Treecreate notes #10 — navigating the rapids
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Coming back to DTI this week after two weeks focusing on a different project was like moving from floating in the gentle waters of the lake to riding the rapids in full flow, complete with lots of rocks to navigate along the way!
The time working on Meeting of the Waters: Locative Media was inspirational and it has been wonderful to see so much positive feedback coming back from speakers and participants. Here are some examples:
- “Thank you so much for this transformative opportunity.”
- “My boundless admiration for developing, organising and presenting the Meeting of the Waters. It is a huge job!”
- “I am enjoying the program so much, I am so grateful to be a part of it. Thanks to all of you for all the efforts to put it together, it’s truly a life changing experience for me.”
Here is the collaborative map:
What I did
This week has been focused on preparation for the research sessions for our Private Beta release. We have some group sessions this week with On-Plant-Vets to test our concepts of the prototype which will help inform our usability testing with some Establishments.
I also had some great catchups with our content designer Diana and fellow researchers Anthony and Josie. These conversations really facilitate knowledge sharing and capability at the level of the informal. Sort of like the water bubbler conversations you have in lockdown…
What I learnt
Finding more confirmation that user centred design has to be considered within a holistic frame of the user. That there is a need to look beyond the engagement with the product to address what else is happening in their worlds. Often I say my passion is inclusive design and that is true, as my definition of inclusive is not only about building for diversity, it is building with regard to ecosystems and impacts on the more-than-human world. Thomas Wright’s article More-than-human design: rethinking agency and sustainable practices really speaks to these issues of social responsibility and humans needing to be aware of their impacts.
“The more-than-human approach extends the agency of humans beyond their impact on humans to include the conscious need to consider the impacts on non-human actors in the world.”
I really love that this thinking is emerging. It strongly aligns with the work we do at Treecreate to seed change in how we consume, create, nurture and participate in the world.
What I read
- This article When research goes wrong had some good insights in terms of finding ways to recalibrate if a research project does fail. In many ways my Msci journey has maybe not been a lesson in failure, but the need to re-scope a project if things change along the way — for example the participant group, the technology and the research question itself.
- One of our developers Elise shared this gem about working in remote teams — Why your team isn’t profiting from remote productivity
- I also liked this article about doing BERT tests — How to use a BERT test to unlock more constructive design. Some of our research sessions have been more like focus groups so this could be a great way to get feedback quickly from each participant. BERT stands for:
— Bi-polar. A pair of desirable and undesirable adjectives at each end of a scale
— Emotional. The emotion and feeling evoked by a design
— Response. The participant’s subjective opinion
— Test. The letter T stands for Test. - What makes good research insights great
- The users journey — story mapping products that people love
- Accelerating user research
- 8 creative ways to share your research
- Data insights for decision-making
- Design research from interview to insight
- Sharing user research findings
And one more thing…
I am still riffing on Braiding Sweetgrass this week — it is so full of beauty and wisdom
“The most important thing each of us can know is our unique gift and how to use it in the world. Individuality is cherished and nurtured, because, in order for the whole to flourish, each of us has to be strong in who we are and carry our gifts with conviction, so they can be shared with others.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
Have a great week everyone :-)
