FUTURE WORKSHOP A CO-‐DESIGN METHOD T H E O R E T I C A L , M E T H O D O L O G I C A L , A N D P R A C T I C A L A S P E C T S O F O U R A P P R O A C H
Group 10 Signe Harring Hansen (290690-‐sihh) IT University of Copenhagen Bachelor in Digital Media and Design Co-‐Design: Understanding and Involving Users – E2011 INTRODUCTION
workshop, and video sketching. When designing our research plan, we had a very clear idea of what would give us the best outcome, and we had some expectations to the process, and how everything was supposed to work out.
A relation between workers and designers is created as a new discursive object within the cooperative movement: workers as influence-‐weak yet knowledge-‐strong and designers as technological humanists, who want to increase democracy and empower the weak party.
The biggest hurdle in our process was the difficulty with finding possible users to work with in our co-‐design method, the future workshop. This unforeseen obstacle triggered other problems; we thought about finding another method, and reconsidered what users to work with, and our schedule was postponed several times.
(Finken, 2003, p. 64)
Co-‐design, and the idea of designing with users, seems like an ideal solution, but it also have its obstacles; planning a research within a time limit, deciding on what methods will contribute the most, and figure out how to use the result for a design outcome in the end.
The following paper will discuss potentials and disadvantages of the co-‐design method future workshop by reflecting on how it was incorporated in our project.
Our project was about the sensitive subject of children with sick parents, and our aim was to cooperate with families in this situation (our target group), and professionals in the area. We worked with the three methods: qualitative interview, future
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Our investigation revolved around a profound subject: the relation and communication situation between sick parents and their child/children. Therefore we had to go around the future workshop differently.
THE INTEND OF A FUTURE WORKSHOP
Originally, a future workshop was not intended for IT or innovation, but since participatory design has become a common and valuable part of IT design, the future workshop method has made its way in this field. Bødker, Kensing, and Simonsen (2004) describe and outline how to implement a successful future workshop in an organization.
FUTURE WORKSHOP AS A METHOD IN A UNIVERSITY PROJECT
The following will be a discussion about implementing a co-‐design method like the future workshop in a university project, by reflecting on how we executed the future workshop, and how it contributed to the project.
The overall objective of a future workshop is “to create an initial joint proposal for changing a situation that a group of people find unsatisfactory” (Bødker, Kensing, and Simonsen; 2004; p. 270). As described in the group report, the future workshop is divided in five phases; preparation, critique, fantasy, realization and follow-‐up. The idea of dividing the process like this is to focus the participants in different aspects of the particular theme of investigation; first by critiquing all possible things about the situation, then fantasizing about all possible solutions to those problems, and lastly narrow those ideas down to realistic solutions. The other two phases, preparation and follow-‐up, are there for the research group to be aware of and plan some time to prepare the future workshop, and some time to analyse and follow-‐up after the future workshop.
We planned the future workshop from the Bødker, Kensing, and Simonsen (2004) text, but with some adjustments, which in my opinion might have affected the process and outcome. Not necessarily in a bad way, but it might have turned the future workshop more into a qualitative, unstructured interview with two persons. Bødker, Kensing, and Simonsen (2004) suggest that a future workshop should consist of approximately 20 participants (p. 273), but that was highly unrealistic in our case, therefore we scaled everything down. We did wanted to do more than only one future workshop with only two persons, but after many weeks of search, we had to realize that it simply was not possible. We decided to do the future workshop after the interview with the nurse Janne, both because we did not find participants until very late, but we also gained some background knowledge from the interview with Janne and further more, we got the interview with Grace, who contributed a lot to our understanding of the situation. With this background knowledge we had the opportunity to see if there were some similarities in their views, even though all of our
Bødker, Kensing, and Simonsen (2004) propose three different schedules for a future workshop: 2-‐day, 1-‐day, and ½-‐day schedule (p. 273). This is probably the ideal solution, and is also possible if the organization has requested help from designers to improve something, but it truly depends on the theme of investigation, and if you can find people who are willing to participate for that long.
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informers were in very different situations. There was, and that made the project a success, since we gained a lot of knowledge from our three methods, even though they might not have worked exactly as we wanted them to.
subject as communication within a family in a difficult situation. The difference in the future workshop is that we are dealing with a family and with emotions instead of employees criticizing systems within the company. The future workshop is supposed to work like an open forum with lots of inputs and discussions, but that can be hard to facilitate with personal problems, since the participant might be even more introvert.
When planning the future workshop we decided not to include any group work (Bødker, Kensing, and Simonsen; 2004; p. 271), because we could only find two participants, and we did not plan on doing a long workshop. This affected the process, since the dynamics of the workshop is not the same, when this change in settings is not applied. The effect on our process was that the three phases was not clearly separated, and the conversations ran continuously through the phases. Since Lisbeth and Camilla talked avid about the period of the mother’s breast cancer sickness and recovery, the foremen/facilitators did not interfere much. Camilla was my friend so I could not be the facilitator, though I would have liked to influence the themes of conversations at some points during the future workshop. I was only present to make the participants feel comfortable, and to document the future workshop with pictures and videos. The theme of conversation was very descriptive, and it would have been nice to have them talk some more about and dig deeper into some specific problems.
The fantasy phase was especially challenging in our future workshop, because our participants did not think creatively enough: “Sometimes it can be hard to get this phase going because the participants are not used to thinking creatively or developing wild ideas […]” (Bødker, Kensing, and Simonsen; 2004; p. 275). The facilitators should have been more controlling in this phase, I think. I consider the fantasy phase as the most important, since it is the most innovative and interesting part, where the participants should really give us something to work with further on. The ideas put on the table was not wild or unrealistic, but in fact very useful. This of course made it an easy realization phase, since there were already some realistic suggestions in the fantasy phase. Overall we got a good discussion with Lisbeth and Camilla and some good solution ideas for our design outcome, but was it actually a future workshop?
The ‘guide’ by Bødker, Kensing, and Simonsen (2004) insinuates a process, where the users firstly unfold their brains with everything related to the problem, and then they narrow it down, and select the best and most realistic idea at last (p. 275).
Since we did not separate the phases, and did not encourage the critique and fantasy phases enough, I do not think this future workshop lived up to the expectations. Even though we planned it really well, there were simply too many obstructions that made this co-‐design method hard to complete appropriately. Maybe we were just unlucky, but when it comes down to it, I think there are two major reasons to this outcome; it is important to consider the time
I believe, one of the reasons that our future workshop did not turn out like Bødker, Kensing, and Simonsen (2004) describe, was the theme we investigated. They describe the future workshop from an organizational point of view, where we dealt with an emotional
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limit we had to plan and complete a research project, and the theme of investigation is also worth considering before planning a future workshop.
how the social interactions are important to observe as well when analysing focus group data. In a possible focus group with two or three families who had been in a situation where a parent was sick, it could be interesting to analyse the interactions between the participants. They might not talk a lot in the beginning because of some personal barriers, but the body language is just as interesting.
The future workshop method is very time consuming, and can and should work as an inspiration to further research. We scaled it down to only two hours instead of half, one or two days, which it is actually designed for. This means we did not dig deep into the phases, and might have missed some important points. Implementing a future workshop in a university project of one semester, where the first couple of months are only lectures before the actual project work begins, seems to me a little bit unrealistic, if we should get the full benefits from the method.
But why did we not do this then? These are reflection I have made afterwards. The reason I/we found the future workshop interesting a first was because it was new. I already worked with focus groups before, and I saw this as an opportunity to try out a new method – which I believe the university is all about. CONCLUSION
This applies to many ethnographic methods, which should include extensive fieldwork research. As Blomberg (1993) explains: “Typically, field work involves some combination of observation, informal interviewing, and participation in the ongoing events of the community. Through extensive contact with the people studied ethnographers develop a descriptive understanding of the observed behaviors” (p. 124). Therefore, it can be hard to conduct a fulfilling ethnographic study in a course of only a couple of months.
I set out to discuss the method future workshop in a university context by reflecting on the way we implemented it in our project. My conclusion is that it was not ideal for this project; since we underestimated the time, and we did not consider the difference it would be to talk about social relations compared to work contexts. But we learned from it! And we did get valuable data from the workshop, even though it seemed more like an interview/small focus group.
The other thing I found to be a reason for our future workshop not working out as I hoped, was the theme of investigation. As mentioned, it seems to me the future workshop method is designed for work related situations to implement in a company with staff. I imagine, a focus group layout would be more beneficial for a more social subject like communication between parent and child – especially when it is a delicate subject like serious illness. Since a focus group is not only about the statements, but also about the interactions between the participants. Halkier (2010) discusses
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REFERENCES
Blomberg, J. (1993). Ethnographic Field Methods and Their Relation to Design. In Participatory Design: Principles and Practices. New Jersey. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Bødker, K., Kensing, F., and Simonsen, J. (2004). Participatory IT Design. MIT Press, pp. 270-‐277. Finken, S. (2003). Discursive Conditions of Knowledge Production Within Cooperative Design. In Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems (SJIS), 15, pp. 57-‐72. Halkier, B. (2010). Focus Groups as Social Enactments: Integrating Interaction and Content in the Analysis of Focus Group Data. Qualitative Research, 10:71.
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