PROJECT PROCESS JOURNAL:
:DESIGN INNOVATION & SERVICE DESIGN Semester 1 (Sep-Dec 2017) Qin Lu
Overview This journal book of the semester 1 includes 3 exercises. All of these three projects are team works, the students from various background worked together as team. I will introduce these projects by week, and also illustrate some of my reflection during the process.
1
content 1
week project
page
2
3
1.1
1.2
Magic Show
Visual Ethnography
p.4
p.10
4
5
6
-timeline 7
8
9
10
11
12
13
1.3 Soft Power
p.22
Summary
p.41
1.1 Getting to Know One Another WEEK1: - Brain storming - Individual research - Tutorial - Reflection WEEK2: - Transforlation - Challenge - Reflection - SHOW TIME
4
Magic Show REVIEW At the first meeting day , we were introduced by a magician Mark Walbank about the background of magic track. I learnt there are “7 principles” of magic trick: Vanish Appearance Transporsition Mind reading Penetraction Restoration Levitation After that we were randomly assigned to 7 teams to practice the little magic "Vanished Cup". Then we were asked to do our first project “creat and perform a magic trick” in the team. It aims to encourage us to get to know each other and work on a team-setting.
‘If you can dream it, you can do it.’ — Walt Disney My understand For desginers, it is important that to keep intellectual curiosity. As well as magicians, imagination and creativity also play a vital role in their career life. Designing a magic trick, we can adopt some innovation design approach, such as human centred design.
5
week1 DESK RESEARCH
Individual case study Who we perform for? Peers and tutors What is the aim? An unexpected, creative and theatrical magic show How to design a magic trick? TIPS: Narrow your choice Starting point Both sides to direction Object: many different versions “the more magic you know, the more magic you create.” Working on a routine
6
GROUP BRAINSTORM
REFLECTION
ADVICE After two days researches and discussions, we had the first tutorial with Brain, Elio and Mark. This time, we were not well prapared and the ideas were not our original. We just copied the ideas from the previous magic show. Actually our magic trick was not our own designing work but imitation. So, it seems that we did not do much work. And also, it didn’t practice our creativity and imagination as the project expected.
At the very beginning of this proiect, our group did the first brainstorm. Each of us had different interests on these seven types of magic trick. Thus, we decided to do the research individually and bring own ideas to the next disccusion, rather than come up ideas together. Each team member held their own ideas and all hope to continue do it as the final work. When we had the discdusion, the team member who can present their ideas better, then he/she can get more vote for his/her idea. So, eventually, our final idea was came up from one team member. It might not be the best one, but just as it was the best convictive one. In my perspective, it is not really the collaborative working practice should be. The teamwork setting should enable every team member involved in. There should not exist competition but a co-oriented cooperation of the same direction.
Then, we reread the project brief, tried to find out something we were missed and thinking another way of designing show.
7
week2 PREVIEW
In the second week, we changed the mode of group work. Instead of just adopting the opinions of one person, we tried to collect all the ideas and sellected the good parts. Then, we determined the way of performing magic. Began to practice again and again.
TRANSFORLATION CHALLENGE
8
As I did not have much experience in presentation, and I always feel nervous when I do public speaking. Fortunately, my teammates are very kind. During the practice, they gave me some helps and advices, also encourage me that we were did good.
MAGIC SHOW TIME!!
TAKE YOUR TICKET.
Please enter the show 20 minutes before the start. GUESS WHO? It is really hard to Ross to remember classmates’ name on the first meeting day.
WHO WEARS SCARF?
Jessica weared the grey scarf on that day.
WHERE IS MY ID CARD? Carole lost her ID card. But where is it?
WHO WEARS WHITE T-shirt?
Quini weared yellow T-shirt, the girl weared white T-shirt named Cheery. 9
1.2 Visul Ethnography
After
WEEK1: - Individual Understand - Desk research - Twice visits - Reflection
WEEK4: - Layout book - Instagram - Final Presentation - Reflection
WEEK2: - Qualitative research - Interim Review - 3rd visit - Reflection
WEEK3 - Stroytelling - Titlile - Visual narrative - 4th visit
The Barras Market REVIEW We were introduced this project by a video from Youtube named ”context is everything”. How do we think about where we are? Location is not a straightforward as: I am here. Or the geographic location, which located by google maps or GPS. But the place making sense of where we might be. In my perspective, the aim of this project is to find out the relationship of environment and people, to reveal the rituals and reality in people’s daily life.
GROUP ORM BRAINST
week1 DESK RESEARCH
From the initial desk reaserch, we got deeper undertand about the Barras Market. It is a street and indoor market which is run at the weekend, it's located in the east end of Glasgow. It was set up by Maggie McIver in 1921, it was originally an open market but soon got changed to a covered one. It has always sold antiques, bric-a-brac and some vintage items. We contacted the people who run the market to see if we can get some information off them about it, but unfortunately they didn't want to talk to us. So we decided to go to the market to find out some information, as we couldn't find much more on the internet.
The first visit:
The second visit:
As it only opens on weekend, our first time visit was on a weekday when it was closed. It felt like a deserted town, there were random people standing on street corners, it didn’t feel very welcoming.
At that weekend, we visited the the market again when it was opened. The atmosphere was completely different, there was a steady flow of people through the stalls, music, people laughing, a few stall holders advertising there stalls by shouting, and lots of conversations.
I have to say, my first impression of the Barras market is not good.
REFLECTION I felt so exciting when we got this project ‘the Barras Market’. As I am a big fan of vintage, such as the old furnitures, clothes and jewelry. I always believe that all of tangible things in this world are souled. They experienced the different life with us, met a lot of strangers and even witnessed the development of the times and the changes of history. As well as a place, numerous people came here and then left, took something away. Other people stayed there for a long time, as a part of the place.
week2 QUALITATIVE RESEARCH Question setting
We had prepared a few questions to ask the customers and store holders, so we could get a feel of the place and work out what kind of narrative we wanted to focus on. We asked the store holders and customers about: The history of Barras Market? How has it changed? What do they think of the new development of the BAAD? ......
We also asked them many more questions that came up throughout our conversations, which we recorded.
15
Individual Interview
There are some of our interviewees, most of them are old people. And also, a special interviewee, a dog.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Here is some small stories from them: P1: He is a painter and studied in GSA decades before.
P2: The candy shop owner always treated us free candy, like Holloween.
P3: “Can I take a photo of you” I asked. “Of course.” He said.
P4: This punk-style coffee shop owner dreams to be a magazine model, always asked us take photo for him.
P5: We had a long conversation with her on the last weekend, when we left there, she gave each of us gifts.
P6: She likes hold that monkey toy, and call it “baby”.
P7: “They are my 5 girl-friends.”
Tony, our friend, introduced us to others.
P8: Emmmm...
It didn’t really talk with us.
16
Interim Review
REFLECTION After the presetation, we were given some valuable advices and feedbacks from Brain and Elio. Then we considered more on: The stakeholders home/area in their stall and how we can involve them in the photos withoutsharing who they are. Share them in their natural environment. Show small details of their area. More details about their name, age, or how long they have been at the market. Also think about the quality of the photograph. (more faded more fits the market) Try to capture the olddess of place, such as the old ragged chair with plastic bags hanging off it...
It was an important part of our project to build relationships with the store holders, as it would get us better insights into the market. At the start we felt quite intimidated, because we didn’t know how to approach the people, and were afraid of what their reaction would be to us doing a project about the market. Our opinions soon changed as we started to talk to the people and show an interest into the market and their roles there. Unlike the first meeting, they started to share more personal details about the market and their lives, and we did the same back. They started to actually ask us if we could take photos of them which was quite funny, I think they thought they were on a photo shoot.
17
week3 STORYTELLING Narrative research
THEMES
TITLE
After a couple of visits to the market we came up with a few potential themes for our project, many of them were about the contrast between different aspects.
‘The people and places behind the objects in the market’ is the phrase we are using to sum up our narrative. From this we thought we should have a more snappy title so we chose ‘Behind the Objects’.
For example: The The The The ......
old and new parts of the market young and older people who work and visit the market inside and outside of the market area cheap and expensive products they are selling there
We had all of these ideas and wanted to look deeper, so we decided to look behind all of them, focusing on the things that you don’t necessarily see and look for. When we started searching for things on this topic we realised that there were many corners, stories, memories and people, that without interacting with the store holders like we did you don’t see.
18
Constructing the narrative After coming up with a clear narrative of ‘Behind the Objects’, we started to collect all of our images we had taken so far and picked out the ones that would relate to our narrative, these photos weren’t done with much thought and care so then we produced a plan using the relevant photos. When we last time went back to the market we would know which areas, people and backgrounds we needed to take photos of. We could have easily taken a load of portraits of the store holders, but with inspiration from the photographer Juliane-Herrmann we chose to look at different ways we could show a person and there space through a photograph.
on irati
Insp
19
week4 OUTCOME BOOK LAYOUT When we had the photography workshop, Daniel recommended us a bookshop, named Good Press. We went there to look for inspiration for book layouts, there were so many amazing books and we got some great ideas about our book layout. Inspired by a book, which includes photographs and has some smaller photos on separate paper which are inserted between pages. As our project has many layer to it, we thought that we could develop this idea of inserting images but do it in our own way. So we have experimented layering photos of textures and quotes from our research at the market, on top of photographs that we may use in our book. We tried this using both normal paper and tracing paper, which gave very different effects. In the end we decided to go with the tracing paper as it gave a really interesting effect when layered over different photographs and text.
20
REFLECTION During this month's project time, we went to the market every weekend and talk to people there. We tried to understand their lives, their stories. We even became friends with them after the project was over. Our team members still spontaneously return to that small market, like going to a weekly appointment.
INS: behind_objects
21
REVIEW The theme for our group is Global Scots. This is the longest project among semester 1, the whole duration is 7 weeks. We have been assigned the specific works for each week. And even have the weekly tutorial. It seems easier than the previous two, however, we actually took longer time to explore the exact direction. We have to make many desicions based on the researches, and we need ensure every choice making sense. During this project, we also participated in many related workshops and lectures. Such as insight workshop helped us utilize the data gathered from desk research.
SCOTLAND
1.3 Soft Power
WEEK1: - Briefing - Desk research (Quantitative) - Reflection
WEEK2: - Context framing - Framework - Stakeholder map WEEK3: - Engagement (Qualitative) - Interm review - Reflection
WEEK4: - Evidence Wall - Insights workshop - Insights framing
WEEK7: - Future projections - Presentation - Final reflection
WEEK5: - Case studies - Aspects - Initial concept - Reflection WEEK6: - Communicating concept - Flow map -TYC program
23
week1 BRIEFING
Soft Power
We have come to that understanding that ‘Soft Power’ is the way in which a country exerts influence and improves their reputation. This is achieved through promoting an attractive vision of your countries’ political values, culture and foreign relations. A country’s soft power derives from its most attractive assets, usually being their culture, education, language and values. For example, a current way Scotland is using soft power is through the Edinburgh Fringe festival, the world’s largest arts festival that draws in millions of people to Edinburgh.
24
Global Scots
Global Scots is not just Scottish people living abroad, but people who have visited or lived in Scotland and taken away some of our values when they have returned home. We can then refer to them as ‘Global Scots.’
ADVICE From our first tutorial, we got some ideas from Brain and Elio, and tried to narrow our focus on a specific group. We were interested in Millennial Scots, as we felt they represent modern Scottish values. And they are the future influencers and will drive our Soft Power strategy forward.
DESK RESEARCH
Starting from Global Scots, we explored: How young people travel, the services or organisations they use? Where they travel and what they gain from that experience? The idea of ‘National Service’ as a framework, and if we could look at adapting it to a soft power strategy? How different brands and organisations use ambassador programs? Young Scot’s values, suchi as Liberal, forward thinking, politically engaged. Came to this conclusion due to young people’s opinions towards political events such as the Independence Referendum and EU Referendum.
25
REFLECTION From these intial desk reseaerch, I tried to explore more knowledge, more background infomation to get more possibilities. Actually, at the first week, every one felt aimless and had no ideas about what does our final outcome would be. Just did broad research without direction. But the most interesting part was talking with the my team member. Talked about our individual understanding about the context, the theme and the topic. As we all from the different background, we got the totolly different view towards same issue. I think it is quite important for our studying process, as it can be helpful for extending our thinking.
week2 CONTEXT FRAMING
Focusing on young people was an area that we felt offered an opportunity to utilise - how they are the modern representation of Scottish values, so that we could move away from traditional, more stereotypical ideas of Scotland.
Young millennial Scots
Travelling through Europe ARGUMENT
Share and promote Scottish values
We decided to focus on Europe because of Brexit and how the important links Scotland and its people have established with Europe. Scotland as a majority didn’t vote to leave the EU and so demonstrated a preference of staying part of that community and so we wanted to explore how we could aid this.
We wanted to promote the fact that Scotland’s young people are liberal, forward thinking and politically engaged. So we continued to gain an understanding of what modern Scottish values were, moving away from stereotypes. 27
INITIAL FRAMEWORK Linking the Scottish Youth Parliament with the European Youth Parliament
Attract millenials from across Europe
Bring young people together to discuss global issues
Global Issues discussion in form of a residential in the Highlands
Promote Scotland as a place of progressive values
Maintain a positive relationship with EU
Create a community of global Scots
STAKEHOLDER MAP We have highlighted key people for us to engage with in order to further our knowledge and gain their insights to develop the framework.
Scottish Youth Parliament
GOVERNMENT
European Youth Parliament
ORGANIZATIONS
European Youth Card Association PERSONAL Creative Scotland
Department for International Development
Young Scots Millennials
Young Scot Common weal
29
week3 FIELD RESEARCH
“‘Young people visiting Scotland always notice the scenery ‘ they say it is beautiful and cold.’” “Youth globally are wanting to become more engaged. ”
Toni Andrews
Young scot Co-design Officer
INTERVIEW INSIGHTS
During these interviews we focused on finding out what Scottish values do these stakeholders feel are unique to Scotland and young people, and when speaking to young people we were also interested in how they travelled and the values they feel they represent whilst doing so.
“ Build the idea of 'human capacity to do better, be better” “Our environment represents our desire to lead internationally on renewable energy.”
Robin McAlpine Commonweal
“'Thought and practice leader' links to aspects of our culture and history.”
“I miss countreyside, scenic views and firendly people about Scotland when I’m abroad”
SMAPLED
Young person 30
“ I think there is a lot of stuff that happens globally but not with young people.”
“I learned how other culture live and environmental concerns when I travel”
REFLECTION
INTERIM REVIEW FEEDBACK After the presentation, we were given some advices and suggestions from following:
For these two weeks, we mainly picked some rough aspects from our desk research and then did some individule interviews. As an ESL (English as Second Language) student, how to write a formal and appropriate email is a problem. Fortunately, we were given some guide to teach us how to write. At this stage, how to ask a right question is a big challenge for us. We need make sure what kind of answer we want to receive, and why we need ask the quetion. I think this is the most difficult part in field reseaerch. Moreover, from the interim review feedback, the limitation was we were lacking some evidence to support the desions we made. Then we decided pay more attention on explain “WHY�. Why we made the decisions.
31
week4 INSIGHTS
EVIDENCE WALL
insights
opportunities
Scottish young people want to travel but feel it will be more difficult with BREXIT.
To provide scottish young people with a way to easily travel and engage with europe. To provide travel through education.
ideas
Partnerships between Scottish and european organizations. Penpal system. Offering classes in european countries for Scottish students.
DIMENSION MAP
INSIGHTS FRAMING During the insight workshop, we collected all of the data we gathered and filtered the useful informations, tried to knit together disparate these information into a new and coherent whole by following flow.
DISENFRANCHISED Platform for communication
Revolution
Problem solving workshop
Political installations
INDIRECT
DIIRECT
Classes in EU countries Partnerships Politics pen pals (Europe)
FRANCHISED
Integrated YP into political organizations
33
week5 INSIGHTS ARTICULATION CASE STUDIES
We explored case studies that linked into these key insights from our research, these were:
2050 Climate Group Scotland’s youth climate group towards a sustainable future Aims: To lead a social movement by engaging, educating and empowering Scotland’s Future Leaders to take action on climate change. How: It is a collection of young professionals across Scotland who all share a commitment to climate change mitigation and adaptation and accelerating Scotland’s transition to a low carbon economy.
34
CAMP COOPER UK's leading American-style summer camp based in Scotland for international &British campers aged 7-17. Aims: Encouraging campers to develop life-skills such as independence, confidence and leadership. Forming friendships, inspiring creativity and having fun. How: This camp is a sell-out every year, and we found it interesting that they have placed this camp with American values in Scotland and have made it a success - it shows how strong American soft power is!
OUR ASPECTS
After a serious of interviews and case studies, we reorganized our previous desk research, then got 3 aspects to look at:
WHY? Growing sector. Scotland is leading renewable energy. Unique soft power asset.
WHY? Offers job opportunities for young people. Young people want to be engaged in the discussion. Educational meaning.
WHY? Highlands generates a large tourist revenue. Highlands has many historical and beautiful sites that people will travel to visit. 35
INITIAL CONCEPT
We got the information from the one of our interviwees Luara, the chair of EYPUK. She mentioned they are organizing a large international event for summer 2019. Which will invite over 100 young people from across Europe attend to debate important European issues, in particular looking at energy and sustainability. From that, we were thinking to link with the EYP event, to establish a summer camp following that event. Then we came up the SYS program.
Scottish Youth Symposium
36
CHALLENGE
REFLECTION
However, we suffered the biggest challenge of the project in this stage. As the context we thought about is too narraw, and the value-system didn’t really make sense.
Once we did enough secondary and primary research, how to transfer these data and concept to idea is a significant part at the whole design process. However, the details of a design is as important as the concept even more important as the idea sometimes.
We might be quite arbitrary, did not consider how does the value-system really work, and the motivations of these young people engaged in. They should have the bigger ambitions to come together, and also their identities can be something they exchanged there. So, at the next stage, we decided use the program as an exaple, and step back to try to get a broader context.
We spent so much time to decide how to mix our final concept because we felt all concepts had the potential developing possibility and don’t want to abandon anyone. It caused that after we finally decided the concept, we had to hurry to consider the details, to make our decissions sense. And the whole system is complicated that it is hard to consider all the details in the short time. What we have to do is to be honest to express which idea we agree or disagree and give reasons. It can makes teamwork more effecient.
37
week6 2-week renewable Hackathon camp
CONCEPT Flow map of TYC
Museum Workshops Exhibitions
Camp Educational resource POWER HOUSE
Have a presence in school/unis/ communities
THE YOUTH COLLECTIVE pop-ups
Webesite and social Mdia INFOs
Renewable energy youth Ambassadors
38
Share the skill they’re learnt abroad
Epresence
Share this exchange online
Open globally for stays from schools + unis
2020 CELEBRATION FOR SCOTLAND 100% RENEWABLE ENERGY
Activities related to renewables and outdoor
about 5 visions: Youth participantion
Issue:
Aims:
Values:
Utilise natural landscape
Space for innovation
Globalisation
Leader in renewables
How it works? The current situation is that Scotland is one of the leading countries in renewable energy alongside iceland, sweden and costa rica, but there is no space within Scotland to celebrate and optimise this. We enable young people worldwide to view scotland as a place that not only has a beautiful landscape, but also has a forward-thinking attitude to youth engagement in renewables. The Scottish Government's energy plan now calls for 100% of electricity consumption to be generated through renewable sources by 2020. In the lead up of this, we have created a vision of Scotland as a continuous world leader in renewable energy, with young people at the forefront.
The Youth Collective focuses on youth participation and renewable energy activities within a self- sustained village called The PowerHouse. It mainly runs through various levels, through local and national initiatives and also through engaging the international community, and this will be funded by the scottish government with input from organisations interested in promoting sustainability.
local national international
39
week7 COMMUNICATION FEEDBACK FUTURE PROJECTS As the collective grows would like to encourage going down a morally rewarding pathway as opposed to capitalizing on Scotland’s role as a key player in renewables. Further spread Scottish soft power abroad via young people with renewable ideas. TYC works to create awareness of renewable acheivement
Route to a Renewable Scotland
TYC established to optimise and draw attention to a renewable
Scottish Government TARGETS The Youth Collective (TYC)
2018
40
2020
After the final presentation, we got some advces and suggetions from tutors and peers. Indeed, some limitations still exist in our program. There are some improvement we can do in the future. As the time is tight, we did not do the enough field research to support our idea. Some of our ideas were a little bit arbitrary.
TYC works to create awareness of a renewable Scotland
2030
SUMMARY During the first semester, I continued to practice and try as one project after another, putting into practice the previously known but unfamiliar design theories and methods. Moreover, as I continued my teamwork, I learned a lot about design thinking that I did not have before from my teammates, and found some of my own prejudices in the design process. However, I still have not overcome my biggest challenge, communicating with tutors and speaking public. I will try to do that at next semester.
(
The end.