little sister to whom I dedicate this work, wishing that by the time she manages to understand it, she will be inspired to reach even greater achievements.

Thank you.

CONT E N TS

I N TRO D U C T I O N

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12 THE PERFORMATIVE 1 8 RESEARCH AIMS 1 9 THE PARTICIPATORY

CASES & METHODS PROJECT CASES

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Smart City RISE ToD UPSIDE

METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH

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EM E RG I N G TH E M E S

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TANGIBLE MEDIATION AS SOCIAL NEGOTIATIONS

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Smart City case Tangible mediation

ITERATIVE DESIGN AS RESPONSIVE PROCESSES OF TRANSFORMATION 4 4 ToD and UPSIDE cases Participatory transformation

BACK AND FRONT STAGE INTERPLAY AS INTERDEPENDENT RELATIONS

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From design intentions to material roles Interweaving back and front stage

CO N C LU S I O N RE F E RE N C ES APPENDIX

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introduction.

T H E PA R T I C I PATO R Y T H E P E R F O R M AT I V E RESEARCH AIMS

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INTRODUCTION I consciously organized this thesis in a non-traditional structure. The literature review is articulated throughout out the chapters instead of being introduced all at once. In similar lines the analysis and discussions are also presented as themes emerge. This is because I see the qualities of temporality and responsive thinking not only in the theoretical discussions but also in the methodological process I carry within this work. Thus, I do not separate “result”, “analysis” and “discussion” in different chapters. Instead I believe their interplay to be healthy and, therefore, I interweave them in the chapters of “emerging themes”.

In the introduction I draw from a broad perspective around the concepts of participatory approaches, moving towards the idea of temporality in line with a particular theory of social interaction, which I introduce in the following pages.

I elaborate on a perspective of the performative, seeing design anthropology through the act of performing in design practices. I come to discuss the concept of back and front stage, before introducing my focus in tangible materials, which leads to my research question.

This thesis is outlined by four chapters: chapter 1 that contextualizes theory and goals; chapter 2 that introduces the cases and the methodological approach; chapter 3 that discusses the three emerging themes interweaving theory and practice; and chapter 4 that sums up this work’s main contribution.

T H E PA R T I C I PATO R Y There are two principle developments in design and innovation research & practice, that have striven to involve users and a range of participants at varying levels of engagement Participatory Design & Participatory Innovation.

According to Pelle Ehn, Participatory Design (PD) emerged in the 1970’s in Scandinavia. He points out that this concept is characterized as an approach to involve users, while it is also seen as a “way to meet the unattainable design challenge of fully anticipating, or envisioning, use before actual use, takes place in people’s life-worlds” (2008: 1).

Elizabeth Sanders, Eva Brandt and Thomas Binder have also explored the concept of PD. In offering a framework for organizing tools and techniques for PD, they suggest that: “participatory design practices have developed significantly since the pioneering work of the 80’s reported in, for example, Greenbaum and Kyng (1991) and Schuler and Namioka (1993)” (Sanders; Brandt; Binder, 2010: 1). They underscore that while the early work of PD was mainly concerned users’ participation in the design of ICT system, today it spans across a spectrum of domains in commercial, community oriented and research contexts. For them (2010: 1), “PD today is an emerging design practice that involves different non-designers in various co-design activities throughout the design process”.

As Yamauchi points out, PD is not only a concept to actively involve users, “participatory design is called for because users must have a sense of ownership to make better use of the technology” (Yamauchi 2012: 125). In this way, design teams are not only producing technological solutions that users need to learn how to use but they are also encouraging users to offer themselves reasons to use the technology in meaningful ways for their own lives. PD’s core methods suggest the use of workshops and design sessions through which users are invited to think and take creative actions in order to generate their own ideas.

For Ehn, a project is a common way to align resources (people and technology) in all larger design endeavors. In practice, these resources align a PD project. They may be: “project brief; prototypes; cultural probes; sketches; ethnographies and other field material; buildings; devices; project reports; ‘users’; engineers; architects; designers; researchers; other stakeholders; etc” (Ehn 2008: 1).

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In 2008, Jacob Buur and Ben Mathews underscored the strengths of PD. For them, the PD’s uniqueness relies on “its ability to introduce novel user-driven practices to organizations that have traditional ways of thinking” (Buur; Mathews 2008: 259). In the same publication, they argued that user-driven innovation had come of age in academic and research circles and in governmental funding bodies. However, according to them, many entrenched development processes in industry were still retaining the traditional structure which limits the adoption of user-centered methods of innovation . In this context: “[the move to Participatory Innovation] is the able development of new products, even in co-operation with users, is not always sufficient to guarantee the (commercial) success of products” (Buur; Mathews 2008: 259). They continued suggesting that engineering, market or production issues carried to downstream viewpoint had not been the focus of the PD community.

From this discussion, the concept of Participatory Innovation (PIN) has been developed through the SPIRE research center as a practice with its own international conference and methods. In 2013, together with Bernd Ankenbrand and Robb Mitchell, Jacob Buur articulates that:

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Participatory Innovation gathers theories and methods from across different academic fields to describe how people outside an organisation can contribute to its innovation, and identify way for industry, the public sector and communities to expand innovation through the participation of users, employees, suppliers, citizens, members, etc., on a strategic level, in concrete methods and in day-to-day interactions. (Buur; Ankenbrand; Mitchell 2013: 57)

With regard to the development of PIN over the past five years, the SPIRE Research Summary (2013) suggests that business model innovation has been drawn into the realm

of participatory actions, while conversational analysis and theory of complex responsive processes of relating have been demonstrated as a complementary action research to

substantiate claims on social processes of innovation.

One aspect to have emerged in the development of participatory innovation at SPIRE, that this thesis will further explore, concerns the complex responsive processes of relating in a participatory process. From my perspective this is particularly interesting, as although Participatory Design and Participatory Innovation use the word “participatory” and “participation”, a closer look at complex responsive processes indicates that the whole notion of participation can be expanded to include more than just involving users and

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participants. A central aspect of participation which I feel can be further explored is the temporal dimension of involving a range of people in a participatory design and participatory innovation process. By temporal dimension I refer to the ongoing moment-to-moments of the present, in which one find oneself acting. A good example of what I mean by this is Stacey’s (2011: 320) distinction between what he calls the living present as opposed to the “here-and-now”. As he says: The arrow of time then means that the movement of human experience in the present has the circular self- referential time structure of reconstructed pasts and imagined futures. We may call this the living present, which is very different from the notion of the ‘here-and-now’, which explicitly excludes the past and the future in focusing entirely on present feelings. (Stacey 2011: 320)

Influenced by Stacey and other social theorists, such as George Mead (1934) and Lucy Suchman (1987), I see temporality as a way to situate emotions and actions in context of the present. Rather than exploring a systemic quality of processes and human relations, my take is essentially inspired by the concept of a responsive thinking. Simply put, in the

first (systemic thinking) the whole is a combination of parts or sub-parts with additional properties that can act in their interaction and give meaning to the parts; whereas the second (responsive thinking) suggests an ongoing movement of human interactions and responses through the interdependency of relations (Stacey 2011: 339).

I discuss this perspective through the following chapters as new themes emerge. In line with the concept of responsive thinking, I introduce the emergence of themes as a way of working with an ongoing movement of reading, practicing and reflecting. Instead of taking the path of developing a sequential process by applying theoretical lenses as a process of analysis, I develop my work through a recognition of patterns of interaction in emerging themes. These patterns are then worked through a series of analyses and transformed

into themes as discussions and writings go on. Within this process of emerging themes, I agree to deconstruct the idea of temporality through sequentially. This responsive view comes into play to allow new things to emerge throughout the process, rather than only answering preestablished questions. In line with Mead’s work, it acknowledges the interdependence of the past and different moments of the present in a continuous movement.

I take this understanding to address different project cases of design practice that have been

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carried out in a international context. I highlight that this work did not begin in the moment

when the thesis contract was signed by me and my supervisor. In fact, the interaction between him and me is essential for why and how this thesis became what it became. My

perspective on my supervisor’s way of thinking has been changing throughout time as we negotiated our roles and relation. Through this process I recognize the transformation of my identity and the focus of my thesis. The movement from being his student to explicitly facilitate a course for other students with him has not only transformed the way we interact but how I come to understand the content of our conversations. However, such a process of transformation is rather hidden and hard to consciously notice in a present moment.

In order to illustrate a specific situation when a process of transformation turned to be conscious, I offer a short narrative written few weeks after I arrived in Sweden:

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“The truth is that I never truly understood Henry’s way of thinking. Of course it did make sense most of the times when we talked (way before he became my supervisor), but for some reason I was never able to explain to anyone else why our discussions were so interesting. Worse than that, I could not even put words together to tell in depth the difference between his way of thinking and most of the researches who have surrounded me over the past few years. In the beginning (shortly more than a year ago), the idea that things were created in the interaction between actors sounded rather obvious and boring to be further explored. When reading or discussing about it, I would internally ask “does this theory actually bring anything new? Hasn’t this be claimed and studied for most sociologists for a long time by now?”. It didn’t seem very challenging to agree and simply acknowledge that a conversation is composed by a process of thinking and speaking, through actions and reactions. It took me a while to find out that I was actually not wrong, but rather that my internal inquiries were just not enough to grasp the complexity of the discussions I was being exposed to.” [Narrative written in February, 23rd, 2014]

Following up on my intentions of working with a social interaction perspective of design practices in my thesis, I went through a series of negotiations to find out what to explore.

I talked with different companies and without really knowing what my intentions meant, I went to work with the Interactive Institute in Stockholm. At that moment, having in mind a way of exploring participation and challenging the way designers talk about stakeholders, I initially entitled my thesis proposal to be: “Design participation: managing stake and holders”.

What I came to recognize later on were the elements of my own identity that I would not

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have noticed otherwise. When at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) I am not part of the group of researchers that hold the masters education I am taking, at the Interactive Institute (II) I come relate to these researchers’ perspectives from a much closer position when I am physically close to them. A similar pattern of recognition happens in terms of nationality: in Sweden I feel much closer to Danish language and culture than when I am in Denmark. The point here is to acknowledge that all these reflections influenced and, at the same time, were influenced by who and where I was and how I articulated this work.

While finding myself recognizing patterns of identity in relation to Denmark I also had to deal with the role of being a newcomer in Sweden. This turned out to be an important matter, to shape the new role I was negotiating in relation to the context I found myself in.

According to Saks and Gruman, an organizational newcomer is unsure of his/her role and how well he/she will perform the job. They argue that: “in effect, they [the organizational newcomers] are like strangers in a strange land who must learn how to think, behave, and interact with other members of the organization if they are to become accepted and effective members themselves” (2012: 27). I my case, the land and the language were new as well as the organization.

The frustration I went through during the first weeks encouraged me to re-think my own interests, reasoning them and bringing them into my thinking and reading. I was actively reflecting upon the allowance of my participation. Another short narrative, shared with some of my classmates and with my supervisor, illustrates a participation dilemma: “Like there is no half hole, it feels like there is no half participation. In any case, half hole will be an entire hole itself, right? Maybe in different size, shape or deepness, but still a complete one with all characteristics it is composed of. So it is participation, isn’t it? I told you all that yesterday I was quite happy to be able to clarify my role here and manage NOT to take part in a project that is going on now, didn’t I? This somehow is still true. HOWEVER, when everybody left me today to move into a meeting room, where I could see (through the glass) lots of things building up on the wall that I would love to get to know, I felt that I wanted to be part of it. Just half part! Just observing what was happening and, at the same time, concentrating inside my computer on other stuff I need to do...

BUT I came to think that there is NO half participation. I cannot be invisible or unnoticed. If I’m there I’m already taking part and influencing the way people talk about things (especially If I make them switch languages). If I’m not there, I’m also influencing how things unfold with my non-participation. So, is participation also NOT to take part?” [Narrative written in March, 11th, 2014]

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I see these reflections around the means of participation closely related to my thesis proposal. The reason why I have not taken the means of participation as the main goal of my work relies on the allowance of being influenced by the context and dare to dive into some unknown discussions in regard to social interaction. This has led me to a lack of confidence and turned out to be paradoxically more challenging and motivating than I expected.

The path to move into a non-traditional approach to explore design comes from my willingness to go beyond the development of a product per se, which I have carried out in my bachelor thesis a few years back in time. Holding an industrial design background, I now seek to explore people’s relations instead of focusing on the physical qualities of the designing products. In this way, my prior interest does not lie in the understanding of the specific person-to-object interaction (as some interaction design researchers would be focused on); neither do I discuss only the person-to-person relationships (likely to be addressed by social scientists). Instead, my interests were focus on how the performative nature of a person-to-person interaction is influenced in the negotiations facilitated by

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tangible materials.

I lie my perspective of the design process on its iterative quality. However, I take a different view than the concept of iterative design introduced by literature, such as by Jakob Nielsen (1993) that describes it as a method which aims to iteratively uncover usability problems and refining user interfaces. I come to see design iteration as a continuous process of transformation in the ongoing interplay between the participatory and the performative, introduced next. In other words, I understand the transformation in iterations as an invitation for non-existing things to emerge in contrast to the understanding that problems are already there, ready to be uncovered.

1 . 2 T H E P E R F O R M AT I V E As noted in the previous section another significant aspect of participatory innovation was the use of design anthropology. Drawing on Clifford Geertz (1973), Dourish (2004) suggests that Sociology and Anthropology are so closely related that they almost overlap. For both of them anthropology explores the cultural meaning of social structures and patterns of social interaction, while sociology examines their emergence and maintenance. Emerging as a distinct body of inquiry in the mid-nineteenth century, anthropology has developed

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through different contextual approaches. Whereas American anthropologists dealt with the immediate and local availability of the native society to produce their own field reports in the field, the European anthropology was not as close to the anthropologists themselves. They were investigating and producing theory through second-hand field reports. Central from this separation was the arising of the European Anthropology into practical investigations, leading to the development of ethnographic methods. (Dourish 2004: 58) Not necessarily focused on the role of ethnographers in design, Charles Goodwin (1994) addresses the debate around professional practices arguing that the social shapes the professional and his/hers ability to see a meaningful event. For him, such an “ability [to see a meaningful event] is not a transparent, psychological process but instead a socially situated activity accomplished through the development of a range of historically constituted discursive practices” (Goodwin 1994: 606).

In discussing applied ethnography, Clark (2007) points out that the classic model of ethnographic research in anthropology relies on the ethnographer biography as a tool for socially interactive inquiries. By exploring Blomberg’s et al. (1993) notion of ethnography as a way to support practices of users involved in the design process, Clark argues upon the active involvement of participants as a shift in the value of ethnography. Through an actionoriented design ethnography perspective, he suggests a shift from the role focusing on what ethnography captures and represents to a process of playing, creating and illuminating the design project field for those involved (Clark 2007: 85).

By drawing on the work of Goffmann (1959) and Schechner (1977, [1988]; 1985), Clark introduces concepts to support design practitioners in the planning, conducting and assessing of design activities, such as performative framework, strategic corridor and performative task: While the performative framework provides an overview of the various issues valuable for planning and assessing design activities and vocabulary for illuminating them, I introduce strategic corridor and performative tasks to draw extra attention to the contrast between active and passive formats of social engagement. (Clark 2007: 144)

One of the most interesting aspect of Goffman’s work that Clark draws on is Goffman’s concept of back and front stage. In a seminal publication entitled “The presentation of self in everyday life”, Erving Goffman introduces a framework to explore everyday social

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intercourses based upon a metaphor of theatrical performance. He develops the term “performance” referring to the moment when an individual activity occurs and it is marked by his/her continuous presence towards specific observers that are influenced by the moment itself (Goffman 1959).

The author labels a concept of “front” as “that part of the general and fixed fashion to define the situation for those who observe the performance”. He continues by arguing that: “front, then, is the expressive equipment of a standard kind intentionally or unwittingly employed by the individual during his performance”. (Goffman 1959: 22). He thus describes the standard parts of front, such as a scenic setting composed by furniture and a physical layout.

In discussing the standard parts of what he explores as “front”, Goffman introduces a series of other terms that support his articulation, such as the idea of “personal front” to indicate, in his words, “items of expressive equipment” that intimately identify a particular performer regardless of where he/she is to perform. As part of such items, he lists: “insignia of office or rank; clothing; sex, age and racial characteristics; sizes and looks, posture; speech

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patterns; facial expressions; bodily gestures; and the like” (Goffman 1959: 22). Although acknowledging the influence of this theory in my work, my dicussion is taken by a slightly different perspective, as I reason later.

Central for my exploration is the interplay between different perspectives which engages me in an articulation of paradoxical discussions. It also allows the emergence of themes that would not have emerged otherwise. Although recognizing certain conflicts by intersecting the above introduced theories, I attempt to draw out the social interaction perspective by using four main theories: the idea of communication as an interdependent process by George Mead (1934); the concept of perceptions as bodily experience from Merleau-Ponty (1962); the work of Lucy Suchman (1987) about situated actions; and Ralph Stacey’s (2011) notion of complex responsive processes of relating.

I explore the intersection of their theories from the perspective of contextuality and embodiment. However, I must acknowledge that their works do actually steer into different and interesting contradictory directions. This leaves me with both a great challenge and an opportunity to possibly develop relevant discussions.

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1.3 RESEARCH AIMS Although Participatory Design and Participatory Innovation have addressed the engagement of stakeholders in project workshops, the preparatory process up until to participatory activities seems to be still rather interesting, yet neglected by some research explorations.

The perspective I raise here is that a series of movements in participatory practices might happen way beyond the involvement of stakeholders and might be extremely associated to what happens during and after the stakeholders’ involvement.

I suggest that these movements shape and are shaped by the social interaction between actors supported by the surrounding materials. To explore so, I seek for intersecting participatory practices and social interaction viewpoints, focusing on how people interact with each other mediated by tangible materials.

I believe that the novelty of this thesis comes to enlarge the notion of participation to include a temporal dimension and to explore of what happens “behind the line of visibility” in participatory processes. By acknowledging that participatory activities are not only co-created in the “front stage”, I focus on an articulation of the concepts “back and front stage”, which leads to my principal research question: “how design iterations transform and are transformed by social interactions in the interplay between back and front stage of participatory practices”.

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cases & methods.

PROJECT CASES Smart City RISE ToD UPSIDE

METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH

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CASES & METHODS In this chapter I briefly describe the project cases, ahrea of introducing the methodological approach that I have taken in this thesis. This is because I believe that the reader needs to be informed what cases I am referring to before I introduce how I draw on them. Paradoxically, the flow of this work requires that I situate the projects into their particular discussions as the text goes on. For this reason, I here briefly introduce them from a general perspective in order to be able talk about the methods. Then I go into the details of the specific moments as the discussions in the chapter of “emerging themes� call for it.

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PROJECT CASES The three project cases presented here are projects carried out by the design team of the Interactive Institute - Stockholm studio, in which I have taken active roles.

SMART CITY This project proved to be very complex. One of the principal actors involved in the Smart City project was a consultancy company, IMCG, which works with green innovation and strategy development. The company had established a working relationship with the Interactive Institute - Eskilstuna studio some years ago. The Interactive Institute - Karlstad studio was invited to take over the project. As a follow up in the study, IMCG collaborated with an IT company, called HiQ. They developed an app focusing on the before-during-after journey of event-goers.

Within this setting, the Interactive Institute - Stockholm studio was invited to take part in the project, working closely together with the Karlstad studio. On top of all these relationships, there was Vinnova funding the project.

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The role of the design team from the Stockholm studio was not very clear from the beginning. They were invited to organize workshops in relation to the business model involving the previous mentioned app, but they were not certain of the purpose behind it.

The first conducted workshop was focused on the user journey map of an event goer. The Stockholm team together with the Karlstad contact person went to a real event to map the journey and to bring insights to the workshop regarding the “before-during-after” moments.

Apparently, after the workshop they got to know that this was not exactly what IMCG was looking for. The discussions were then led towards Business Models. According to one of the Stockholm team members, there were three perspectives. In an interview conducted by me, she explains that: “the client [IMCG] was talking about the Business Model Canvas and innovative business models, the Karlstad office was talking about the flexible business models while in the Stockholm office we talked about Tangible Business Models”.

In December 2013 there was an internal workshop between three Interactive Institute offices (Gothenburg, Stockholm and Karlstad) focused on gamification. This was the moment when I came to Sweden for the first time on a short visit. In this meeting I was asked to make a brief introduction about how we have been working with Participatory Business Modeling in Sønderborg. Buur, Ankenbrand and Mitchell (2013: 61) elaborate in this concept. They suggest that “physical objects with no apparent connotations relating to business, serve as ‘things to think with’ as in the design tradition. They help to stimulate social construction of new meaning in groups across company functions and even company boundaries.”

With this in mind, at that moment I had just finished working on the facilitation of a course related to this topic for the first year students of the master program IT Product Design.

Because of this, the topic was not only fresh in my mind, but it had also been taken to a new level of understanding from when I was taking courses myself and working on designing such models. Through the process of taking a facilitator role, my reflections on what this all meant to me had changed significantly. Rather than understanding the development of a model to represent a case as the design goal itself, I became aware that what happens in the negotiations around the business case is key for this concept. Thus, the design decisions are not to provide answers on how to solve a particular business issue. Instead, the designers job becomes to design an invitation for unexpected things to emerge from the interaction between the experts.

Up until then I had not really considered this as something worth exploring in my thesis, but

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I could not simply ignore the opportunity and the potential of creating such a fruitful give & take collaboration. I felt I had the knowledge and the time to bring something which they were interested in and to take the opportunity to explore an existing complex project event in a different country/culture. There, in an unconscious process my identity as a newcomer had already started being shaped.

I came to recognize later that this process did not only shape me and my work, but it was also shaping the situation itself. An example of this were the two main activities we ended up conducting in the actual workshop in Sweden, months later: both originated from tools developed in Denmark beforehand and both suggested by me.

The international dislocated collaboration Back in Denmark, I created a proposal to design a tangible tool within a dislocated collaboration to kick-off the partnership with the design team in Stockholm. Through

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a joint course, three students from SDU were invited by me to join the development of such a tangible model. The distant collaboration was facilitated through a series of Skype meetings and email/file exchanges. In an intense 3 weeks project, Michelle Castañeda, Nina Huijboom, Paula Laborda and I worked face-to-face in Denmark to design of a tool that would support the main workshop of the ongoing “Smart City” in Sweden.

Throughout the design process, our main focus was to grasp the context of the Swedish project as much as we could and to involve experts. Acknowledging their experience with this matter, we conducted a series of conversational inquiries (Shaw, 2005) and try-outs with local researchers, such as: Mike Kirk, Robb Mitchel, Henry Larsen, Frederik Gottlieb and Jacob Buur [listed here in the chronological order of the inquiries].

Within this setting we created a tangible tool, later named “The Business Journey”. Its main purpose was to encourage actors to introduce their business, negotiate ways to collaborate and discuss how to move forward. Simply put, the outcomes of this phase of the project were: • a tangible tool (brought to Stockholm one week later); • a short report (appendix A); • an explanatory video (figure 1);

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• a short paper accepted and presented in the SIDER’14 Conference (appendix C) What I learned quite late was that the project was still very unclear at this moment, which I came to understand months later as the reason why some of the information we were asking for from Denmark could not be given to us. In an interview conducted after the final workshop with the design team member (who was supposedly leading the project from the Stockholm studio) I was told that: “(...) I think when you came in from Denmark it felt that we put some new fuel into this project. And then it felt like..Wow! If you can put these three weeks here, we can achieve something that can actually be interesting for us to do. And without that we wouldn’t really have enough time in the budget to do something that we would find very interesting. (...) So I think that it was a kind of new beginning.”

27 F i g u re 1: B u s i n ess J o u r ney tool - e x t r act from a e x p lan at or y video

The unfolding face-to-face collaboration in Sweden When in Sweden the time I would spend on this project came to be limited by the amount of work required by other projects that turned out to be both more urgent and more important for the team. This way, the workload for the “Smart City” project was mostly only driven forward in the week before the workshop. Series of role-negotiations took place between the different actors involved in the workshop planning, for instance to recognize who was the leader of the project and who should decide what activities should be conducted in the workshop. In the end, one Stockholm team member and I were the most active players in the backstage process of developing, improving and producing support materials for the activities.

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We developed two main activities for the workshop: one activity using a new version of the “Tangible Business Journey” tool that we created and built ourselves; another one based on the “staging process”, proposed by Buur et al. (2013) as a tool to invite stakeholders to stage their relations. About this model, they argue that: The way we have come to explain the success of the staging process is that to innovate a business model we need to be prepared to rethink roles and relations in the value network. Acting is a simple and fast way of experimenting with new roles and relations. The staging process turns abstract business relations into something that people can actually experience, and their experiences of line of sight, relative distances, etc., in the physical space make them think about how business relations in ‘real life’ may change in similar ways. (Buur 2013: 66)

RISE ToD

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Standing for “Research Institutes of Sweden”, RISE is a network of research and technology organizations, wholly or partly owned by the Swedish state. RISE consists of four corporate groups with a total of 16 organizations and their subsidiaries.

Under this umbrella of institutions, the “RISE ToD” project Testbädd och Demonstranter = Testbed and Demonstrators was organized in 8 work packages and has 10 different “pilot projects” (which is composed by the test beds and their clients). The overall goal of the ToD project (all work packages and pilots) is to be able to offer more test bed services to SME’s (Small and Medium Enterprises) and research institutions.

By having representatives in 2 work packages of this project, the Interactive Institute Stockholm comes into play. Furthermore, besides being members of the RISE and part of the work packages in the ToD structure, they (we) had also gotten the role of organizing the main workshop of the project up until now. Aiming at “building understanding and enacting communication”, the workshop took place on 20th and 21st of February and had around 60 representatives of the project.

However, I actually began to work on the project with little of the understanding I have indicated above, which I gathered in retrospect. At that point, the design team had already had two iterations of the activities to be carried out in the workshop. Reflecting upon the

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project while trying to make room for my participation, what I came to find out was that the iterative process had a much more important role than only in the design of the activities.

In this case, design iterations were used as a way of “pre-involving” the participants, which could lead to a more engaged performance in the front stage and a better acquaintance of the design team facilitating the project. While the iterations depended on a limited number people involved, channels like emails and phone calls were used to reach all the participants before the workshop. With the purpose of inviting them to share burning questions and bring specific materials, it also functioned as a way to set up expectations and kick-off the “back and front stage interaction”.

As far as all the material, tasks and activities were conducted in Swedish, my participation was rather shallow and unclear. While being a newcomer in Sweden and in the Interactive Institute, I took the challenge of keeping up with the acquaintance reached from the previous iterations trying to decode the basic behind the new language.

When I was present and was giving full attention, the discussions about this project were

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taken in English. But if I slid my eyes to the computer or showed any kind of disinterest in the topic, a hidden permission would be given for an unconscious and rather fast language switch. Such language and participation negotiations were on during my first three weeks in Sweden until the “ToD project” workshop (Figure 2) passed and we quickly moved onto the work required by the “Smart City” project.

F i g u re 2: p i c t u re s of m o m ents t h at i llustrate t h e ToD w o r ksh op .

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UPSIDE The User-driven Participatory Solutions for Innovation in Digitally-centered Ecosystems (UPSIDE) is an European project that aims according to one of the key members of the project, Luc Schmerber (email exchange): at promoting the development of cooperation frameworks and synergy linkages between research, innovation activities within the companies, urban development policies and open user-driven innovation ecosystems which are close to the interests and needs of cities and their stakeholders, including citizens and businesses, and which may bridge the gap between short-term city development priorities and longer term technological research and experimentation} (2014)

This project involves a number of partners associated to regional clusters from 6 countries: Slovenia, Denmark, Estonia, Netherlands, Germany and Sweden. Periodic meetings and general assemblies take place in different regions in order to move the project forward,

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exchanging practices and building joint plans.

Carried on by the Kista cluster in Sweden, the workshop was lead by the “Kista Science City� team and counted on the Interactive Institute to bring in participatory activities. As Kista being a specific area where thousands of ICT companies and research organizations have offices located, the Interactive Institute came to be part of the Swedish cluster. However, once again, besides being only a passive member of the group, our team was to have a significant part of the 2-days meeting (figure 3).

Figure 3: p i c tures of moments of the main UPSIDE meeti ng

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With a tight schedule for preparation and not having it the highest priority (as I interpreted), we re-used some of the activities and materials designed for the ToD project, adapting them to the new context. However, the adaption was not only a matter of switching language.

During the translation process we went through an understanding of the appropriate terms and what types of projects the participants would be invited to build together through the tangible materials and activities, shown in details on a workshop summary (appendix B).

From my perspective, the uselessness and frustration I had once faced in the ToD project were now transformed into confidence. The feeling of making myself useful enough to bring contributions from the ToD practice and from my own previous experiences made a greater impact on how I understood my participation than if I had not experienced that frustration before-hand.

Another important detail about this project was the Interactive Institute’s role to develop a “Participatory Methods Inventory” (appendix B - last section), which allowed me to reflect upon what/how/when the methods we used in that particular case could be used in different projects. This reflection started in the meeting itself and moved on to a development of

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“method cards” (figure 4).

F i g u re 4: re f l e c tion of t h e a ctivitities i n t h e meeting ( l e f t ) ; car d s d e v e l oped af t e r words f ro m a n aly s is of t h e pratical a c t i v i ties ( r i g ht )

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METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH According to David Silverman (2005) choosing the method of any academic research is part of a decision that cannot be predetermined. He argues that “no method of research, quantitative or qualitative, is intrinsically better than any other” (Silverman 2005: 06). This is because the methods to be used in any kind of research need to be meaningfully connected to what the research is essentially looking for.

When it comes to the Design Research field, there seems to be a strong adoption of qualitative methods. Christopher Ireland explores this matter in a chapter of the book “Design Research Methods and Perspectives”. In his words, Qualitative Design Research “enjoys a controversial existence”, which results in chaos among practitioners and methods “ranging from inspired to inept” (Laurel ed. 2003). Dealing with similar issues, Bonnie Johnson’s chapter in the same book argues that not only Qualitative Design Research is paradoxical as he explores an overall perspective on design research regardless the methods applied. For him, design

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research itself is both imaginative and empirical. It must go beyond what designers can hear and see and yet be grounded in an empirical evidence (Laurel ed. 2003). That is due to the controversial design quality of requiring researchers’ empathy with a certain level of attachment (in order to truly understand the users) and detachment at the same time (in order to avoid taken-for-granted assumptions and offer conclusive observations to some extent.

With this controversial design quality in mind and the idea that the methodological approach influences and is influenced by the context itself: I have begun this research with a collection of plans and expectation but yet with a non-defined set of methods. I started by taking an active participation in ongoing projects carried out by the Interactive Institute Swedish ICT AB. Within an action research approach, focus was then driven towards the design of materials to support activities and their explorations, through narratives, interviews and video analyses.

The practical experiments of this thesis were incorporated through my active participation in three projects: “Smart City Events”, “RISE ToD” and “UPSIDE”, developed mostly by me in cooperation with classmates in Denmark and colleagues in Sweden. The

research designs are: (1) applied in the front stage workshops:

tangible

supporting

models,

materials

for

the

activities

and

video

extracts;

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(2) for the backstage analysis: tangible materials for collaborative mapping and interview strategies.

The data collection of this work is characterized by a combination of field notes, interviews, video extracts, narratives and collaborative mappings analyzed in individual and collaborative sessions. By them I mean:

• Field notes: an individual collection of drawings, activities register with pictures and notes and written analysis in a notebook, that I entitled a “thesis diary” (figure 5).

Figure 5: example of f i e l d notes i n th e “th esi s di ar y ”

• Narratives: write ups of personal and contextual reflections on specific issues. In line with Patricia’s Shaw concept of conversational inquiry (2005) I reflected upon present moments in order to make sense of the reasoning behind them. Examples of them were used in the beginning of this introduction to illustrate particular themes (figure 6).

Fi gure 6: exampl e of narrat i ve

• Interviews: sessions conducted in line with Schensul’s et al.

(1999) perspective on “in-depth, open-ended interviewing”, which aims at deepen the interviewer’s knowledge about the topic. For them, this open-ended, exploratory interview format invites researchers to explore with flexibility the topics as they Figure 7: imag e of t h e i nt ervi ew

arise. In line with this concept, I developed an specific strategy to explore the “what”, “why”, “who” of different matters of the project (figure 7).

• Video extracts: fragments of videos recorded in collaborative sessions of the project cases. The extracts were selected through video analysis and utilized to allow the emergence

Figure 8: example of v i d e o extrac ts for analys is

patterns of interaction, that would not be noticed otherwise. (figure 8).

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• Collaborative mappings: a series of meetings that focused on collaborative reflections. Although these sections’ structure and goals varied from one project to another, here I was inspired by Schensul’s et al. (1999) understanding of “mapping as a data-gathering technique”. Drawing on Chambers (1992: Fi g u re 9: exampl e of c ol l aborat i ve mappi ng s

129), they suggest that: “a number of social scientists have popularized the concept of ‘social mapping’ as means to gain the direct involvement of community of people in data gathering, leading to community development, agricultural innovation, and other programs that depend on community participation” (figure 9).

The figure bellow (figure 10) illustrates how the process went through. Looking at it from bottom to top: the green graph shows the intensity of work dedicated in specific projects throughout time. It seems important to highlight that in January the work was done in Denmark and it refers to project that developed a business tangible model to be used in

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a project in Sweden, that occurred in March. The dashed lines suggest the connection between the projects. This connection is mainly manifested through the transformation of materials from a moment to the other, linking the projects.

Figure 10: visualization of the methodological process from a chronological persp ecti ve.

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The image also shows a purple layer of analyses and reflections, which were extremely connected to the project practices themselves. Here some activities were conducted by the design team (us) as the project required (as the “ToD reflection”) and some were conducted by me, demanded by my thesis (as the Smart City interview and collaborative mapping).

On top of the “green practices” and the “purple analyses” there is the yellow layer of theory.

This layer shows reading peaks in February and March. It illustrates an intense and constant move of reading on April which that I would like to clarify as the moments when I struggled the most in attempting to connect theory across authors as well as with the analysis of the practices.

A yet extremely relevant take in this process is the acknowledgment of the overlapping quality of these movements (figure 11). While I split them to be able to go into details I give particular importance to their interconnections. By consciously understanding the relations between this different moments I deepen my perspective, into a concrete process, on how things emerge, often taken for granted. This way of thinking is carried throughout my work. I split micro momenta to dive into analysis attempting to avoid neglecting its contextual quality.

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F i g ure 6: v i s u alization of t he m e thodological p ro cess with the “ re al” overlap of a c t i vit ie s

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emerging themes.

TA N G I B L E M E D I AT I O N AS SOCIAL N E G OT I AT I O N S

I T E R AT I V E D E S I G N A S RESPONSIVE PROCESSES O F T R A N S F O R M AT I O N

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3

EMERGING THEMES In this chapter I recognize the emergence of themes situated in the temporal quality of the interweaving between the three mentioned cases with the theory I have been introducing. Here, I draw on the cases while offering contextual discussions. In entitled the three themes as the topics of this chapter: “tangible mediation as social negotiations”, “design iteration as complex responsive processes of transformation”, and “back and front stage interplay as interdependent relations”.

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TA N G I B L E M E D I AT I O N AS SOCIAL N E G OT I AT I O N S This theme unpacks a discussion about the mediation of tangible materials in social interaction. Rather than exploring tangibility as a quality for human interaction for the means of product interfaces discussed by other works such as in the field of HCI (Ishii & Ullmer 1997), my primary focus lies on person-to-person interactions.

Here, I attempt to explore the way people interact with each other mediated by the presence of tangible materials and influenced by the temporal quality of social objects.

Jyri Engeström (2005) discusses the concept of social objects within social networks. He draws on the work of Karin Knorr-Cetina while discussing sociality as more than just people. From a different perspective, Mead (1934) dissociates the physical nature of the term social objects. He suggests that tangible objects can be treated as tangible things whereas social objects have to be understood in terms of social acts. According him, the value is socially created regardless to its physical manifestation. Stacey points out that “while a physical objects are to be

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found as things in nature, social objects can only be experienced in their particularisation in complex social acts as the living present” (2011: 358). He (Stacey 2011: 360) elaborates in this concept by pointing out that: Social objects are common plans or patterns of action related to the future of the act. Social objects have evolved in the history of the society of selves and each individual is born into such a world of social objects.

Individuals are forming social objects while being formed by them in an evolutionary process.

With regard to design practices, I seek to understand how participants interact between themselves through situated actions, while manipulating tangible materials in collaborative sessions. By situated actions Suchman underscores a perspective that every course of action is essentially dependent on material and social circumstances (Suchman, 1987).

Although Mead and Suchman developed their theories in different directions, they challenge the traditional understanding of human communication. Mead proposes a very interesting dialectic between self and the other, that describes our interdependency between each other as essentially grounded in the notion that we are “social selves” (Mead, 1910); Suchman explores the relation of knowledge and action to suggest that: ‘isofar as actions are always situated in particular social and physical circumstances, the situation is crucial to action’s interpretation’ (Suchman 1987: 178).

These perspectives on social interaction have been addressed in a significant amount of publications in the past 30 years, focusing on one’s relation with mind, body and the social.

Whilst Descartes claims that the mind observes the world and gives it meaning, Heidegger turned this understanding around by suggesting that everyday experiences lies not in the head, but in the world (Dourish 2001: 107). This challenges the perspective of the control that the mind has over the body and suggests discussions around whether they are even separable.

The development of such reflections is taken further by Dourish in his work entitled “Where the Action is: the foundations of embodied interaction”, published in 2001. There he continues articulating that although Husserl and Heidegger have steered their theories into different directions they were both concerned to the individual experience of the world while Schutz came in to encompass the social world in relation to an individual (Dourish 2001). Here I point out that Schutz’s understanding of the social is different than what noted

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from the complexity thinking perspective while seeing the individual as already social.

Dourish also concentrates on the work of Merleau-Ponty, whose goal was to restore the relations between Heidegger’s “philosophy of being” and Husserl’s “philosophy of essence” (Dourish 2001). The focus then became on the perception of embodied experiences. Taylor Carman discussed the nuances between Husserl and Merleau-Ponty’s work. He points out that although initially inspired by the Husserlian theory of intentionality, Merleau-Ponty turns his account to the intentional constitution of the body and its role in perceptual experience (Carman 1999). He writes that: Merleau-Ponty never doubts or denies the existence of mental phenomena, of course, but he insists, for example, that thought and sensation as such occur only against a background of perceptual activity that we always already understand in bodily terms, by engaging it. (Carman 1999: 206).

Although brief, the introduction of social interaction from a phenomenological viewpoint is important for two reasons: (1) to acknowledge the relevance of the work carried out by these theorists and therefore attain permission to discuss the body and the social in an

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overlapping but yet different discussion; (2) to highlight the main grounds that influence my own thinking: Merleau-Ponty’s and Mead’s works supported and articulated by their advocate researchers, in special Taylor Carman, Paul Dourish, Ralph Stacey and Patricia Shaw.

I want to clarify here the seemingly contradiction of drawing on these two works. I believe that the paradox of confronting the theories of embodied experience with that of social interaction illuminates fruitful reflections rather than lessen both notions.

In order to make the discussion focus this discussion I turn more to the role of objects in a social environment, which also has been taken up in a number of publications. One of the most important carries the concept of “boundary objects” (Star & Griesemer 1989). They introduce the idea that new objects and methods mean different things in different worlds.

They argue that actors face the challenge of reconciling these different meanings if they wish to cooperate. In regards to the concept of boundary objects, the proposal is that they (the boundary objects) are “objects which are both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and the constraints of several parties employing them, yet robust to maintain a common identity across sites” (Star et al. 1989: 392).

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Although this concept introduces an extremely relevant perspective on how objects can have an organic, or in their words “plastic”, quality of transforming accordingly to the context they traverse, I am convinced that the meaning are less in the objects per se. I see that the plasticity function allows the transformation of objects from one situation to another. However, instead of carrying qualities to facilitate shared meanings I understand the objects as mediators through which non-existing meanings are created. From MerleauPonty’s phenomenological viewpoint, I understand the meaning experienced in the human perception. At the same time that, in Stacey’s words, “meaning is not attached to an object, formed as a representation, or stored, as in cognitivism, but is created in the interaction.”

(Stacey 2011: 332). In line with these works I articulate a contextual analysis proposing a reflection on the “front stage interaction” mediated by objects.

SMART CITY CASE | the business journey activity As described in chapter 2, the Smart City is a project which has grown through a puzzle of relations between an organization called IMCG and different studios of the Interactive Institute. Numerous meetings and collaborative sessions have been conducted throughout this collaboration. However, for the matters of the discussion highlighted in this chapter’, only a specific moment of a particular workshop will be analyzed: the “business journey activity”. Three main reasons for this selection are: (1) my active participation on planning and running the activity, (2) the feasibility of having it fully recorded on video and (3) the use of English in most of the conversations, even though Swedish was officially the language of the workshop.

A discussion on the design and planning of this activity is only covered in the following sections of this thesis. Instead, my current focus is on the front stage; on how the participants interacted between themselves through the materials. The concept of the front stage is also deepened later on. By now it seems to be necessary to highlight that by front stage I refer to the moments when external participants are to interact with each other in collaborative sessions.

The business journey activity is a contextualized and live version of the business journey tool created in the very beginning of 2014 in Denmark. Bringing it to Sweden few weeks after its academic “launch”, we transformed the tool into the main activity of the one of the Smart City workshop. Occurring simultaneously in two groups (one in Swedish and one in

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English) in two different rooms, the activity took one hour throughout 5 main steps:

• STEP 1: “Choose one or more objects from your toolbox and introduce yourself and your business through them” (figure 12); Fi g u re 12 : s t ep 1

Fi g u re 1 3: s t e p 2

• STEP 2: “Your task is to collaboratively plan an event. All together select one of the ‘scenario cards’ or create a new one to define what type of event you will be working with”(figure 13);

• STEP 3: “The board is split in before-during-after moments. Use the holes to add your contributions to each of those moments. Feel free to agree on the Fi g u re 14 : s t ep 3

F i g u re 1 5 : s t e p 4

content of the holes and to tag them” (figure 14);

• STEP 4: “Open the lid and discuss what you have

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created. Select three key factors for your event to happen and write them on the ‘scenario card’ on top of the board” (figure 15); • STEP 5: “Use the video guide to create a 3 minutes video of your event” (figure 16); Fi g u re 16: s t ep 5

F i g u re 1 7: s t e p 6

• STEP 6: “Watch the videos from both groups altogether and discuss their key points” (figure 17);

TANGIBLE MEDIATION The following paragraphs discuss an analysis of a video extract from the Smart City project workshop. In line with Patricia’s Shaw (2005) notion of conversational inquiry, I introduce the activity while asking questions to myself in order to enhance the means of what is happening in a particular momentum. The activity regards to the building of a collaboration between possible future business partners in relation to events in the city of Gothenburg.

The focus is driven on a particular momentum of interaction from the two groups:

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We are five people present when staging

the

business

journey

activity: JR, MN, CE, EL and I (figure 18). Although written instructions were prepared for this activity and the plan for my role was essentially to take pictures and videos, I felt comfortable enough to intervene at some moments as a facilitator.

The presence of another nonSwedish speaker encouraged me to take such a role without feeling ashamed about speaking English.

F i g u re 1 8 : a c t i v i t y s e t t i n g , g ro u p 1 ( p i c t u re e x t r a c t e d f ro m t h e video)

The activity starts by the participants reading in silent the instructions. Some of them start to open their tool boxes and the others follow. They are to choose the objects through which they would introduce themselves to the others. After a non-measured couple of silent minutes, an exchange of looks and a simple “yeah..?� pushes them to start speaking.

JR takes the initiative to start introducing himself as being part of the Interactive Institute - in the city of Karlstad. He points out that he would take instead the role from an event production company that he runs. His first explanation comes in Swedish - probably influenced by the fact that the instructions were all in Swedish. Realizing that the French woman sitting right in front him could have not understood everything: he asks if she would need him to switch to English. Hesitatingly she says that she did not understand the last part, which makes him repeat everything what he said, now in English.

He then introduces two objects: a paper clip and a screw. He describes the paper clip as being the script that his team gets, emphasizing that it is about content and what happens in their head altogether with their engagement. In his other hand he lifts up the screw explaining that this is part of his job, his profession. He suggests that the screw is the technical element and the quality of an event that needs to work out on a particular day without the risk of redoing or postponing it. He talks about how equipment of lighting,

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sounds, cameras, computers, voting systems and so on need to be accurate. He concludes by saying that his business is: “a combination of content [lifting the paper clip in the right hand] and production [lifting the screw on the left one]” (figure 19).

MN takes her turn to present her company as “connecting life styles”.

Like JR, besides sharing her name and introducing the company that she works for, she tries to outline her role in that specific moment.

F i g u re 1 9 : J K i nt ro d u c i n g h i s ob je ct s

Here, it might be relevant to point out that we did not suggest them to focus on a specific role,

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apart from the ones they already have in the company they work. Before this activity, there was

a brief presentation from the IMCG company regarding the app that they had developed. By being part of the Interactive Institute team (although in a different city), JR knew what was to come. However, at that point he had not been introduced to as a workshop facilitator.

Thus, the others could not know how much JR knew about this activity. Without knowing this, three of the four people at the table followed his structure when presenting themselves and all of them took a fairly similar time frame to do so.

So what happened here, Patrícia?

Illuminated by Mead’s concept of internalization of social, I would describe what happened as an example of how social rules are set during the ongoing negotiations of “playing” a specific shared activity, which influence and unfold the activity itself. Based on evidences collected throughout the entire activity I would also suggest that one could to refer to this phenomenon as a hidden facilitation process. By starting and making use of specific strategies to execute certain steps, JR had set some hidden directions and norms through his engaged participation, that ended-up being followed by the others in a social occurrence.

Going back to the moment when MN is introducing her role, she also decides to use two objects to support her 2-minutes speech: a key tag, that she explains as being the vision of events through which the visitors should have a great experience; and a hinge, named by

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her “a door opener” that opens technical opportunities for events. She puts up the objects back in the box in a noisy and confident way to mark the end of her turn.

Seemingly a quite person, CE starts by describing his work as someone who has to deal with IT products and IT service management. Beyond following the pattern of officially choosing two objects, he manipulates them to simulate how they should behave together to accomplish the actions they were chosen for. He first takes up a wheel and slides it on the table while talking about the fact that he has been working with traffic control in the city of Gothenburg for 4 years.

Then he introduces an “s hook” as an object to grip data while simulating the movement that would represent the action of griping data if this was a tangible activity. Interestingly, he takes a third object without making it clear if this was an object added to his speech or part of his gestures. He talks about the creation of a platform to centralize data while touching a key tag. He never introduces it verbally as an object to support his point and puts it back when giving the turn to the next person (figure 20).

F i g u re 2 0 : C E i nt ro d u c i n g h i s “ s h o o k ” ( l e f t ) a n d t o u c h i n g t h e ke y t a g w i t h o u t v e r b a l l y i nt ro d u c i n g i t t o t h e ot h e r s ( r i g ht ) .

Revisiting the video to make sense of this action, what I came to notice was that when he starts his speech the three objects were already placed in a different compartment of the box than the rest of the materials. The fact that the three objects were placed in the lid of the box might suggest that they were already selected to be introduce before the other participants introduced their own objects. However, CE refers to the two first objects by using the verb “choose” whereas the third object is not officially mentioned.

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For example, after introducing the wheel he says: “And... I first started working with grouping data, from the beginning identifying data for IT services and platforms that distributes data, as a project manager. So I also chose this small hook to find and group data and making it public.” Then he moves on to talk about a central solution while touching but not talking about the key tag. In this moment, the three other participants seem to look at his body movement and gestures with the object in his hand as they were expecting him to say something about it (figure 21).

F i g u re 2 1 : C E ’ s s e l e c t i o n of objects b e f o re b e f o re h i s t u r n t o introduce t h e m ( i m a g e e x t r a c t e d f ro m t h e v id e o )

And what can be said about this?

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Whether CE wanted to introduce the key tag as a third object or it was just part of his bodily movement while speaking is something I cannot confirm without contacting him and asking so. And even if I did so, the simple act of contacting him and asking such a question could influence his explanation about it. Regardless, the significance of why he touched the key tag is not the main point here. It could simply mean that he wanted to say something that did not fit with the two previous objects or that he needed to touch something else while speaking. It could also mean that he actually took the key tag as part of his selection but did not know how to “perform” an action with it as he did with the others.

Although I am unable to confirm his reasons, I have imagined around CE’s motives, as it enables me to speculate here is if he felt that he was not socially allowed to add a third object simply because the two other participants had only chosen two objects. The point being that my inquiry now moves toward the meaning of his action rather then the action itself.

What I am introducing here is Mead’s theory of gesture-response, through which he argues that we communicate through a conversation of gestures that continuously calls for a response. He elaborates on the interdependency between mind and the social suggesting that, in Stacey’s words: “’Mind is the role-playing action of a body directed toward itself, just as the social is the action of bodies directed toward each other” (Stacey, 2000). For them

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both it is impossible to have mind without the social just as it is impossible to have the social with the absence of mind.

This raises the question of whether CE’s action was “the action of a body silently directed toward itself” or if it was “the actions of bodies vocally and publicly directed toward each other”. In other words, was that an individual mind process mimicking the social or a genuine process of social relating that calls for response? In the light of the complex theories that I have been discussing in this thesis, the temporal quality of a particular interaction cannot reify the social and the individual as two separated bodies. This means that the two “opposite” acts of my inquiry happens in internal and social conversations that goes on paradoxically at the same time.

I describe now the fourth participant, EL’s moves. Like the others, she starts by presenting her position at the company where she works, but emphasizing the role (the “hat,” in her words) that she would be taking in the specific moment. Another intensity emerged, however, when she was presenting her objects. Instead of using them as elements related to her work qualities, as the three others did, she chose to combine two objects to build up a replica of an event stage, explaining that it relates to a real stage in the events she organizes. Here the point of interest is not in the fact that she built something under different “rules”, but on the way she feels uncomfortable to have done so. While introducing her combination of a magnet and a screw to resemble a stage she says: “I chose this just because it is a scene.

Like a dance floor”. She laughs and the others briefly laugh with her while she continues: it’s funny. I didn’t go that far.” Then she moves on talking about the challenges of organizing events.

Why did she feel uncomfortable with acting differently to the others?

After all, the activity has not set such rules about the objects: neither through the written instructions, my oral facilitation nor in the affordance (Gibson 1979) of the material. The purpose of the activity was to encourage them to share details of their work practices, making them familiar with each others’ businesses. They could have done this by selecting/ building/doing almost anything with the objects. The act of choosing objects and finding ways to articulate them by themselves was what would trigger each others’ attention and interests, making living tangible marks in the present situation. In line with Suchman’s (1987) work, these marks are situated in the handling of the material as much as in their minds.

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However, it became clear that for the last person to present something done in a different manner than all the others appeared to be something the person felt as “wrong”.

An interesting parallel discussion could be raised here in relation to the affordance of the material. From Gibson’s (1979) perspective, she handled the material in the way she did, as the material affords so. For him: “Objects can be manufactured and manipulated. Some are portable in the way they afford lifting and carrying, while others are not. Some are graspable other are not. To be graspable, an object must have opposite surfaces separated by a distance less than the span of the hand” (Gibson 1979: 133).

However, my point of interest here is to explore the impact on the others if a person perceives his/her actions as either “right” or “wrong”. This example appears to confirm that the social dynamics shape collaborative actions, but it does not presume that rules created in the social relation are stronger than other ways of setting “rules”. If there were

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clear instructions on how to execute the task of choosing and presenting the objects to the others, they might have followed it - or at least consider to interpret them in a specific way.

At the same time it offers a reflection on where meaning is created. For me, the design of the activity that includes the preparation of the instructions as well as the design of the tangible tool (including the selection of the objects) convey intentions, but the meaning making is social, created in the contextual dynamics of the ongoing situation.

In a chapter of a book edited by Wendy Gunn and Jared Donovan (2013), Larsen & Have’s come to discuss the present moment as a “defining moment”. They suggest that “the phenomenological themes of ‘particularity’, ‘contextuality’, and ‘spaciality’ are obviously important, but they must all be seen in light with the theme of ‘temporality’ going on in the social interaction” (2013: 142). Inspired by them I see that, like contextuality, the contextual dynamics of the ongoing situation are not apart from these phenomenological themes.

In EL’s case, we are left with wondering how things would have unfolded if she had been the first instead of being the last participant to present her way of dealing with the objects.

In terms of temporality, Larsen and Have offer in the same chapter that: paradoxically, the temporal awareness transforms the past and the future in the present moment, which in turn alters recollection of the past and aspirations for the future” (2013: 142 ). In response to

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the temporal quality of the ongoing situation, I would suggest that the activity would have turned out quite differently if EL had been given a hidden facilitation role.

In conclusion, I would like to emphasize the impact of tangible materials in the social dynamics of participatory activities, underscoring that when it comes to moments where rules are not set or explicit, the participants will follow each other’s actions or feel reluctant to not do so. I come to suggest that the awareness of designers (or those who design the activities) in these social interaction is key to the planning, running, responsive facilitation of and active participation on these kinds of participatory activities.

I also come to see how Mead’s concept of social objects from a double perspective: while being a social act detached from physicality, social objects may also be manifested through tangible materials that facilitates creation of meaning socially, which does not refer to discovery of a shared meaning. Even when emerging from tangible manifestations, social objects might qualify a temporal act in constant negotiation.

I T E R AT I V E D E S I G N A S RESPONSIVE PROCESSES OF T R A N S F O R M AT I O N Unlike the previous theme, here I avoid addressing the unpacking of momenta in the micro analyses of social negotiations. Instead, the presentation and discussion of the following cases are dedicated to explore movements of continuous processes from a more longterm viewpoint.

The attention is now focused on the activities that happen “behind the scenes” or what I now term as “back stage” of design practices of which there is still little research. I seek to dive into such a back stage of design practices, making sense of the transformatory process of the design iterations throughout time.

Crucial for this exploration is the question of how meanings and relations become what they become. In essence, how the navigation between projects and practices influences their own occurrences as the process goes on.

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By back stage I mean situations composed of actions conducted by a design team when developing activities to engage external participants. Inspired by Goffman’s theatrical concept, I draw a slightly different perspective on the notion of back and front stage, which I discuss in-depth in the next chapter of this work.

ToD AND UPSIDE CASES As introduced in chapter 2, these are two distinct projects that overlap each other from a back stage viewpoint. While the ToD project deals with a network of intentions between numerous of Swedish research institutes, the UPSIDE project is concerned with the relations between IT cluster regions from 6 different European countries.

In the ToD case, there were conducted three iteration sessions with 4-5 participants before the prominent workshop, which was packed with a combination of activities in 2 days for about 60 participants. From one iteration to another, I see an iterative process

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of transformation that responds to the social relations situated in a temporal quality. By relating the design of the workshop with a product in development I see a continuous process between each iteration. However, I come to see design iterations regarding how tangible materials are transformed.

While the iteration one was conducted with a set of non-selected tinkering materials, the second session was supported by tangible materials prepared on the basis of an analysis upon the first iteration. As the materials had not been used up to that point, the iteration three was used mainly to explore how the still rough materials were to be manipulated and sense-made by the participants.

By using the materials, the participants built a “tangible understanding” of their work, while representing physical facilities and people involved. Their final task was to navigate through the relations between the built elements and record a short video that could be shared as a way for other to reach an understanding of their work practice (figure 22).

F i g u re 2 2 : g ro u p re c o r d in g a v id e o u zi n g t h e m at e r i a l b uilt b y t h e m

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Through an analysis of the previous session, the design team (we) developed changes in the flow of the activities as well as in tangible materials. In this process, simple series of transformations were ignited: small pieces became bigger with larger surface as an invitation to be written on, formats and sizes were matched to be connected with each other and colors gained relevance as a way to shape the groups’ identity. An overall idea of the transformation might be illustrated by the pictures bellow whereas a particular example is shown in the “move” from the yellow to the brown materials at the right bottom of the image (figure 23). By reflecting upon how the participants related to the yellow formats in previous activities we have adjusted their proportions for the next encounters.

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F i g u re 2 3 : m at e r i a l t r a n s f o r m at i o n t h ro u g h d e s i g n i t e r at i o n s

From a cross-project perspective, the iterations of the ToD project by the design team (us) came to steer the materials to be used in the UPSIDE project. At this point such reflections seemed to be transformed into guidelines for the development of series of materials that would not have been thought of that way otherwise.

PARTICIPATORY TRANSFORMATION The mentioned process of transforming reflections into practical project guidelines is understood here in line with Stacey’s (2011) concept second-order abstraction. According to him the move from first to second-order abstraction is moves away from the actual experience of what he discusses as local interaction. However, this second-order abstract is important for the development of modern states, modern organizations or modern science.

The paradox takes place when we understand that, in contrast, “without immersion and

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accompanying first-order abstraction there would be no means to perpetually construct societies, organisations and sciences� (2011: 422). He emphasized the nature of this paradox by suggesting that: The perspective of complex responsive process, therefore, takes the form of first-order abstraction, indeed all thought does, but it seeks to avoid second-order abstraction by avoiding reasoning to do with forces, structures, maps and models and focusing on narrative patterns of experience instead. (Stacey 2011: 461)

Illuminated by Stacey and his colleagues (such as Patricia Shaw and Douglas Griffin) I come to see the transformation process of design iteration in line with the complex responsive processes, which combines the though of Mead on communication and that of Elias on relations of power. In essence: “complex responsive processes are patterned as propositional and narrative themes that organise the experience of relating and, thus, power relations�

(Stacey 2011: 469).

Although keeping a subtle nuance in the organizational complexity addressed by them,

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I come to refer to this theory while dislocating it towards design matters. Traditionally iterative design is an approach taken when a series of user trials are an essential element of the process. According to Jakob Nielsen (1993) it refers to a method that develops user interfaces through refinements conducted iteratively over several versions. He explains that each iteration is subjected to user testing or other usability-evaluation methods designed to uncover usability problems. Simply put, instead of dedicating an enormous effort at a late stage of a design development process to try out specific features of a product or service, the continuous quality of improving-testing-improving allows fine changes to be made and tested it out while it is still feasible to consider them.

I understand this approach in line with the shift of the design perspective from designing for the users - when only inviting them to test solutions - to design with them - when facilitating numbers of encounters throughout the process. Whereas some perspectives on the concept of iterative design might take tenuous different intends, I examine iteration as a multipurpose practice fundamentally dependent on the response of social relations.

Rather than focusing on technical improvements I see design interactions as to be shaped by whom the participants are and how they come to relate to the material as well as each other.

As an example of this multipurpose quality of iterations I can draw on a meeting that aimed

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to reflect and evaluate an workshop. Besides functioning as a connector between previous and next steps of the ToD project, this meeting represented an invitation of reinclusion for a member of the design team who had not been part of previous activities. It was also a starting point to discuss the methods to be used in the following project, the mentioned UPSIDE. What I suggest here is that the iterative quality of the design process can be understood not only at the aim of improving features of a particular design solution. I claim that the concept of iterative design can be expanded to recognize a temporal transformation through a social process of relating.

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53 Having articulated discussions in regards to a tangible mediation in the front stage and participatory transformations in the backstage, this topic comes to finally reason the usage on these terms within this work. Here, I draw on Goffman’s concept of back and front stage, adopted from a theatrical metaphor to a social psychology context. I then articulate my take by understanding it as moments of the design practices. In crossing the cases presented in previously I navigate through different moments, giving particular attention to how one influences and is influenced by the other.

I consider Goffman’s notion of the setting as parts of the “front” as to be an important elements for my analysis. Inspired by his understanding, I treat “front stage” as situations when external actors of a particular project are to collaboratively perform in participatory activities, which are to be planned and run by design teams.

By design teams I am referring to a combination of practitioners and design researchers whom not necessarily hold design background but are concerned in designing encounters to facilitate human interactions. Despite of not engaging into this matter, I point out that what qualifies a design team is not the design background held by the team members.

The distinction between designers and design researchers has also been reaching subtle

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parameters to some extent. That might be due to the fact that a significant section of design research calls for deep explorations through practice instead of only theoretical or isolated lab experiments.

As noted in the previous chapters, I take the concept of “backstage” as preparation for the participants’ active performances in what I have introduced as front stage. However, slightly different than Goffman’s notion of backstage as situations where people hide things from the audience, I come to see the backstage as moments where the design team rehearses the front stage activities. In other words, I refer to what goes on “behind the scenes” in a continuous movement of interaction.

FROM DESIGN INTENTIONS TO MATERIAL ROLES It might too obvious just to say that a back and front stage relation can be manifested through tangible materials. However in the movement from the design intentions to the

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social sense making unexpected patterns of interaction may emerge. While negotiating intentions, designers try predict how materials are to be assigned to particular roles by the users.

An example can be drawn from the Smart City project. In this case, the design teams both in Denmark and in Sweden steered towards the development of a tangible tool with a set of intentions and physical features. However, as noted previously, the ultimate roles are only created in the social interaction through a movement of negotiations.

This can be illustrated by evidences of participants’ actions when searching for a “start position” or something that can be understood as a physical front of a particular unusual object. Participants seem to try to interpret the designers’ intentions looking for the “right” way to use the objects that are exposed to for the first time. Within this process I come to exemplify that particular features function as mediator to interplay designers and participants’ moves.

The allocation of holes within a circular setting offers, for instance, an invitation to mark time. Once figured out where and how to start, this physical characteristic of the business journey tool (introduced in chapter 2) might suggest when a cycle of manipulation is complete (figure 23).

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F i g u re 2 3 : c i rc u l a r a l l o c at i o n of ho l e s.

In discussing roles of tangible materials I underscore two complementary perspectives based upon the analysis of UPSIDE case. Whereas materials can be used to represent a specific context, they are also extremely powerful in facilitating the emergence of relations, which can be observed in the UPSIDE workshop.

In groups the participants started by physically building a particular cluster of the project.

Once they were placed in groups with members of different clusters, they were first encouraged to inquiry the representative of the cluster to be built about its particularities.

After setting up the case of the cluster by building test beds and other facilities with the tangible materials, they were encouraged to moved beyond the representation. They steered to a “tangible conversation� that aimed at facilitating the understanding of current relations and emergence of new ones (figure 24).

F i g u re 24 : m at e r i a l ro l e s in the activities of U P S I D E meeting.

Reflecting on this activity, I come to suggest that the same set of tangible materials can be assigned to different roles. They can have a: representation role, in which a spatial quality is called to visualize in a tangible manner a particular case; or facilitation role that functions as an invitation to sparkle conversations and facilitate the emergence of relations that did not exist before.

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INTERWEAVING BACK AND FRONT STAGE While the discussions that I have proposed up to this point can benefit from a clear distinction, a deeper perspective presupposes an awareness of their inter-mesh. While a static theatrical perspective could suggest that everything behind the curtain belongs to the backstage, in design practices the curtain might shift within different perspectives accordingly.

In the case of the ToD project, the roles of the members of “work package 8” (WP8) can illustrate this complex movement of relations. The entitled WP8 is composed by about 6 members from 4 different institutions including the Interactive Institute. Its role is basically to develop tools and strategies for building an understanding between all the other work package and pilot members. In this particular project, these members are also, at the same time, participants of the workshop itself as a front stage activity. The paradox is that the workshop is also considered as one of the WP8 member’s backstage strategies. In this way they become interdependently both back and front stage.

56 Yet another paradoxical movement of role negotiation is of that the Interactive Institute (II), as it is besides a member of the WP8 also the official responsible for the preparation and run of the workshop.

An interplay between back and front stage happens not only in their roles but in the occurrence of the collaborative activities. While the WP8 members are immersed in the activities of workshop’s backstage, they are also seen as guests of the collaborative meetings prepared by the II design team. This puzzle of relation can get even more complex when we dive into the double roles of the WP8 members, who are also members of particular institutions and cross-institutional pilot projects.

While to be part of a front stage suggests to be treated as guest who seeks to understand what is going on, the means of being part of a backstage goes beyond the hold of information about the schedule of a certain activity. Emotions like anxiousness or fear of failure are part of the shaping of a backstage group identity. At the same time, feelings of inclusion and exclusion are negotiated in the line between back and front stage participation. A parallel line with the concept of communities of practice (Wenger 1998) can be drawn in this understanding.

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However, by acknowledging the subtle nuances that distinct back and front stage I come to suggest that, in fact, every backstage is a stage for another backstage, where stage is a moment that holds particular interactions. Slightly more complex than that, I suggest that the backstage is inhabited by design community of practices with some front stage actors that can ultimately become part of the it if the social relations allow them so. Here I am drawing on Wenger’s (1998: 73) notion of community of practice. For him: Practice resides in a community of people and the relations of mutual engagement by which they can do whatever they do. Membership in a community of practice is therefore a matter of mutual engagement. That is what defines the community. A community of practice is not just an aggregate of people defined by some characteristic. The term is not a synonym for group, team, or network.

Resonating with Wenger’s notion of community of practices I come to refer to it from the perspective of the theory of complex responsive thinking of relating, described by Stacey (2011). In this way, I relate to the inclusion/exclusion in the concept of community.

This is to say that iterations interplay between back and front stage can be understood as an organic movement of social relations, multi-roles and communities of practice. Within this interweaving, I propose that: • Social relations refer to contextual encounters between people and unfold social conversations, actions and feelings.

• Multi-roles hold to the puzzle of parallel roles taken by the same person into different projects and situations.

• Design communities, which emerge from the negotiation of involved designers, relate to the dynamics of inclusion/exclusion through the level of familiarity with a certain groups methods, actions and rules.

Such elements can be seen as perspectives to facilitate the interdependent quality of the back and front stage relations.

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conclusion.

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CONCLUSION This work results from a series of processes of transformation that I went through while being a master student, which this thesis marks the end of. While being faced with moments of uncertainty and frustration I ended up reinforcing previous interests and allowing new ones to emerge.

An intersection between old and new interests was consciously manifested in this work. Whereas I am still excited to work with the challenge of engaging perspectives from different actors in the design process, I now find myself even more interested

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in exploring the social nature of their interaction. Another important interest, also manifested in this thesis, is my strong belief in the fruitful navigation between academia and industry.

Within this motivation, this work aimed at exploring the social shaping of participatory practices, particularly in moments of interaction. I have drawn upon participatory design and participatory innovation, two developments of design and innovation research and practices. In line with the theory of complex responsive processes of relating, I have come to situate the means of participation in a temporal dimension. I have acknowledged the notion that participatory activities emerge way beyond the actors’ involvement in what I have called front stage to explore the notion of participatory practices through the performative.

I have shaped my focus around the inquiry of how design iterations transform and are transformed by social interactions in the interplay between back and front stage of participatory practices facilitated by tangible materials.

To explore so, I have conducted this work throughout an active collaboration with the Interactive Institute Swedish ICT AB in Stockholm. With an action research approach I explored three project cases: “Smart City”, “Tod” and “UPSIDE”. I have

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taken these projects into a continuous process of analyzing and interweaving it with theory, while recognizing emergent themes.

The main novelty and contribution of this work relies on the three main themes, which I have come to see as concept worth further exploring: “tangible mediation as social negotiations”, “design iteration as complex responsive processes of transformation”, and “back and front stage interplay as interdependent relations”.

In discussing these themes I have come to suggest that: • Tangible materials facilitate the social dynamics of participatory activities. I underscore that when it comes to moments where rules are not set or explicit, the participants will follow each others’ actions or feel reluctant to not do so.

• The concept of social objects can be understood from a double perspective. While being a social act detached from physicality by Mead, social objects may also be manifested through tangible materials. They might facilitate a social creation of meaning, although do not refer to a discovery of something that already exists. Even when emerging through a tangible manifestation, social objects are qualifying a temporal act in constant negotiation.

• The iterative quality of the design process can not only be seen as the aim of improving features of a particular design solution. I claim that the concept of iterative design can be seen from a perspective that recognizes a temporal transformation through social processes of relating.

• Every backstage of participatory practices is a stage for another backstage, where stage is a moment that holds particular interactions. Slightly more complex than that, I suggest that the backstage is inhabited by communities of the involved designers with some front stage actors that can ultimately become part of the it if the social relations allow them so.

Although believing the relevance of these propositions, I acknowledge that they can be further developed. Since this work explores the emergence of the mentioned themes I suggest that future works might benefit from the deepening of these. Thus, the exploration of different project cases may steer new fruitful perspectives.

As a drawback of this work I recognize that the data collection could have been more methodical, which would might have given more reliability to the discussions. I also acknowledge my wish to have allowed the emergence of more themes and to have drawn in more literature, deepening my understanding of some of them, such as Wenger’s work.

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Goffman, Erving. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books.

Gunn, W.; Donovan, J. (editors). (2012). Design and Anthropology. Anthropological studies of creativity and perception. Ashgate, UK. Ishii, Hiroshi & Ullmer Brygg. (1997). Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces between People, Bits and Atoms. In Proceedings of CHI ‘97. Cambridge, MA. Laurel, Brenda (ed.). (2003). Design Research Methods and Perspectives. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT Press: Cambridge.

Lima, Patricia; Castañeda, Michelle; Huijboom, Nina; Laborda, Paula. (2014). In Proceedings of SIDeR’14. Stockholm.

Lübre, Alexander. (2011). Principles for Business Modeling with Novice Users. In Proceedings of PINC’11. Participatory Innovation Conference 2011, Sønderborg, Denmark.

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Sanders, Elizabeth; Brandt, Eva Brandt; Thomas, Thomas Binder. (2010). A Framework for Organizing the Tools and Techniques of Participatory Design. In Proceedings of PDC’ 10.

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appendix.

SHORT PAPER: “The Business journey: finding collaborations through tangibility”, presented at the SIDER’14, in Stockholm.

‘The Business Journey’: Finding collaborations through tangibility Patricia Lima, Michelle Castañeda, Nina Huijboom, Paula Laborda MSc IT Product Design Mads Clausen Institute for Product Innovation University of Southern Denmark, Alsion 2 6400 Sønderborg, Denmark +45 6550 1000

palim12, micas13, nihui13, palab13; @student.sdu.dk

ABSTRACT The establishment and strengthening of collaborations between current and future partners are often faced with the challenge of reaching a shared understanding between actors involved in particular contexts. In a fairly novel area explored by researchers and practitioners, tangibility has been suggested as a way of overtaking such a challenge. Actors with diverse perspectives and intentions are encouraged to discuss their businesses qualities through tangible objects. Following up on the means of engaging stakeholders and facilitating the process of reaching collaborations through tangibility, this paper presents a study case focused on the development of a tangible artefact called: ‘The Business Journey’. First, a short overview of tangible business modelling is given, followed by the description of the case context. ‘The Business Journey’ is a discussion tool, which invites all stakeholders to introduce themselves and discuss possible opportunities of collaboration within different touchpoints. The artefact focuses on three main characteristics: tangibility, possession and user involvement – reached throughout a process that considers a number of design iterations.

Keywords Participatory Innovation; Tangible Business Modelling.

1. INTRODUCTION It has been discussed by researchers that more reflective and deeper conversations are generated when using through the interaction between hands, body and mind. ‘It engages the brain in a different way’. Participants develop ‘different kind of responses’, which seem to be more creative and reflexive. [5] Interactive methodologies support participants in the process of communicating their own ideas and perspectives as a way of

"Paper presented at SIDER’14 Royal Institute of Technology, KTH, Stockholm, Sweden Copyright held with the author(s) "

reaching a shared understanding. Such participatory methods suggest that collaboration and innovation emerge from – often conflictual – conversations [3] facilitated by objects and activities that require action. This way of understanding conversations has its grounds in the theory of the ‘complex responsive process of relating’, through which Stacey et al. [9] argues that human interaction, in a transformative process, leads to the emergence of novelty. It suggests that novelty can emerge from conversation between people. In addition, when body movements are involved in the process of creating, there is a change in the perception of the surroundings and the created idea, concept or object [5].

The use of tangible tools compared to traditional methods is more advantageous, according to Buur et al., because it: ‘...allows participants without a business degree to understand and innovate a company’s business through the use of tangible materials like toy bricks, bric-a-brac metal objects, foam pieces, even organic materials. Such materials are particularly suited to support mapping activities where participants together explore who are the stakeholders in the business venture, and how do/can they relate to one another in a value network.’ [1] Another interesting aspect of using these models is that they ‘keep people’s hands busy, which often appears to take the pressure of verbal articulations. The use of objects and images provides an indirect mean to commence talking about topics, which may be difficult to approach head on. Providing material as ‘things to think with’ also seems to provoke more unexpected discussions.’[4] In an enlarged perspective, the concept of ‘Tangible business modelling’ has been understood as a participatory modelling process. It represents a significant step towards shaping Participatory Innovation [2] methods. Such models aim to engage key stakeholders in action, encouraging them to co-create shared meanings and business opportunities. They move the business discussions from text and spread sheets into visual creative sessions using three-dimensional space [7].

Mitchell and Buur describe ‘Tangible business models’ as tools to ‘Facilitate thinking, create simplicity, express the vivacity of the business, make it easier to think big, provoke new connections and associations, support story telling, work across language barriers, and provide easy to recollect experiences.’ [7]

2. PROJECT CONTEXT As a study case, this project deals with the development of a tangible artefact, named: ‘The Business Journey’ focusing on an existing scenario that involves a series of stakeholders.

With the goal of designing the artefact, a project conducted by master students at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) was taken as a way to establish a close collaboration between SDU and the Interactive Institute Swedish ICT – Stockholm studio. The design process looked upon the context of an on-going project, held by the Interactive Institute, in which different stakeholders were to come together and create collaboration around the matter of sustainable events. Called ‘Smart City’ the project was used as a real scenario to develop and test out the tangible tool.

The dynamic of the model is divided in 3 stages. Before the workshop starts, every stakeholder starts with a box containing a set of elements. Each stakeholder has the same elements but with different colour, i.e. silver, bronze, white, purple, gold and blue (Figure 03).

Through strategic researches made few years before by the Interactive Institute – Karlstad studio, a sustainable consultancy have decided to focus their attention on the journey of the eventgoers. Following this goal, a partner company has developed an app that enhances a sustainable experience for the “before-duringafter journey to events”. Currently the collaboration between external stakeholders is to be established and strengthened in an upcoming workshop to be hold in Gothenburg, in which the Tangible Business Model is to be used as an interaction mediator.

Figure 3 – ‘The Business Journey’ artefact: the toolsets

3. ‘THE BUSINESS MODEL’ The model consists of a board with twelve circular containers and a large circular lid on top (Figure 1 and 2). There are six toolsets with different elements (Figure 03), one for each participant or stakeholder. Another tangible tool, the Silver Set [1] was used as inspiration for the selection of the elements, which later were modified and adapted to this particular case. Based upon experiences with the Silver Set tool and the availability of the material, the elements were chosen as to include a variety of different functions and representations. This way, connectors (as magnets and chains) were put together with elements that represent randomness (as the dice) and that contain the elasticity function (as the hair band). Another feature considered in the design of the tool set was the mix between “technical tools” (found in mechanical workshops) and everyday objects as a way to lead to a number of combinations and sense making process from the participants. The final selection of the elements includes: a screw, a washer, a chain, a ball, a diamond, a dice, a metal ring, a hair clip and a hair elastic.

The goal of the first stage is to let all the different stakeholders get to know each other. Each stakeholder is to choose some elements that represent and help to introduce their own business. The idea, at this point, is to start creating a sense of ownership of the tangible materials from an individual perspective and a shared meaning from a group viewpoint. This stage also helps the actors to identify and highlight their business strengths and get familiar with what the others’ value as to be their most important business qualities.

The second stage is about building all together the journey of an event planning. The board, made of chalkboard, is divided in three sections: Before, during and after. Once the sections are determined, each stakeholder starts placing some iconic element inside each container. The participants are to write on a plastic tag what every container represents. The elements represent each person’s contribution to a specific touch-point or phase within the journey. The participants could turn to the next container or place elements inside the same container to indicate collaboration with another stakeholder. This stage is finished when the stakeholders went all the way around the journey suggested by the board. Some containers might be left empty if the stakeholders consider that it makes sense for their particular case.

Figure 4 – ‘The Business Journey’ artefact in action: stages 1 and 2

Figure 1 and 2 – ‘The Business Journey’ artefact: the board

In the third stage, the lid is to be removed in order to reveal all the contributions created in the previous stage. In the end of the final stage each stakeholder gets an overview of what they have agreed

on by looking at the different colours in each container. With this overview there is content to support a discussion regarding their future partnerships. (Figure 5)

4. DISCUSSION In this section the core competences of the ‘The Business Journey’ are discussed to express its value above a traditional way of business modelling.

Tangibility brings a touching experience by empowering users to think with their hands [6]. This encourages them to use physical elements as subjects of discussions and helps to turn an abstract argument into a more concrete point. Besides, it might reduce the negative impacts of timidity in teamwork. In other words, the possibility of writing down an opinion without being pushed to speak (and, thereby, leaving a “comfort zone”) is more likely to welcome everybody to contribute. [8]

Figure 5 – ‘The Business Journey’ artefact in action: stage 3

3.1 The development process For creating this model, board games were used as inspiration.

They were chosen due to the quality of being intuitive and to offer a clear and dynamic flow. During the design process, different sessions with professors and students were used as iterations to improve the model and reach a result to be applied in the upcoming workshop.

Besides conversation and explorative activities, an initial session with five types of board games was held in order to uncover the possible opportunities of each model for the mentioned case. After tests and group discussions with different participants, some games were left out even when its action flow and playfulness was interesting. Since the goal was not to create a game, the decision was based on the quality of insights the model could provide to the stakeholders and the discussions it could generate.

Based on the results of the first testing sessions, some improvements were conducted, mainly on the appearance of the prototype. Next, actors from different user groups were invited to the try and act it out within a more contextualised setting. There were two participants without any experience with “Tangible Business Models”, one participant with a slight understanding about this approach and an expert. For this test it was introduced a case similar to the real situation and the variation in participants gave insights from different perspectives.

The analysis of those sessions revealed that the uniqueness of this model resides in the friendliness and easiness in which opportunities of new collaborations can be created between stakeholders that do not know each other. This is achieved mainly because the model creates a sense of ownership that provokes the stakeholders to take an active part during the discussions. By making turns and going all the way around the board, the stakeholders start building a relationship and finding opportunities on different areas; the second stage mostly works as a brainstorming situation that brings a broad spectrum of ideas. The areas in which the board is divided offer a framework for the stakeholders that ease the flow of ideas.

Possession gives users a feeling of owning something, which motivates them to take part of the negotiation in a more active way. The toolsets in different colours give the participants the opportunity to describe their business in a metaphorical way. They have the ownership of a toolset that offers them a feeling of being equally important.

User involvement invites the stakeholders to think from a user perspective. By defining the different stages the stakeholders are encouraged to focus on the different steps of the journey that a user will go through. In the end, the surprising element of the lid opening gives the stakeholders an overview of the whole process and how the collaboration can be built in each moment of the journey. This then generates the opportunity to reflect on how to move forward with the partnership in different moments.

The comparison between ‘The Business Journey’ and some traditional tools to discuss business – post-its, whiteboards and flip charts – raises relevant points of discussion. Advantages of the second can be argued in the easy and recognisable way of its use. All these tools do not need explanations since they invite the participants for the use right away. However, without saying that ‘The Business Journey’ is the only solution that offers such attributes, this model adds the mentioned crucial values to a business modelling process: tangibility, possession and user involvement.

It is acknowledged though that, in practice a combination of the known traditional tools and ‘The Business Journey’ can lead to even more valuable solutions and insights.

5. CONCLUSION Based upon a study case, this paper introduced the design process and qualities of ‘The Business Journey’, a discussion tool that supports different stakeholders to negotiate collaborations, cocreating business opportunities and new ways of partnership.

Central to this work is the understanding that the process of finding ways to collaborate emerge from on-going conversations between – not necessarily business-oriented – actors. By being encouraged to talk through tangible elements, which meanings were negotiated by themselves, the actors might encounter paths to move forward. As suggested by this paper, such conversations might get even further through the facilitation of “possession”, “tangibility” and “user involvement”. This perspective is, however, still to get deepen when explored into practice both in the mentioned Swedish ‘Smart City’ project and in future similar cases.

6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank the Interactive Institute Swedish ICT – in special Brendon Clark, Kajsa Davidsson and Sara Reinholtz – for the opportunity to build up a collaboration that led us to develop this project. We would also like to thank all professors, researchers and students from the University of Southern Denmark who have got involved somehow with our work. Their inputs, both from their experiences in working with ‘Tangible Models’ and from their pure and engaged participation in our try-out sessions, were crucial for the work we have reached within this project.

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[3] Buur, J. and Larsen, H., 2010. ‘The quality of conversations in participatory innovation’. CoDesign. Vol. 6, No. 3, pp.-121-138.

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[5] Gauntlett, D. and Holzwarth, P. 2006. Creative and visual methods for exploring identities. Visual Studies, 21 (01), pp. 82-91.

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[7] Mitchell, R. and Buur, J. 2010. Tangible business model sketches to support participatory innovation. pp. 29--33.

[8] Oorschot van, R., Lima, P., Chaboki, B., Serban, C. 2013.

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[9] Stacey, R.D., Griffin, D., and Shaw, P., 2000. Complexity and management: fad or radical challenge to system thinking?

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