Soumitra,
I wish I had more time to discuss this with you, but we're in the middle of international fielding right now and my time is short.
When conducting these sessions, if the people involved are a designer as facilitator/moderator and participants/stakeholders, then I would recommend pairing up your students so each session can include a designer as facilitator/moderator and a secondary designer as note taker. This way, the facilitator is more free to develop a rapport and empathetic understanding through direct interaction without the interference of taking notes. In addition, having an explicit note taker allows for higher fidelity notes which facilitates a more rigorous analysis.
Also, Elizabeth Sanders put out a really great high level understanding of the various approaches to design research, I think it's call the Landscape of Design Research & can be found for free at her website: www.maketools.com (which incidentally promotes generative design research methods that I personally tend to believe is a great tool for design research).
I am a design researcher at a consultancy in the US & if you're interested in talking more about various methods of design research & I also happen to be personally interested in design research pedagogy. I will be more available for communication after August 1st.
I hope this helps,Susana La Luz
Design Research Associatelextant:
> Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2011 10:52:53 +0530
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Note-taking tools for Design Research
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Thank you Alun,
>
> The ORID framework seems to be something that I can use to develop my
> material. I would aim for having the note-taking tool take on the role of
> the 'facilitator' part of an ORID session.
>
> regards,
> Soumitra
>
> On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 11:29 AM, Alun Price <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
>
> > Hi Soumitra
> >
> > For simple and effective techniques I tend to fall back on the ORID and
> > SWOT questioning frameworks. They can both be used in a number of
> > situations. ORID; Observation (what do you see, what are the details),
> > Insights (how does it affect you, make you feel), Reflection (what do you
> > think it means etc.), Decision (what will you do next). works well in
> > framing sets of questions about a situation or a design that you're testing.
> >
> > Alun
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Soumitra" <[log in to unmask]>
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Sent: Monday, 25 July, 2011 10:59:07 AM GMT +08:00 Beijing / Chongqing /
> > Hong Kong / Urumqi
> > Subject: Note-taking tools for Design Research
> >
> > Dear PhD-Design list members,
> >
> > I am about to teach a short 'Research for Design' course to undergrad
> > students at a professional design education institute (not a university).
> > This will probably be the first and only such course that they will follow
> > in their UG program. I want to make it simple for them to effectively apply
> > some techniques like observation and interviewing for their future
> > projects.
> > So far, my experience has been that the students are able to look at and
> > hear many things within a situation, but have difficulty in seeing and
> > listening to stimuli (focus and interpret) and transform them into insights
> > for design. Personally, looking at my own process, I think notetaking forms
> > a critical part of the research activity and it would be effective to focus
> > on developing/collecting some tools that would help the students
> > systematically take notes of their observations and interviews with the
> > intention of extracting insights from them.
> >
> > I thought of note-taking methods with corresponding templates that I have
> > seen earlier that are used by practitioners to prescribe and guide an ideal
> > note-taing process. Some of these are:
> >
> > 1. Cornell Notes
> > 2. 6-up and 1-up templates from AdaptivePath? (
> >
> > http://www.boxuk.com/blog/using-sketchboards-to-design-great-user-interfaces
> > )
> > [not exactly note-taking, but similar]
> > 3. The notepads used by McKinsey and BCG that have a grid on one side and a
> > powerpoint slide on the other... (haven't been able to locate a link to a
> > picture)
> >
> > Can you point me to some more examples and/or share some of your own
> > expreriences and tools?
> >
> > Thanks and regards,
> > Soumitra
> >
> >
> > --
> > Soumitra Bhat, MSc.
> > Director - UserINNOV Design Co.
> > www.userinnov.com
> >
|