-/a case in academic domain
Baha Elghoul - Émile Roch - Shikhar Bhardwaj - Washington Bim
Design Deliberationfor
September - November 2021
“NOTHING EXISTS ION.”ELSEEVERYTHINGEMPTYATOMSEXCEPTANDSPACE;ISOPIN– DEMOCRITUS
After countless approaches to find a single academic rendezvous was in despair. Find ing a meeting and observing them would have given us a lot of details about the di alogues exchanged and the topics discussed with the tone of language and biased opinions of individuals. But instead, we interviewed teachers and professors from our previous institution to give us an insight into the deliberation processes in respective academic settings.
***fun fact*** - Despite its phonetic similarity to Democritus, democracy is not named for Democritus. The word democracy is actually derived from the Greek dēmokratiā, which in turn derives from the Greek dēmos (meaning “people”) and kratos (meaning “rule”). ... Knowledge of Democritus’s life is largely limited to untrustworthy tradition.
Introduction
After thoroughly going through the potential stakeholders, we found the academic settings our key area point to explore and indulge with !! We want to focus on how we can make the process more convenient and toxic-free ?! How can we find ways to agree to disagree and get along with the viewpoints of others in the group ?!
Designing for Deliberation is having to find out critical processes in discussions and debates. Deliberation is a process of slow and careful movement or thought. Designing for deliberation started with finding out problems that already exist in the society and working on top out it breaking down the key elements of the process and later ex panding it to find real-life solutions.
APPROACHCHALLENGESSYNOPSIS
BRAINSTORMINGDEFINITION
is an unscrupulous businessman as well as a lobbyist and outspoken advocate for the tobacco industry. His job consists in defending the tobacco industry against smoking prevention policies, which represent a clear danger for Big Tobacco, the corporation which employs him. He defines his role as follows: “inform the general public of all the research carried out on the effects of smoking.” His strength consists in defending what cannot be defended by fast talking people with a discourse that seems logical and scientific at first glance.
Joey Naylor: But that’s not what we’re talking about
Nick Naylor: OK, let’s say that you’re defending chocolate, and I’m defending vanilla. Now if I were to say to you: ‘Vanilla is the best flavor ice-cream’, you’d say...
Nick Naylor: Oh! So it’s all chocolate for you is it?
Nick Naylor (the father lobbyist): Whoa, Joey I’m never wrong.
Joey Naylor: ...but you didn’t prove that vanilla was the best...
Joey Naylor: No, chocolate is.
Nick Naylor: I didn’t have to. I proved that you’re wrong, and if you’re wrong I’m right.
Memorable Quotes
Joey Naylor (his son): ...so what happens when you’re wrong?
Joey Naylor: But you still didn’t convince me
MOVIE REFERENCES
Joey Naylor: But you can’t always be right...
Nick Naylor: Exactly, but you can’t win with this argument... so, I’ll ask you: so you think chocolate is the end all and the all of ice cream, do you?
Joey Naylor: Yes, chocolate is all I need.
Nick Naylor: Well, I need more than chocolate, and for that matter I need more than vanilla. I believe that we need freedom. And choice when it comes to our ice cream, and that Joey Naylor, that is the definition of liberty.
Nick Naylor: It’s that… I’m not after you. I’m after them (all people around)
Thank you for smoking comedy/drama - 2005
NickSynopsisNaylor
Joey Naylor: It’s the best ice cream, I wouldn’t order any other.
Nick Naylor: Ah! But that’s what I’m talking about.
Joey Naylor: But what if you are wrong?
Nick Naylor: Well, if it’s your job to be right, then you’re never wrong
Panchayati raj originated in 2nd millennium BCE in India during Vedic times. Since Vedic times, the village (gram) in the country is considered as the basic unit for regional Mahatmaself-administration.Gandhiadvocated
In most cases, the people you’re facing are heavily invested in their opinions1. Especially if the cameras are rolling; what would their fanbase say if they suddenly said: “Well, you know. I’ve heard your arguments and they make sense to me; I’m actually going to change my mind right here and now.”
I often get asked for advice on how to persuade someone who has an opposite stance with no intention of sharing your opinion.
That never happens, right? But, maybe that’s okay?
Thank you for smoking comedy/drama - 2005
The Panchayat Raj system was first adopted by the state of Bihar by the Bihar Panchayat Raj Act of 1947. This led to the establishment of a three-tier Panchayati Raj system: Gram Panchayat at the village level, Panchayat Samiti at the block level, and Zila Parishad at the district level.
Panchayati Raj as the foundation of India’s political sys tem, as a decentralized form of government in which each village would be responsi ble for its own affairs.
CULTURAL REFERENCES
“We notice only what we lective.”sionsthereforenoteworthy,thinkandourvi-highlyse-
After defining and exploring the existing patterns of design in deliberation we looked into the possibilities to intervene and expand our research upon. A situation where it is important to have new perspectives through our lenses.
We listed down a few distinctive situations where deliberation is a key process of en gagement between the individuals to eventually tackle one problem from the other. The following diagram shows the list of ideas :
Problem
Through these analyses we selected the critical incidents from educational institutions that we firstly called pedagogic organisations. The incidents could be either synchro nous or asynchronous and also remotely done or on site. We wanted to study this situation because we thought that it had the whole aspect of deliberation where the teacher could bring their own opinion on how to teach since there are various way to do it, there were choices to make in order to keep common view, they would compare their ideas of how to handle the class etc.
We also tried to do schematized analysis :
As a researcher, we wanted unbaised opinions of the deliberation processes that hap pen in an academic institution. We asked questions about/like :
QUESTIONS ADDRESSED
The users are mainly professors, school teachers, administration staff. We did a maps of users specificity :
- The atmosphere of the meetings - Common problems during the deliberation - Methods and process they put in practice to have their meetings - People taking part in deliberation
TYPOLOGY
We identified the following reference situations :
Initially,methods.wecompiled
To start with, studying users becomes more efficient when we directly observe them and record our findings. But due to lack of finding a potential academic deliberation, we instead carried on with interviewing our previous professors from our previous insti tutions to talk about the process of deliberation in their respective institutions.
this collection to inspire our own design teams. In response to requests from clients, colleagues, students, and teachers, we’re sharing some of these methods and how. we have found them useful in real design projects. These cards aren’t meant to be prescriptive nor Exhaustive “how-to” for human-centred design, New methods are being developed, adapted and applied all the time. This deck is meant to encourage you to try new approaches for making design useful, useable and delightful to people.
Studying “USER”
IDEO Method Cards are intended as inspiration for practising and aspiring designers, as well as those seeking a creative spark in their work. These cards show some of the ways IDEO keeps people at the centre of the design process. Our techniques are not proprietary and have been adapted from various established human and social re search
Our method to approach varied in degrees but eventually, we tried to squeeze out as much information as possible.
IDEO method cards are another tool to use while interviewing or doing user research.
PROTOCOL
Stéphane suggested that we use critical incidents, a method that would allow us to make good conclusions on a few interviews without observation.
The 5 whys methods can also be operated from this point
We decided to go for critical Incident interviews this way : - explain the kind of situations we want them to talk about telling that we are waiting for an out of the norms event in a good way or in a bad way.
Afterwards we may ask about multiple things : - The tools and the process they use to deliberate, - some specificity in their stories - asking about the kind of the meeting and if there are other meetings
We weren’t able to listen to a record of a session and to transcribe a whole record due to the lack of time. We took notes during the interviews and quickly transcribed the processes of deliberation via diagrams.
Notes can have this look :
The problems were already found by the stakeholders and discussed in the brief. Now we can see where these problems come from in the situation of educational set ting meetings.
ANALYSISDEMOGRAPHIC
We opted to get in touch with teachers from our family and from the university we went to during the previous years in our respective home country.
We sent mails explaining the subject of the study and telling that a fast response was Thesesneeded.mails got us 5 interviews :
- Director in primary schools, Tunisia
We firstly decided to send mail to our teacher to help us relay the information toward their pairs. After seeing no response from the pairs we decided to fill a form to send online but again no success.
- Indian institute of Crafts and Design, Senior Professor and Head of International Links, -IndiaPearl Academy, Part-time Professor in Design Thinking and Methodology, India
Then the critical event method was suggested. That made us rethink the public we wanted to interview. In order to get good and dedicated answers about personal and critical events we needed to speak with teachers that, firstly, we were close to and, sec ondly, we were rapidly able to reach.
- Academic manager at Gobelins school, France
- Head teacher at Gobelins school, France
Every one of us went on miro to draw patterns on how the stories they asked for went. Then each of them tried to make a representation of a generic model from which we can see issues coming out of the critical incident we recorded.
By comparing the models we were able to identify key points they could address as problems and from where these problems were coming from.
“Sometimes I don’t feel like these new decisions fit my school. But, I find myself obliged to apply them regardless of the situation. So sometimes I feel bad about not being able to do something about it. ”
INTERVIEWObservations
A1 - Interpretation of the direct orders issued by the ministry :
Interview with school principle in Tunisia. We were able to extract the following graph from the interview :
Interview with Academic manager at Gobelins art school in France :
- One or some participants of the debate lost their cool.
- The manager put himself in a situation where he was able to have authority figures.
- One or some participants with bad faith are making the debate struggle.
What the interviewers analysed in these diagrams is that debate is just for the man ager a way he has to go through in order to convince changements that have already been decided.
We can note that the meetings occur frequently and that these diagrams are about ones that went bad. So we can see that the meetings do not necessarily come with an issue or a changement. But when it does it will potentially bring debate that goes bad.
The diagrams always start with a situation where there is a changement or an issue and the debate is about this issue. The output of the debates have to direct toward a situation prefered by the manager.
There is multiple state of “goes bad” that happened to the manager :
A2 In the case of struggle we can observe that he always has issues telling or explain ing his point of view.
A3 he also has issues on listening due to his position where he cannot accept a no since the decision had already been made.
Interview with the Head teacher at Gobelins art school in France :
Before the meeting Documents are shared on what they want to discuss, the notion to teach and organisation documents
This teacher had extra positive experiences he wanted to share with us. He has been a full-time teacher for 2 years now. The stories he started with were really short. They were on how he struggled to teach what students wanted to learn against what the old school formation coordinator wanted them to learn. He explained that in this kind of situation there is a silent debate where he teaches what the students want to see and the next year the program changes because it’s become the norm. The participants of the debate were the coordinator and the students. Before and dur ing the course week, they argued to him about what they wanted him to teach. They were confronting each other’s ideas through the teacher that was the one, in the end, to decide what was the final output.
The courses he now delivers are noticeable in the way that they are taught by him and a part-time teacher. As the part-time teacher changes all the time he has to coordi nate with an upstream work where they decide on how they will teach their courses. The method is particularly efficient and often brings really good results. He explain that both teachers are bringing differents things to the course preparation meeting :
He started with quick stories about his struggle before he was Head Teacher but then after a few propositions of when and how he could have faced this kind of situation from the interviewer he talked about the most noticeable story of all : the way he now makes his courses.
the deliberation between formation coordinator and students the teacher can choose to listen to both parties and make a decision about which opinion is better after confronting ideas of the opposing parties by himself through an iterative process of A5discussion.ForPlanning
In this method we can recognize a way to deliberate that is structured, that is specifi cally taking a point of defining each element that could be brought to the discussion. By acknowledging the content of the debates the parties are aware of all the points that need to be discussed. They are anticipating possibilities even though they could have different opinions. They are not confused or disturbed when the opposite party is bringing a different opinion and are able to consider it.
The meeting occur
a good meeting with interesting debate acknowledging all the ele ments that could be part of the discussion is a vector of open-mindedness.
As a result the debate goes smoothly both parties argue on method and come to a final decision that works.
Another thing to notice about this course preparation is that the part-time teachers are selected to work well with the Head teacher. When the part-time teacher is not known by the head teacher for different reasons (exemple: the students requested a specific person) the Head teacher tries to let the teacher on his own. He considers since the part-time teacher has been requested, somehow, he has already proved that his method works.
The Head teacher is bringing the planning and how to catch the attention of children The part-time teacher is bringing educational notion on how to teach and what to Thenteachthey
That is a time where the students can try to change or update the program on their
A4own.For
discuss doing a back and forth defining how on the planning they want the course to be done.
Interview with Part-time Professor in Design Thinking and Methodology at Pearl Acad emy in India
Interview with Senior Professor and Head of International Links at Indian institute of Crafts and Design in India
InterviewIndiawith
Part-time Professor in Design Thinking and Methodology at Pearl Acad emy in India
Interview with Part-time Professor in Design Thinking and Methodology at Pearl Academy in
I2 (A2 + A4 + A5) When all of the content of the deliberation is not defined prealably difference of opinion can be hard to handle. Sometimes it will bring bad faith, some times it will bring anger. If everything (or a minimum knowledge it has to be defined) is considered upstream we can have a more effective deliberation.
Interpretation
I1 (A1 + A3) We can see a common problem from two opposite parties of different countries that are in different political and economical situations. The problem is that no communication is effective and when communication is there it has no real effect on the output of educational decisions from the head of universities.
Design in implication for design can be interpreted differently. There are multiple things that we can think about when it comes to the implication of the analysis of the interviews in design with design as a mind process preceding the operation of design where operation of design is the decision taken during deliberation.
Implication
D1 User should be able to provide or get information on what will be discussed before D2meetings.Usershould have access to decision in institutions in order to have fair deliberation.
Conclusion
We ran a study by running interviews with multiple people in order to grasp problems and frictions. These interviews helped us identify general patterns that are shown in the following figure :
So our design will be a special method that will help them overcome these challenges to improve the meeting quality.
We started by the following hypothesis : the pedagogic teams face problems during deliberation processes. The interviews that have been conducted were conducted with individuals from different countries. The idea was to have a generic view of the meet ings. In this way the analysis had to be outside of a specific country culture or more only on the academic culture. We also wanted to notice the point of divergence of the different cultures and use them as a tool in our analysis.
We faced many problems such as identifying the common ground between the con tent of all the interviews. One of the limitations of our work is that it lacks a variety of answers and doesn’t cover the full spectrum of the pedagogic team. This could impact the final design in order to adapt.
As a person in this world, we make sense of our surroundings and ourselves through opinions borrowed from our parents, teachers, and friends and as a result of these col liding opinions we often diverge on our views too.
To find a better judgement in others opinions, we want to design something (an appli cation or an object or a system) to help teachers and institutions to have a better re ciprocal deliberation and come to a shared point of view.
-/a case in academic domain
Émile Roch - Shikhar Bhardwaj - Chaima Belhoula - Eugénie Dulout - Karine Ismail
Design Deliberationfor
November 2021 - Feburary 2022
CONTENTS 1. Introductions 2. Design Space 3. Methodology 4. Results 5. Interpretation 6. Limitations 7. Implication for Design 8. Conclusion
The next step led us to define the problem statement more clearly and analyse the interviews more thoroughly, to be able to test our concept we went on with focusing our learnings and actions towards the more flat discussions in academic settings (not a prominent cause for the problem but still)
The alpha wolves are not necessarily the strongest, the fastest, or the smartest. High rank has more to do with attitude and confidence than size or strength. Dominance also does not favor gender — either the alpha male or the alpha female may be the overall “leader of the pack”.
fig.01: the collecting findings from SES 215 - on deliberation in academic institutes in three different countries.
***anecdote*** - There is a story that goes like this: one of the disciples of the kung-fu master asked his master: “How come you avoid fights and arguments all the time?” The master replied, by seemingly saying, “You are right.” and to agree with them. The baffled disciples replied by saying, that is so absurd !! ‘’ To which the master replied, “You are right.”
For our course on Design Interaction, we chose the topic of Design for Deliberation to explore and study throughout. The first session with Stephane led us to interesting findings on the nature of deliberation in academic settings as such this institute. A LITTLE RECAP !!
Introduction
Also, the fact that many communities of men (particularly online) are seemingly convinced that they can all be alpha males is a contradiction in terms; there should only be one alpha male per community, that’s sort of the whole point. The rest should try and depose him as and when the opportunity presents itself, but until then they are, at best, “beta males”, a term often used as an insult by members of said community with no sense of irony.
People can belong to different hierarchies, for example; a guy who is the most vocal, dominant person in his amateur football team might be under the heel of an aggressive boss during his day job. Is he an alpha male, or not? It depends on context, obviously. Humans have many different social groups and varying roles within them, because we’re more complex. A universal “alpha” seems unlikely.
fig.02: defining the problem
We started developing our design spaces right after we discussed the problem statements with following points to consider while developing it -
fig.03: Design Space - Emile
2. The design space is going to evolve
3. initial design spaces - - - collective design space
1. Constraint to create the project is the design space
SpacesDesign
Give each member/deliberator importance by making them respect each other Also give time before deciding.
4. Retain the parts of this case base for future problem solving
Aprocess.paper
3. Revise the proposed solution if necessary
Decision science is the interdisciplinary application of business, maths, technology, design thinking and behavioural sciences. It starts with a business problem, becoming a heuristic problem, becoming an algorithm (with a pattern), becoming codified to finally being operationalized in systems. It provides data-driven insights to help organizations make better decisions. By combining those aspects properly, one could say that we can eliminate the biases in deliberation. The question that remains is how to do Basedso.on
To improve the quality of any deliberation and discussion, an independent moderator is essential. But moderators also suffer from human biases. One solution is to rely on automated facilitation techniques. A paper “Toward machine learning-based facilitation for online discussion in crowd-scale deliberation” talks about the CBRbased modelling cognition which provides an effective reasoning paradigm for modelling the human cognition behaviours in solving real-world problems. A casebased reasoning system can be described as a system that goes through 4 steps:
2. Reuse the solution in the case to solve the problem
1. Retrieve the most similar case from existing case bases
the agile methodology, more project management tools are coming out each day. Using those tools in deliberation can help with real-time communication and can give an opportunity to each person in the team to express their thoughts freely on the project space. This can help reduce biases during the deliberation
fig.04: Design Space - Karine
“SolutionChat: Real-time Moderator Support for Chat-based Structured Discussion” discusses a platform to assist moderators with facilitating a structured discussion for community problem-solving. The system named SolutionChat visualizes discussion stages and featured opinions and recommends contextually appropriate moderator messages.
• Reform opinions. Deliberation between individuals sparks deliberation within themselves, challenging and expanding their opinions on issues.
What are the basic components of argument and deliberation?
The Stanford Online Deliberation Platform is a web-based platform that facilitates constrictive discussions with the use of an automated moderator. This automated moderator plays a role in reducing the biases. It maintains civility during discussion and encourages equitable participation.
• Is the AI the deciding factor for deliberation or the moderator
Exchange opinions. Deliberation is not individual monologues, but a substantial consideration of ideas by multiple group members who advance different perspectives.
• Reflect. Deliberation encourages members to acknowledge others’ viewpoints and consider them in relation to their own viewpoint. The inability or unwillingness to consider opposing viewpoints leads to uninformed, and often indefensible, resolutions.
• Judge. Deliberation fosters conclusions on critical issues.
• Define what bias to eliminate, choosing the one that affect the deliberation
Solutions based on artificial intelligence, text-based technologies like NLP (natural language processing) and machine learning might raise another question, that is if we are replacing the human bias with the bias of the algorithm behind the automated system.•Having an impartial third member
• AI are double sided. They can be seen as impartial but they have biases too.
fig.05: Design Space - Shikhar
• Synthesize. Deliberation combines and builds upon individual contributions to create intellectual activity greater than the sum of its parts.
• Contest issues. Deliberation involves a controversy or unsolved problem in need of resolution.•
What can one argue about?
• Theories. Theories are hotly contested in science, social science, and the humanities. Deliberation tests the strengths and weaknesses of theoretical paradigms.
• Policies. The range of possibilities for action is almost limitless. Deliberation about policies encourages in-depth analysis of possibilities for change. These debates inevitably incorporate issues of facts and values, but policy deliberations center on legal or legislative changes.
• Interpretations. Competing interpretations of texts or data are prevalent in a complex society. Deliberation can compare interpretations for correspondence to truth, authorial intent, or social productivity; essentially, what someone or something “means” and why that is important.
• Research. Studies, data, and articles offer many issues for deliberation. Deliberation can involve issues about methodology, findings, conclusions, or the implications of the research. They say statistics do not lie; but the way one uses statistics in an argument or how the statistics were developed are clearly open for debate.
• Facts. Rarely are interesting and non-trivial facts so obvious that they invite universal agreement. We do not argue over the location of the Pacific Ocean or the temperature that water boils, for a resolution to such issues is easily reached. However, not all scientific or “factual” issues are beyond dispute, such as the effects of global warming and the cause of AIDS. However, deliberation provides ways to expose the areas of the contest and to compare and provide alternate views on competing facts.
• Criteria. The process of decision-making always involves criteria for judgment. Deliberation about criteria assists in making judgments that are satisfactory and legitimated. There are criteria for determining the admissibility of evidence in a courtroom or the viability of a scientific finding; however, the standards themselves are often the subject of intense deliberation.
The importance of hierarchies. Using simple solutions as putting dots to anonymity and facilitating the deliberation.
A good deliberation is a changing process. Lots of factors influence the deliberation that one or a group of people often avoid.
• Values. The clash of values is a defining marker of contemporary society. Deliberation can raise questions about the tensions between and within value systems that guide decision-making. Most Americans support free speech and the freedom of religion, but when these values come into conflict (such as posting the Ten Commandments outside a courthouse), it is the deliberative process that attempts to resolve these conflicts.
• Definitions. Much conflict is ultimately definitional. Deliberation forces advocates to defend their definition against the scrutiny of others. For example, what constitutes “freedom” or what determines “life?”
~Alan Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
“To notice is to select, to regard some bits of perception, or some features of the world, as more noteworthy, more significant, than others. To these we attend, and the rest we ignore—for which reason conscious attention is at the same time ignorance despite the fact that it gives us a vividly clear picture of whatever we choose to notice.”
The concept of Alpha is not only prevalent in the societies of sapiens but are also common in our long ancestors, monkeys and as well in a pack of wolves. The Alpha nature in animals has a lot to do with attitude and confidence rather than just being fastest, strongest or smartest. The Alpha bias in deliberation is often caused by various factors like the position of an individual in the hierarchy of the institute, intro/ extroversion of an individual, gender etc etc to just name a few.
fig.06: Design Space - Chaima Manipulation and strong sheep effect.Voting simultaneously may affect the vote of each person if the group gravitates toward an option rather than the other one.
fig.07: Collective Design Space
Here is our collective design space showcasing works and techniques we all explored in our design spaces to have a better and more effective flat discussion while deliberating.
1. List of Physical Visualizations and Related Artifacts
2. Co Op games tend to have lead ership effects. In hanabi (cardgame) it’s removed by the secret of the cards in the hands.
RELATED WORK SUGGESTED BY OUR MENTORS:
4. Production of an individual first list of solutions, ideas, and protocols to solve or solve a part of the problem.
2. Realisation of individual “state of the art” of what has been done to solve the problem. - fig. 03 - fig. 04 - fig. 05
DESIGNMethodology(PROCESSANDPRESENTATION)
The process is done following a list of tasks meant to put the conceptors in creative and imaginative positions. The tasks are the following :
1. Formulation of a problematic - fig. 02
3. Bring together the different overviews and classify ideas in a common representation of the design space. This task is going to help conceptors to make a first iteration to imagine and avoid different new possible solutions.
5.1 Sharing the lists with other conceptor. This step will enhance the ideas each of the conceptor already have and make connections between their ideas and the other conceptors ideas, or create new ideas from multiple ideas that are presented and not necessarily theirs.
7. (respectively Karine’s, Chaima’s, Emile’s preferences on design solutions)
5.2 Ideally we iterate on the 4-5 steps (we can also iterate on the 2-3 steps too) to make the ideas evolve but we performed the task only one time due to a lack of time.
6. From these ideas one or a group of solutions that seems more viable is developed. The solutions can also be combined into one.
8. This start of a solution has to include itself in a usage. to formulate that we create a Journey Map. The Journey Map has the convenience to give an overview on how the prototype’s script will go and question the conceptors on potential issues that the user will face.
9. Prototype realisation. With the help of all the previous steps the conceptors are ready to realise a first prototype.
9.1. Prototype testing. The prototype is tested following a protocol with official forms and script.
10. Analysis from the tests and go back to one of the previous steps to iterate with the new information.
7. Explain the voting in phases concept
2. Company Tree choice
1. How is the position in the company tree affecting the speaker in the 2.deliberation?Howisthe mood of the speaker affecting the deliberation?
Phase 1: BEFORE
3. Mood choice
3. Is the time representation concept helping in the delivery of a flat 4.conversation?Isthemind map helping in visualizing the problem and the solutions?
5. Does voting in phases help in reaching an agreement at the end of the deliberation?
STUDY DESIGN (PROTOCOL)
5. Explain the time representation concept
Phase 3: AFTER
1. Contact the testers
1. Assign the roles to each member
Testing script for the design in deliberation protocol:
The different parts of the protocol designed:
8. Deliberate
2. Demographic and consent forms
With our findings, we eventually formed a series of protocols to practice before, during and after the deliberation process.
Phase 2: DURING
4. Revelation of the debate motion
6. Explain the mind map concept
1. After deliberation form
What are we testing?
2. Discussion with the tester
The recruitment was done by sharing a conceptor between the teams of the course. Teacher also participated in testing the prototype.
RECRUITMENT AND DEMOGRAPHIC
The recruitment wasn’t effective and as a result we didn’t really succeed into having testors during the test by ourselves but we did have trials (at ENS in the pictures) before the main test phase to prepare :
Demographic Data of two testers:
• Surveys
• Direct discussion with the users
The data was taken from 3 sources :
DATA ANALYSIS
We were able to gather these data from the design lab that was equipped for prototyping.
• Photos and videos
During our tests, we observed several results that surprised us but also allowed us to see the usefulness, but also the limits, of each mechanism used in this prototype.
O1. Participants 1 to 4 did not move around the mind map because of the O2.delimitations.Aftererasing the delimitation, in the last testing, they also did not move.
O5. Participant 5 did not want to stand
The following data is from the feedback form that the participants filled at the end of the experience. We had the consent of the participants to share those results. a. How easy was the process
INTERVIEWOBSERVATIONResults?SECTIONSECTION
O7. We had to explain to the participants that their mood is related to the characters assigned to them.
Overall, we report the results of our observations according to two different topics that emerged from our analysis. We identify topics relative to the navigation around the mind map and the use of the emoji and hierarchy tree.
O3. Participant 3 did not understand the meaning of the tree (top down like a O4.pyramid)Participant 3 was the only one to use the note-taking space and only at the end of the discussion
O6. Participants with more knowledge of telecom student life participated better in the debate
• vote, mind map
• “Concentrate on both given arguments and deliberation, as it is processed in the same time”
• a more clear map
• I think adding a signal to speak with the moderator will be helpful. I also feel the space in front of me, meant for notes, is kind of unused, but perhaps in longer debates it could be used. I did not use it, as the mindmap was a sort of collected notes.
• It was a nice system to vote on ideas in real time. Any longer of a debate might be difficult to keep the central mindmap collected, as we took up a lot of space with our short debate.
• “Waiting to speak from moderator/there isn’t a way to give the moderator a signal to speak.”
• “being alone on my stand”
• good work
• “prendre la parole”
e. Anything to comment or to add, here’s your chance ?
c. Did the process help you reach a consensus/decision ?
d. What do you think could have been done differently ?
b. What were the hard/difficult parts of the process ?
• Setting more “checkpoints”, giving time for deliberation and voting
• “mind map”
The moderator played a very important role in the debates. He allowed to keep a good organization when the debates became heated, and allowed to share well when one of the testers was shy to intervene. Globally, the feedback was quite positive concerning this aspect. But users wanted to have a signal to tell the moderator they wanted to speak.
a. The mind map
e. Time of speech visualization
An interesting remark from one of the testers (Tallulah) was that: as our problematic was a question of for or against, we could use only two colors of pens to better visualize the corresponding arguments.
In parallel to the hierarchy tree, this mechanism had the same feedback.
The partial voting system helped to rationalize the outcome of the debate. However, in debates where the decision was postponed, this system made us conclude on the last point of agreement without taking into account the development points of the debate. And one of the testers (Samuel) pointed out that this system, based on unanimity, gave power to a single actor on the outcome of the debate.
b. Moderator
f. Partial voting system
The mind map was very much appreciated by the testers, who consider that this practice allows them to visualize the course and evolution of the debate. But this depended on the organization of the group to collectively write and keep the MM However,clear.
c. Hierarchy tree
d. Mood emojis
concerning the space dedicated to each participant, the opinions are mixed. Indeed, this part allowed us to take notes of the interventions and remarks to come when the floor was not given to us. That said, the obvious demarcation does not allow us to move around the mind map as expected, and we had to explicitly tell the participants that they could move around. On the other hand, some participants deliberately chose to sit down and not move around.
SUMMARY
The hierarchy tree seemed obsolete to the testers who didn’t see the direct interest in it, but in the background it allowed the moderator to know how to interact with the participants according to their role, their mood and their chosen positions.
This mechanism allowed the participants to understand the moderator’s speaking order. As we did not carry out a test without this mechanism, it is difficult for us to know the possible outcome of the debate without it. But this aspect is of great importance in our prototype.
In this section we will interpret and discuss our results. It will include the main insights we get from the observation of the experiments. We will be detailing the observations we had in each functionality designed and used in the deliberation.
6. The fact that the participants did not always refer back to the moderator after finishing and were confused on the speaking order suggests that the speaking rules were not communicated clearly with the participants.
7. The fact that the participants used the mind map to note down the ideas shared suggests that the mind map concept is clear and useful.
1. The fact that participants 1 to 4 did not move around the mind map (O1 and O2) suggests that the concept of moving was not clear or not needed.
2. The fact that participant 3 did not understand the meaning of the tree (O3) suggests that the hierarchy tree was not well displayed or explained.
Interpretation
8. The fact that no participant monopolized the floor proposes that the visualization of the time of speech helped in sharing speaking time.
4. The fact that participant 5 did not want to stand (O5) suggests that having the debate while standing is not always possible.
3. The fact that participant 3 was the only one to use the note-taking space and only at the end of the discussion (O4) recommends that this space was not necessary or not useful.
5. The fact that participants with more knowledge of telecom student life participated better in the debate (O6) suggests that the motion was adapted for them but not for outside testers.
As this study was in the form of a role play, it was prone to different problems that limited its effectiveness and reliability, such as:
Limitations
• The types (demography or other) of participants : most participants were students (or teachers) who were not familiar with this type of administration/students council. They did not always grasp the issues at stake, which sometimes made the conversation quite artificial. They also often lacked arguments, which were resolved after writing down ideas near their role on the white board.
• The protocols : Every participant understood the protocol directly, which indicates that it was clear enough. Further effort must be made from the protocol director and the moderator to explain the role play more at length, to give the participants a sense of acting and to make them feel more in character, which would lead to more realistic results.
• The prototypes or the artifact : Almost all participants avoided too much confrontation and agreed with the ideas that were recommended by others, which might not be the case in a real meeting. This eventually lead to a false sense of consensus at the end of the conversation. The main issue was probably with hierarchy, since not all students who played the Chief of Security acted the part of being one of the conversation ‘leaders’, who might be displeased with the outcome of the meeting. The position of the whiteboard, which was horizontal with everyone standing around, might be discussed as most people did not feel the urge to move around it as it was suggested by the moderator.
5. The hierarchy tree must be used after explaining the other roles to the participants, in order to give them an idea of where their character stands.
1. The whiteboard might need to be placed vertically, with the moderator drawing the mind map, or with each participant taking a turn.
2. The space around the whiteboard should be made clearer, and the study directors who participate in the study as false participants should move around more to initiate a feeling of movement to the real participants.
4. The participants could be asked to brainstorm some argument ideas on a piece of paper before the role play takes place, so that they feel more in character.
Implication For Design
3. The space for taking notes was not used by most participants, it could be deleted to offer a wider mind map.
• Test them
• Iterate on the last 2 steps.
• Manipulation and Sheep effect
Conclusion
• Define a problematic
• Integrating AI to deliberation
tests would include the implication noticed above. However we don’t go without anything as the tests were quite interesting. Every part of the prototype would be interesting to include in future meetings we’ll have in the future, together or separately.
In order to do that we used different tools at our disposal such as miro, design lab, and simple materials such as post-it and white boards. In the end we ended up with a solution made of a protocol that was easily tested with the material we had at disposition.
• Find solutions by confronting and sharing ideas from the conceptors
We determined some appropriate solutions that lead to a selection of them. With these solutions we made a prototype. We performed tests and had generous results as we had great interest from the users. We noticed that we needed more tests to have a serious idea to make the project truly Theblossom.next
• Develop a state of the art
We decided to observe a particular aspect of the context that was deliberation between students and the direction in the so-called “dir-élève” meetings. In our design spaces we found multiple common thematics :
• Having an impartial moderator
• Modulable Deliberation
At the start Hierarchy was the main topic because we observed in the last class that the institution field was a place of no deliberation because of it.
We wanted to work on the hierarchy issue in a context of deliberation. In order to do it we followed a design protocol based on a given methodology :