Last week I attended the 6th iteration of FLNW ( Future of Learning in a Networked World) which was orginally the initiative of
Leigh Blackall in conjunction which an instigation of TALO ( Teach and Learn Online) ...essentially now only an email Google lists group.
The event this year was held in Melbourne, co-inciding with a visit from
Professor Teemu Leinonen who was travelling from Finland to Australia for a presentation in Hobart Tasmania. It has been 6 long years since I've met Teemu physically but have kept in contact with him via the internet as you would expect. Teemu is also my official Co-supervisor for PhD. research with Associate Professor Katina Michael at University of Wollongong as main Supervisor.
Whilst in Melbourne I had the opportunity to speak with Teemu at length about his own research and the manner in which he personally approached his own PhD.
The following account hopefully begins for me ( and others ) an immersion into what Teemu coins as
research based design. Teemu made a great deal of emphasis that this concept is very different to
design based research. In the post I'll explore firstly how we came to be in connection with each other, what it's meant since and also what it might mean for our future work together.
First some historical background.
I first met Teemu whilst attending the first FLNW event which was held in a series of differing locations in New Zealand at the heart of the time when un-conferencing seemed to be grabbing the open web headlines. Leigh Blackall had made an exemplary effort to draw together international key thinkers and fund their accommodation and meal expenses whilst taking part in networked activities in New Zealand. I was privileged to be included in the Australian contingent.
The first FLNW event was instrumental in examining the frameworks by which individuals and groups were using connected and networked educative arrangement to grow knowledge, to debate and to openly disseminate across a wide area of disciplines.
Natural synergies in the common interests of mobile learning and mobile user interface design placed Teemu as high priority to speak to on the list of people who I saw assemble as attendees on the FLNW wiki. Throughout the trip we met amongst a range of highly charged planned events and free thinking informal get-togethers with a recurring theme of making a differnce in the everyday learning and teaching domains which we all in some way frequented either as academics, entrepeneurs, teachers or general ICT staff in our respective organisations.
Teemu's engaging conversations seemed to nearly always return to point of practical reality, to a quiet but firm position which we all have grown to respect of Teemu where he articulates how people come to build great things using a range of behaviours that can be both economically motivated and at the same time innovative, unique and circumstantial - in effect acknowledging the inclusive and exclusive attributes of creativity.
At the core of the conversations in FLNW (TALO) the topic of creativity, of networked ideas that are given room for review and for applied research that results in either a change of process or invention of prototype continues to resonate to this day. That point of creative enterprise has always factored highly in Teemu's activites and therefore hardly suprising given his role as Professor, New Media Design & Learning, Alto Univrsity, School of Art & Design. Perhaps that is also how we came to our conversation together, as creatives given my own background in the Arts, new media engagement and the multitude of projects that have involved both over the last decade and more.
Back to the present and to our meeting discussions in Melbourne.
Teemu identified in our discussions that the foundation for his works have come from a position of seeking to position research based design activities as a methodological approach that results in a working prototype. Within our discussion, amidst my own motivations of seeking to understand the premise to applicability in my own circumstance, Teemu drew upon a project example that I had some direct experience with being that of the MobilED project, a learning tool and service with an audio wiki usable with entry level mobile phones. Teemu and his team had conducted the MobilED project whereby investigations in African countries with poor infrastructure for internet coverage identified that mobile phone usage was high and despite the limitations of the technologies at the time thatthe mobile handset was potentially the vehicle by which to realise byte-sized learning engagement.
The main challenge Teemu stated that the project encountered was the lack of quality learning materials and creative engagement of participants to use the information and communication technology in developing countries. The 'hypothesis' as Teemu coined it was that the project provide a point of reference to position the mobile phone as a mechanism with which people could set-up and maintain their own networked information system.
As a paralell he drew reference to my own Mobdeadly project in 2005 where I was engaging remote Australian Indigenous communities in the use of mobile-blogging as a visual story-telling and accredited training inclusion resource base for vocational training accreditation - two very different projects yet both enegaging the use of mobile technologies as a node or bridge for learning.
Midway in our discussion a lighbulb came on.
It was during what Teemu was stating was his intent and the methodological backbone to his work that made me realise that much of my own approaches in the past have followed a very similar trajectory and conclusion which I was calling "projects".
We both agreed that the concept of project is still valid yet the term must be better informed when examining the motivations that bring about that creative enterprise. We also both agreed that creativity or the desire to seek innovation that transcends the current imbued helpless state of resignation to insufficiency is a motivating force that sometimes gives rise to why these projects come about. In many cases our working lives give us opportunities to explore propositions ( hypothesis ) to state of demonstration which then give rise to applied research to inform application.
The other state that we both identified as being similar with where ideas spawned a "premise of promise " was the space in which entrepeneurship acts as catalyst to bring together people who seek to resolve a working product or process with an underpinning money-making anxiety for healthy measure.
Research based design according to Teemu is an acknowledgment that process orientation to the otherwise adhoc manner in which information gathering leads to product shaping, in this case the product might be a software, perhaps a physical element or piece of equipment or indeed maybe a process to apply in a given situation to realise a result. That provides a motivation to understand the output yet as Teemu suggests if we dig deeper into what constitutes design itself there are many facettes to the core of the output with various affiliations identifiable of emphasis ie. service, artistic expression, science
Midway in our discussions, interrupted by the Waitress enquiring whether we wished more coffee, it dawned on me to ask Teemu how the research based design process informed his own manner in engaging with project cohorts across his widely dispersed, international and often community oriented creations that I had previously called projects and which he was calling
prototype as hypothesis.
In the diagram below which I have sourced from Teemu's
Slideshare presentation - Software as Hyphothesis: Research-based Design Methodology the four core and main attributes or stages are identified clearly.
As the model suggests there are four core areas for consideration that inform the flow of the process by which a method of engagement realizes an output.
- Contextual Inquiry - within which ethnographic interrogations are conducted, where identifiable attributes are mapped and informed from investigation and research involving target groups, audience identification, field surveys, interviews, loosley aligned cohort contact group formations;
- Participatory Design - with people for people or identifying the challenge at hand, the issue-to-fix workshops, informed guessing, mental models and within which unfocussed group discussions ( see Hugh McKay ) or workshops build an understanding of the ideal, explore ideas in collaboration, a co-creation phase whereby creative visualisations of the ideal prototype are envisaged collectively;
- Product Design - "back to the studio"- focussed activities that bring data to a user base or actionable prototype - often known as a development phase, reflection and notation phase within which creative modelling occurs, target deployment modelling with physical / virtual researcher visualisations;
- Protoype as a Hypothesis - a propositional yet functional working model that brings about versioning and resultant artifacts, market modelling and trials, testing, case studies, user feedback and focus group presentations that are both reflective and propositional
As Teemu indicated a number of times in articulating the methodology, each stage has a progressive reflection occuring in cyclical motions as he detailed in a hastily scribbled hand-drawn visual schematic.
This could indicate that the cycle involves conducting reflective surveys that draw the
Participant into examining what is occuring forthem throughout the process - not just at the ed of the process.
For the
Researcher there is a component or behaviour where clearly noted informed questioning is recorded during and between the phases of the process whereby perceived actions or behaviours are regularly recorded to examine as part of the process - not at the end of the process.
What this all means for me ( not yet having read Teemu's thesis nor his manifesto's in this area yet ) are as I detail very humbly here:
- Mapping - apply some rationale to what I have already created to date ( 10 years of action ) and look at where I have already covered ground to inform a foundation and methdological intent to apply to the PhD. research I am involved in....recount "from the laboratory" so to speak
- Prototype - think of my research as endeavouring to build a prototype and to link activities from an informed research base rather than just calling upon my network to participate adhoc ie. in the case of Streamfolio ( project ) applying the priciples of research based design in a consultative and whole-of-business participatory manner;
- Product - build a body of my own example product - could be a pedagocially oriented body of curriculum activities which act as a catalyst for others to follow suit ie. some short POV videos;
- Design - Go into this with no pre-conception as to what the core output will be - approach this as interrogating what is needed by the wider cohort and working on how to be creative in achieving that engagement;
- Go Easy - A Depak Chopra comment the other day made perfect sense - take the time to look what is happening around you and go easier on yourself to acheive the higher goal which is happiness - translated as building things that make rich and creative sense
How this will unfold to inform my PhD. research is very evident.
I have built things in the past and brought people together for reasons and most of them have be around creative enterprise and with ( in most cases ) a desire to relate to others as they go about their own creative and daily endeavours.
The meeting with Teemu was very valuable for me in that it provided some context for the countless hours of thinking that I've immersed myself in as I bring about change in an educative context. The proof of the exercise and the investment in meeting with him in Melbourne along with Leigh and
Leo Gaggl will be in how we can bring about actioning a new prototype as hypothesis....or in fact many given the energy we seem to have in exploring and actioning these over time.
What is your take on research based design? How have you employed similar methodologies or thinking and action around process ? Do you have any key references I should be referring to with my own investigations into this area ?
