Gunnar,
I appreciate your comment. Allow me to mention this.
The Policy Lab and live|work have teamed up to work with the Center for Peace Studies at the University of Tromsų, which is trying to imagine its research program as a :"service" for field practitioners of the UN working on the topic of "disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration" of excombatants after civil wars.
The Policy Lab has substantial expertise in this area. live|work has formidable expertise in service design.
In working together, we used their conceptual framework as the basic model for designing the new service for Tromsų. It became clear at the "insights" phase, that deep substantive knowledge of the DDR systems, political relationships, actors, and history was needed to actually ask the right questions and not alienate the end-users. taking the so-called "naive designer" stance was NOT appealing to people at UN. It was irritating and a time-suck.
The Policy Lab therefore took the lead on crafting the interview process to elicit the kind of "user-insights" needed for live|work. But there were challenges here too. It is one thing to see people as users to a new service. It is quite another, we learned, to see organizational systems as the object of attention, which therefore shifts the focus from designing for people and towards designing for organizational processes. This affected the research phase as well.
Likewise, what does it mean to move from descriptions or reports provided by those interviewed to interpretations about the needs of the system in which they are embedded? That needed attention.
The design firm took the lead on client relations. They were superb, as expected. They also took the lead on prototype development with some assistance from the Lab. The Policy Lab, in turn, will then play a key role in prototype testing with users by also training a professional ear on their experiences so we can get more out of the prototyping testing than the designers can.
We will be writing this up at a later date.
What is clear is that the project was multi-disciplinary because we each attended carefully to our disciplinary skills. We didn't just "brain storm" and hang out together.
These processes can be deeply and mutually supportive. I direct people, again, to the final report from the Conference on Strategic Design and Public Policy, especially the conclusions (at the end, obviously). There is an agenda here. But what we need now is for educators to start to work that agenda into their curricula and syllabi.
https://sites.google.com/site/strategicdesignandpublicpolicy/home
Derek
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Dr. Derek B. Miller
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On Nov 21, 2011, at 10:42 AM, Gunnar Swanson wrote:
> I wonder whether I am just particularly slow or if others find
>> http://issuu.com/nextd/docs/_nextd_teachingcocreationnow
> to be a perhaps-interesting polemic but devoid of anything concrete or actionable. It seems akin to a coach's pep talk to the team--"You're playing like a bunch of losers. Go out there and win!" Excellent idea, Coach. Why didn't we think of that?
>
> So most of us have no formal training in cross disciplinary co-creation. How does one get formal training? Is there a substitute for formal training? What would make someone understand enough to know that seeking formal training or the substitute would be worth the investment (assuming we find out how to find formal training or the substitute)? What does trained cross disciplinary co-creation look like?
>
> It is somewhat ironic that the advocates of sense making are not providing the information that their apparent audience needs.
>
>
> Gunnar
> ----------
> Gunnar Swanson
> East Carolina University
> graphic design program
> http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cfac/soad/graphic/index.cfm
>
> Gunnar Swanson Design Office
> 1901 East 6th Street
> Greenville NC 27858
> USA
>
> [log in to unmask]
> +1 252 258 7006
>
> http://www.gunnarswanson.com
>
> On Nov 20, 2011, at 3:17 PM, GK VanPatter | NextD wrote:
>
>> For those interested in the subject of cocreation we recently posted this to the NextD Leadership Network list over on LinkedIn:
>>
>> Brief explanation on the Humantific blog:
>>
>> Teaching CoCreation Now:
>> Moving Beyond the Teach Each Other Model
>> http://www.humantific.com/teaching-co-creation-now/
>>
>> The doc itself along with many other NextD publications can be found in the NextD Archive on ISSUU.
>>
>> http://issuu.com/nextd/docs/_nextd_teachingcocreationnow
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Related for those interested:
>>
>> NextDesign Geographies (2002-2011)
>> Understanding Design 1,2,3,4
>> http://issuu.com/nextd/docs/nextdfutures2011_v02
>>
>> CoCreation is Rising
>> http://issuu.com/nextd/docs/cocreation_is_rising
>>
>> SenseMaking is Rising
>> http://issuu.com/nextd/docs/sensemaking_is_rising
>>
>> Design Thinking Made Visible Research
>> http://www.humantific.com/thinking-made-visible-research/
>>
>> ReReThinking Design Thinking
>> http://issuu.com/nextd/docs/2_rerethinking.design
>>
>>
>> NextD
>> Design Changed! Did You?
>>
>>
>> NextDesign Leadership Network
>> http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=1617827&trk=anet_ug_grppro
>>
>>
>>
>> Follow NextD Leadership Network on twitter: http://twitter.com/nextd
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