Hi Jennifer
You've hit on a couple of significant issues in regards to
facilitation. I've seen many examples of good facilitation and most
of these events have been run by expert facilitators with no
investment in the content. It's not always true, but there can be a
bias towards certain design outcomes if the facilitator is the
designer. Since 1997 I've adopted the approach formulated by John
Herron in 'The Facilitators Handbook' (Kogan Page 1995). Heron breaks
facilitation down into modes and dimensions. The modes are
hierarchical; co-operative and autonomous. Even in collaborative
work being hierarchical can sometimes be needed. The dimensions
include planning; meaning; confronting; structuring and valuing.
Good facilitators are aware of all these dimensions and should have
skills in recognising and managing them.
I teach a first year undergrad unit called Collaborative Design, where
we explore some of these issue in the context of designing with
others. At first year level we are limited to introducing the basics
and mainly deal with asking effective questions and getting valuable
feedback from users, using simple tools like card sorts, questioning
frameworks etc. These are all part of the facilitators tool kit and
our students seem to be able to differentiate their role as
facilitator in comparison to their role as designer. I believe that
to be crucial in developing effective processes. In my definition,
facilitation is about a process to gather information to inform design
(a separate process).
Regards
Alun
Alun PriceEdith Cowan University (the other ECU)PerthWestern Australia
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From: "PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and
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Sent:Tue, 16 Sep 2014 00:40:07 +0100
Subject:Design Facilitation for participatory work
Hi all,
As participatory design and co-design are becoming increasingly
popular I want to know what you all think of design facilitation in
participatory research.
What is the difference between a designer who is facilitating a group
of participates through a process versus a business person or an
educator? Or is there a difference? Who out there is practicing what
we call "design facilitation" and are there different best
practices/frameworks/components even within design facilitation?
Any and all comments are welcome as well as links to any scholarly
research you all think may be helpful in answering these questions
even further!
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