Endnote for PhD thesis referencing

Am just finishing up Endnote training at the University this morning. What a great little tool to help with the massive amount of references for PhD students. Would highly recommend it as it saves loads of time with referencing in your documents and also your Bibliography. I think the niftiest thing is that the references can be linked to pdf documents saved on your computer.

However, some limitations of the programme include:

• It doesn't have a spell check
• It doesn't consistently format your references so you'll have to tweak things yourself
• It won't put the page numbers in your document referencing so you'll need to do this manually

Get T5 some Service Designers please!

We all know the dramas of T5.

Here's an article in today's Guardian citing the Government on T5 as an "unacceptably poor travel experience" and the need for British Airways 'to place a "much greater emphasis" on the needs of passengers.'

But what is more desperately needed is a proper systems design. The backlog of 28,000 bags demonstrates there is definitely something broke in this sordid system.

The financial costs are also ridiculous.

Someone needs to hire some Service Designers.

CIID's Service Design Symposium

I am rather disappointed that I missed out on the Service Design Symposium at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID). The 2-day event brought together a great line-up on speakers and from the symposium recap here it sounded like a great exchange forum on the emerging area.

The CIID have already begun to post some of the symposium's happenings, beginning with an excerpt from Bill Hollin's presentation.

Dott 07 Explorers Club

The final Explorers Club for Dott 07 happened last Wednesday night, 12 March 2008.



The evening brought together a community of Dott 07 people- the Dott 07 Team, those who were deeply involved in the projects and those who have been enthusiastically watching and supporting the Dott 07 initiative over the past few years.

I was going to write up the night, but Claire has done a really wonderful job on the Dott 07 website. She reports all that happened on the night which you can find here.

Climate Change: Fact or Fiction

Last month, Ben and I, with some friends, went to a talk on climate change held at World Head Quarters as part of a series of free talks held under the banner of Café Scientifique.

To sum it up, it is really disappointing. The facts and fiction were far too simple for the audience that was in attendance. In the Q&A time Ben asked, we all know and believe that climate change is happening (no more convincing needed!), so what is the role of the scientist now?

This stumped the guest speaker. She agreed that scientists brought messages of what happened in the world (note past-tense). We can make projections from this about what will happen in the future, but what and who, is going to do anything about it?

Ben suggested that maybe that was a role for designers and engineers and the lack of understanding of what design could bring by the general public was well highlighted in the subsequent discussion where engineers and technology were seen as the answer to going forward with action to tackle the climate change issue.

My question (which I did not get chance to ask) was why do we need to invent new technologies, in the first place, to help climate change? Why can’t we just use what we already have, re-organise and re-connect things that already exist (such as John Thackara writes in this book, In The Bubble), change our behaviours and lifestyles to accommodate our move towards environmental sustainability? As you may have picked up already, this is very much the ethos of Dott 07. My other big insight into last night was the fact that no one in the audience knew what design meant and no one seemed to know about Dott 07, with it’s huge environmental sustainability theme.

Last night was another reminder of the difference between science and design and an even more significant reminder that we, as designers, have a long way to go to help the public understand design and it’s contributions.

A Research Update

I have almost completed my first phase of qualitative research which has involved interviewing the Project Clients of Dott 07. I had two main aims for this phase:

1. Look at developing an evaluation model for the Dott 07 programme, using insights from both the design and client side to see what kinds of criteria are similar and different;
   
   
2. Understand the experiences and learnings of participating in a design project from a client-point of view.

The first aim has changed a lot. I have never really liked the word evaluation. My instinct was that evaluation was not what I was doing with the Dott 07 programme, but I know I will need a set of criteria to discuss across all project that are at the least, “intelligent and consistent”, as Jim Collins says in his book, Good to Great and the Social Sectors.

I have just 2 more interviews to go and have thoroughly enjoyed doing all of them. One of the most enjoyable aspects of my previous work was meeting and talking with new people, getting insights into their daily experiences, and thinking about how design could have an impact through the products and services we were helping our clients develop.

During my first phase of research, I got to travel a little around the north east region of England. I had to go to Middlesbrough for some interviews and squeezed in a trip to the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA), which was showing a major exhibition called Bauhaus 1919 - 1933. It was wonderful to see some key pieces from the Bauhaus Archive in Germany.



While my interviews for the PhD take on a very different aim, I really enjoyed listening to people’s experiences on a design project. It’s something that I was always curious about in my old job and the PhD gave me a platform to explore this a little.

The process did not come without some learnings. Here are some which I think are important to point out:

• Planning, organising, interviewing and transcribing takes a long time! Plan accordingly;
  
  
• I wrote up a planning document, inclusive of aims, before I begun interviewing. I found it was a great reference to go back to to ensure I was clear on my direction;
  
  
• I drew upon my previous experience in practice as a design researcher which was really valuable. Everything from filing documentation into envelopes to writing up Confidentially Agreements, were things that none of the academic research methods books told me;
  
  
• Confidentially Agreements help lots! I wanted and needed honesty, and part of being able to get that was making sure that the interviewees knew exactly what I was going to do with the data collection;
  
  
• Some of the Project Clients I met at the Dott Debates, which proved to be a really helpful introduction. I was able to let them know who I was, gauge their interest in being interviewed and get a sense of their roles on the project. It made it much easier setting up the interviews;
  
  
• The interviewees found the use of visual aids really helpful in remembering and discussing the design outcomes. It had been 4 months since the Dott 07 Festival and everyone could use a little reminder;
  
  
• I think it’s important to mark out a core set of questions. In some later interviews, where time became an issue, I wasn’t clear on a core set of questions and had to go back to the interviewee to ask them these questions later on;
  
  
• Above all, have fun! The task is a crucial part of the data collection, but if you can’t be yourself and connect with people, you’re just not going to get the feedback you want.

Desform (December 2007)

The smaller and more focused conference of DeSForM (Design and Semantics of Form and Movement) in December 2007, followed shortly after the bigger InterSections 07 conference.



Initially, I wasn't sure how DeSForM would contribute to my research, but reflecting back, it was a great networking conference and it also provided some great insights and learnings in the area of academic research methods for design research.

On the first night, the delegates got plenty of opportunity to bond with a night out to see the Glow Festival, which was a short tour of light installations throughout Newcastle city. The tour ended up at Tokyo, a funky bar which served up an evening meal and drinks.



During the days, DeSForM’s calibre of design research work and presentations was wide and impressive (click on the picture below for the full programme).



It was so wide that some delegates were left wondering at the end, ‘What was DeSForM all about?’ This seemed clear to the organising panel, but was only clarified on the last day at the Plenary Session. While the seemingly lack of focus could shed negative light on the conference, I thought that its ambiguity was valuable in allowing delegates to bring their own meaning to the conference.

For me, generally, the conference was valuable because:

• It spotlighted research methods, which conferences such as InterSections 07 are not so much concerned with;
  
  
• It dealt with broad subject areas, reminding me of the endless potential for design research to explore;
  
  
• It was nice to see and think about products for awhile as these days, I am mostly involved with services, design thinking and design methods.

On a more detailed note, some of my take-aways from the presentations include:

• The reoccurring theme of narratives throughout the conference which is slowly but surely showing it’s importance in all the sub disciplines of design;
  
  
• I really enjoyed Bernard Buerdek’s presentation of design methods history. He not only validated my identification of a 40-year time frame that the field of design tends to see from theory to practice, but also spoke along the trajectory of design's concern with methods to meaning.
  
  
• Geoff Hollington asked some questions which were explored at InterSections 07. He asked, how far do we go as designers in the kind of work that we do? Hollington called for a balanced approach and needing the knowledge of what this is. My work in design methods might help us identity this 'mission creep' (James Woodhuyson, InterSections) more clearly;
  
  
• Carnegie Mellon University presented 2 papers. Having worked extensively with CMU-grads before, I was very familiar with their design methodology and I loved seeing and feeling that familiarity again. Seeing and understanding the CMU methodology in another context really is a testament to the rigour of the CMU approach;
  
  
• Peter Higgins was invited back from InterSections 07 as a keynote for DeSForM. I really enjoyed his presentation a second time around, seeing the ideas and inspiration of combining narrative, media and architecture. This time, Higgins made me see the importance of finding a connection to a place when designing for it;
  
  
• Northumbria University’s School of Sports Science and Psychology presented 2 papers showing the openness of a discipline such as design. One of the presentations was around trust in a research project and they discussed the concept of the wisdom of crowds. This will become really important when communities become involved in the design process;
  
  
• Two presentations (Kevin McCullgh and CMU’s) both brought up questions about the extent to which we can design behaviour. The simple answer is that we can’t, but as designers we can shape it and/or influence it

From my synthesis of the conference, I saw four themes emerge. For me these were: narrative, products, technology and people.

It was interesting to also hear the plenary panel’s feedback on the conference as a whole. Buerdek said that we talked a lot about theory and concepts and had little products to show for it. He asked if the next DeSForM conference could include more design outcomes we could reflect on, so that we might further develop our thinking, theories and concepts in the ever-evolving and expanding field of design.