Tag: design

Lipstick on the gorilla

Education ArchitecturePublished onUpdated onLeave a Comment on Lipstick on the gorilla

Adam Wood presents a healthy dose of provocation in his article about the current state of education architecture in Australia.

https://www.aare.edu.au/blog/?p=3821
Adam Wood

The idea that resonated with me the most is the “faddishness of school design” – our fascination with the image of new school architecture.

New school designs also risk following the current trend for ‘Instagrammable’ architecture, buildings that look impressive from the outside but that disappoint inside to the point of being dysfunctional. The big challenge for Australia is to resist the faddishness of school design so problematic internationally, and focus on spaces that are genuinely useful and meaningful for students and teachers.

When developing a set of options for school design, a team researches a collection of visual precedents. These are photos of real examples of room layouts, facades, furniture and surface finishes. At there worst, they are merely a set of images dredged from the internet, with no story. These images are then used to justify to a client any design choices. What we are often missing is the narrative of the user experience.

Decision makers (clients) are often in a situation with high-investment, high stakes, short timelines and marketing pressure for enrolment. The user experience is something much harder to sell and to hook into, even if it is the core reason for a new building. The user experience is less “instagrammable.”

Our students deserve better than simply “that looks good”. Design choices can be articulated in a broader way than simply using imagery. Technology is providing an amazing array of tools to tell the story of new learning spaces.

We can create a rich set of user experience precedents that are complemented by the stock imagery so commonly lauded over. To create “genuinely useful and meaningful spaces” for teachers and learners we have to use narrative, virtualisation and imagery.

The narratives can also serve as the fixed points we use to evaluate the success of educational architecture.

  • How have we been able to bring to life these fictional accounts?
  • How close to reality were our design stories?
  • How do the user experiences compare after one, three, six and twelve months of post-occupancy?

Adam links out from his article to an interview with Adrian Leaman, who runs Building Use Studies and leads a UK educational charity the Usable Buildings Trust, who explains,

In post-occupancy evaluations, we often find that the results for the “Image” variable are much better than almost all the others. The occupants will tell you “It looks good, but it does not work well”. Lipstick on the gorilla was the way one designer described it! A pretty building but thermally it’s horrible, the ventilation’s terrible, the lighting is so-so, it’s very noisy, people want to escape from it and so on. The discourse about architecture and schools is very superficial. There is a reluctance for designers to re-visit buildings to see how they really work, and what people really think about them.

Here are some ideas to broaden the discourse and for us all to consider when we are involved in these projects.

  1. Observe the time and space of teaching and learning. Immerse your self in teaching and learning, carefully observe how a learning space functions, and how the users make it work for them. Explore the patterns you notice across multiple groups.
  2. Articulate what your learning community values the most. Share a set of principles about teaching and learning. Explain the hopes and dreams you have for the students in your community. As Ira Socol asks: “What do you want your children to be?”
  3. Question the story behind the imagery. Spend time exploring the stories portrayed in the images used in the project documentation. Question and probe for the story of the user experience. Don’t settle for “these are just some examples” – example of what experience? How do they articulate the experience we are striving to create?
  4. Create user experience precedents. Use narrative, imagery and virtual simulations to articulate design ideas. Capture case studies of existing user experience in the school to use as points of evaluation further into the process.
  5. Establish a framework for evaluation. Commit to pre- and post-occupancy long term, using the existing spaces and user experiences as a baseline. It is often a long road, so ensure it is invested in and referenced throughout the process by all stakeholders.

Image by Ozgu Ozden

How to create the ideal conditions for dialogue, creativity and feedback

28 Days of Writing, Creativity, Dialogue, FeedbackPublished onUpdated on1 Comment on How to create the ideal conditions for dialogue, creativity and feedback

I thought I would share in a little more detail about some of the different things we can do to positively impact on these topics.

Creativity Can Be Blocked

One of the most interesting areas to read about is the disposition it takes to be able to be creative.

In this context, I refer to creativity as the generation of novel ideas that add value. Much of the time we face a range of blocks that get in the way of this endeavour.

These can often be our own approach and self-censoring, even self-sabotaging. Or the environment around us sometimes has a negative impact through exuberant judgement or too much pace.

During the session, we will have a look at the different types of blocks and explore the ideal conditions for ideas to thrive.

Speak up!

Dialogue is no different and it can be a delicate experience, swayed and influenced by dominant voices or even culled by assumptions and an underlying threat.

Of course, we can control much of these issues through deliberate protocols and practices. Long term it is about establishing a core set of habits that work for you.

Dialogue is different to a discussion, the former being much more akin to building and developing ideas together in a highly supportive environment. Certain conditions will encourage this and some will detract from it.

Feedback, up, down, forward

Getting feedback right has been a focus for thousands of teachers the world over for many years now. And yet we still seem to spend too much time exploring how to give feedback.

Ultimately we might all be expert feedback givers, but unless the recipient is an expert receiver of feedback, and it is done in a supportive and encouraging space – little may change.

In the workshop, we will explore practical tools and activities for providing and receiving feedback effectively.

We will pay close attention to how we might design the ideal conditions for feedback conversations to take place and what we might do to ensure it is heard and acted upon in the most positive way.

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Imagine each of these – Creativity, Dialogue and Feedback as three little seedlings, each ready to burst forth – we just need to carefully surround them with the ideal conditions to thrive and grow.

Join me on the 13th April in Melbourne for my keynote and workshop at TeachTechPlay.

#28daysofwriting

Photo by Neslihan Gunaydin on Unsplash

How to Keep People at the Heart of Your Next Problem Solving Process

Design ThinkingPublished onUpdated on25 Comments on How to Keep People at the Heart of Your Next Problem Solving Process

 

Problem solving is a skill we want all of our students to be honing whilst at school. However one of the issues I stumble upon during my work is the weaker focus on problem finding.

In many ways problem finding can be more accurately and more broadly defined as the time when we check that a problem is worth solving in the first place. This is something students don’t experience enough.[1] All too often they are presented with a problem and get busy generating ideas, or as adults we assume that the problem is clear when it is not and start from a much weaker position.

I enjoyed this recent article from Emily Heyward[2] that focused attention on ensuring a problem is worth solving in the first place. Instead of immediately jumping ahead there are significant gains to be had by staying in the problem for much longer.

Staying focused on the problem also prevents you from falling into the fatal trap of assuming the world is waiting with bated breath for your product to launch. When I used to work in advertising, we would joke that the “insight” in the creative brief was often something along the lines of, “I wish there were a crunchy cereal with raisins that was healthy and also delicious.” But people do not wish this. They might have a hard time finding a quick breakfast that doesn’t make them feel fat or sluggish. And maybe your crunchy raisin cereal is the perfect response to this issue. But they are not waking up in the morning wishing for raisiny, crunchy goodness. Similarly, people are not wishing for your idea to exist, because they don’t even know it’s an option. So when you sit down to clarify what problem you’re solving, a great initial test is to imagine someone’s inner monologue. Is the problem you’ve identified something that a real human might actually be thinking?

The last line emphasises the importance of empathy in any problem solving/finding process. We have to be able to put ourselves in other people’s shoes to fully appreciate what the need is. I suppose that is the difference between something we might want and something that is a true need.

So spend longer in the problem state. Encourage your students and colleagues to remain in that state, often characterised by asking questions, for as long as you can. Technology and habits cause us to jump out of this inquiry/problem finding state all too quickly. That in itself is a habit or mindset we need to wean our students off.

John Dewey talked about inquiry in a similar way, inquiry in my opinion being synonymous with any creative process, saying that we need to protract the state of uncertainty for much longer.

To be genuinely thoughtful, we must be willing to sustain and protract that state of doubt which is the stimulus to thorough inquiry.[3]

That has always resonated strongly with me. Whether in a design agency as Heyward refers to or as a curriculum based inquiry, it is the deliberate and sustained period of doubt that most characterises an inquiry. When we experience this with an open mindset to learn and empathise with those involved we are more likely to identify a problem worth our time to try and fix.

Further into her piece Emily Heyward also refers to the 5 Whys[4] technique which we commonly use with teams we are working with. I suspect you have probably come across this too. However I like the slight change in the wording of the question, not just “Why?” but “Why does that matter?”. I think this small change resets the question back into one of relevance to the human being at the heart of the issue. It will be a small change I make when I use the 5 Whys technique in the future.

By focusing on the problem you’re solving, you move beyond a functional description of what your product is, to an emotional solution that connects with people at their core. It also keeps us honest that what we’re doing really matters…

In the start-up and design world it is critical to remain focused on the people at the heart of new ideas, but this is just as relevant for the creative inquiry we help our students experience. In many ways the core experience of “school” should be about creating something that matters. I imagine a time when that becomes a new education standard.

  1. The design thinking process emphasises this precursive step. Participants immerse themselves in an issue or topic and then synthesise the insights they gain. It is through these two significant stages that a problem is identified and ratified. You don’t start with a problem, and even if you did you still orientate yourself to ensure it is worthy of our time.  ↩
  2. Emily Heyward is s a founding partner at Red Antler, a branding consultancy specialising in start-ups and new ventures.  ↩
  3. Dewey, J. (1933). How we think: A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process. New York: D.C. Heath and Company. (p. 16)  ↩
  4. The 5 Whys technique is used to dig deeper into the causes of an issue. You start with a simple identified problem and then ask why is that an issue and then repeat again with the answer. It deliberately opens the issue up and ensures a team identifies the root causes. The technique is commonly attributed to the Toyota Motor Corporation during the evolution of its manufacturing methodologies.  ↩

This Simple Yet Wonderful Metaphor Will Steer You Towards Action

LearningPublished on38 Comments on This Simple Yet Wonderful Metaphor Will Steer You Towards Action

You will see over the next few months a range of posts about Legacy. The impact that children can have on the world around them is a topic that intrigues me. I will be sharing my emerging understanding of what Legacy means to me and the relevance to education and society more widely. I suppose this is the first of those posts.

Buckminster Fuller

Richard Buckminster Fuller was an American author and designer, architect and systems theorist. As an inventor and visionary he dedicated his life to making the world work for all of humanity. Something that is remarkable about his life was his staunch belief in the generalist approach. “Fuller did not limit himself to one field but worked as a ‘comprehensive anticipatory design scientist’ to solve global problems surrounding housing, shelter, transportation, education, energy, ecological destruction, and poverty.”

Creating silos in schools, through subjects or career pathways, is not likely to foster the thinkers we need. Fuller grappled with complex problems in a holistic manner. He chose to be interested in many areas of study encircling the problem. I always find stories of multidisciplinary teams or mindsets hugely encouraging. These are stories we need to pay more attention to in education.

Trimtab

During an interview for Playboy back in the early 1970s Fuller outlined a simple metaphor for the impact we can all have on the world.

Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Elizabeth — the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there’s a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab. It’s a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab. Society thinks it’s going right by you, that it’s left you altogether. But if you’re doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go. So I said, “Call me Trim Tab.”

There is great ambition in these words, a message of hope that the individual within a system can make change. Fuller believed we can start with the self, to make changes and build momentum there. The ripples of our impact will soon happen.

I’m positive that what you do with yourself, just the little things you do yourself, these are the things that count. To be a real trim tab, you’ve got to start with yourself, and soon you’ll feel that low pressure, and suddenly things begin to work in a beautiful way.

Learning Legacy

This will form the basis of a longer post in the future, but it is worth mentioning here in the context of Fuller’s challenge for us all. I believe we need to spend more time considering the design of ambitious learning. To help the youngsters we work with develop the capacities aligned with Fuller’s metaphor. To design the opportunities in school for learners to push out against the world and maybe make it a little better.

In many ways this ambition is subdued by the knowledge that through learning we are developing the individual child. But it is the more outward looking, more ambitious holistic design of learning that maybe needs more attention.

What do you mean? I hear you ask. I suppose I think of the examples of school based work that I have been lucky enough to take a small part in over the last few years. Instead of just pretending to do a TEDx event, a primary school we worked with ran the first official event of its kind run by 7, 8 and 9 years olds. Instead of just creating new ideas for the Space Gallery at the British Science Museum one school invited the Education Officers to visit and pitched them.

The list goes on of little Trim Tabs in our schools.

Start Small

Where do you go from here? Learning projects or units of work do not always have the opportunity to have a vast, far reaching impact, so just remember it all begins with yourself.

  • As educators we can make small changes in how we think about learning.
  • We can consider how ambitious we have been in our design of learning.
  • We can foster a creative mindset that starts to believe in the impact we all can have – especially our students.
  • Whilst we might not be able to change the system, we can help our students see that little changes count.

Getting Your Hands Dirty

28 Days of Writing, TechnologyPublished onLeave a Comment on Getting Your Hands Dirty

About four years ago I ran into this lovely blog post from designer Bret Victor, titled: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design. It struck a particular chord with me and my developing dissatisfaction with the interactive experience we see in the classroom.

When we consider the type of play and tactile exploration of the world we experience when we are really young and then put that against the way we interact with devices and screens nowadays. As Victor explains much of the discussion about interaction and user interface and experience design misses something fundamental.

In this rant, I’m not going to talk about human needs. Everyone talks about that; it’s the single most popular conversation topic in history.

And I’m not going to talk about technology. That’s the easy part, in a sense, because we control it. Technology can be invented; human nature is something we’re stuck with.

I’m going to talk about that neglected third factor, human capabilities. What people can do. Because if a tool isn’t designed to be used by a person, it can’t be a very good tool, right?

As he progresses through the post he helps the reader, well in fact, reminds the reader about our amazing our hands are. The tools we use to interact and manipulate so many different objects around us everyday. And it is this dexterity and capability we underplay with our current designs of the digital interface.

I call this technology Pictures Under Glass. Pictures Under Glass sacrifice all the tactile richness of working with our hands, offering instead a hokey visual facade.

Is that so bad, to dump the tactile for the visual? Try this: close your eyes and tie your shoelaces. No problem at all, right? Now, how well do you think you could tie your shoes if your arm was asleep? Or even if your fingers were numb? When working with our hands, touch does the driving, and vision helps out from the back seat.

Pictures Under Glass is an interaction paradigm of permanent numbness. It’s a Novocaine drip to the wrist. It denies our hands what they do best. And yet, it’s the star player in every Vision Of The Future.

And it was this image below from Bret Victor’s post that immediately made me think of the complexity of how we manipulate and sense the world around us with our hands. The variations are huge.

Hands

So where does that leave us in learning and education? How does this make us rethink the way we are working digitally in the classroom?

I for one maintain a healthy dissatisfaction for the classroom technologies we see. But specifically how our children are physically interacting with these technologies and their associated resources. I imagine a time when the human capability Victor refers to and how children use it to learn about the world, forms a much stronger part of their technology experience. 

Interestingly after nearly four years (since the original rant from Bret Victor) the challenge hasn’t changed. Our “Pictures under glass” experiences are more refined than ever, but the integration of meaningful tactility and the convergence of complex haptics seems just as far away. I wonder when we will see a shift from refining the visual to exploring the tactility of our interaction experience.

Image from Bret Victor’s post A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design