CONNECTING THE DOTS
A touchpoint matrix representing my reflections from the studio- Probing into Systems, Services, and Infrastructures
“It’s not that they don’t understand technology, but technology doesn’t understand them”, said Padmini (facilitator) while giving feedback to a team in the class.
In the quote above, ‘they’ refer to the domestic help for whom we were designing a new system service in this studio. This statement really caught onto me, and I found asking myself- For whom are we designing these services and systems? But then again, this seemed to be the theme of the studio. To unearth these questions we traversed in the direction of gated community apps (MyGate, Apna Complex) that became the epicenter for designing, dissecting and probing throughout the studio.
This studio confronted us with quite a few challenges, though it was able to get us to think of the bigger picture. It also contained collaboration, discussion, and feedback in the following five weeks, which was essential to the learning process. It’s hard to capture every little piece of learnings in the document, but will try and accommodate as many as possible.
Our team, the Albatross, looked into CARE as an integral value while designing any service, system or infrastructure especially in the context of gig economy. More information on the purpose and methodology of the project can be found here.
Through this studio, I explored various tools in understanding the service system while designing the final output. In this article, I will attempt to use the Touchpoint matrix (a service design tool) to map different insights and connect it to what, where and when the learning took place. I might not have used all the learnings into creating the CARE RUBRIC, but these learnings will come handy in my future design works.
The various touchpoints for my learnings were -
- Immersive lectures
- Facilitated by Group discussions- external and internal
- Iterated through feedbacks
- Powered by Masterclasses
- Validated by Team Huddles
DURING IMMERSIVE LECTURES
Designing for Experiences & Designing Experiences- At first glance, it is quite interchangeable but if you look closely, there is a difference in what these convey. If the focus is on designing experiences the customer will experience what we set out to naturally accomplish. This includes keeping in mind the experiences of both the internal and external customers while designing the service.
This also points to the fact that the service providers have control over the experience of their internal customers and can make their jobs easier so that the same ease of process can flow to the external customers while delivering their service, especially in the gig economy set-up.
This point made us inquire more into “How can we design experiences while keeping in mind the well-being of internal customers?”
Research for Design & Research through Design- While exploring these concepts, the direction of inquiry became clearer. The fundamental difference between the two concepts is that one is a methodology and the other is an epistemological tool that produces knowledge.
Research for Design is a methodology through which certain aspects are tested and concluded in order to design a better product or user experiences.
Research through Design is not a methodology, it is a method of validating the scope of a project. When applied, it can test hypotheses/assumptions and an output can be discovered based on the validity of the hypotheses.
Let me delve more into the Research through Design and how I understood it. Through our topic, we wanted to probe into the Care relationship experienced between the resident and the domestic help, which was a complex relationship to understand in the light of Care. We as a team, therefore, opted to place an artefact and generate responses. We came up with a care package that helped us understand the different kind of Care that existed within their dynamics. This process validated and broadened the scope of what we were doing. As we progressed into the studio, we could clearly define the process of analysing our output by creating a CARE MATRIX and measuring our outcome and output through that.
The Role as Designers- In the studio, we learned that as designers we synthesise insights and not necessarily limit ourselves to analyse results. We use different tools for data collection and tools to synthesise in order to make something invisible visible.
This was carried forward into our probing where we were trying to make an invisible component like Care a visible value by integrating it into the service- system infrastructure.
FACILITATED BY GROUP DISCUSSIONS
Novelty of Collective Intelligence versus Individual Intelligence- What can be achieved through collaboration may or may not be achieved through individual effort, especially when tackling a subject so vast and complex as this.
Through this studio, what I internalised was that beyond sharing with my internal group, it was important to also understand the perspective of other groups and how and why they were doing what they were doing.
For instance, while discussing in class, the insight that struck us was about creating and using participatory methods involving domestic help in making the care package itself. We also reflected upon the different methodologies we could have used, retrospectively, to make the entire process seem like an activity rather than an interview?
One of the important aspects of sharing in class with all the teams was the fact that we could see many modes of designing services and specifically asking questions at every step- WHY DO WE DO WHAT WE DO?
Like in this example, gamification can be a great tool in probing into a problem area, but the question has to be why use a game and what are the gameplay and mechanics to make this an artefact and what are we trying to achieve through this?
What can using a game achieve that an interview or simple enactment/ roleplay/ storyboard/ drawing cannot? It is always good to take a step back and ask why are we doing this? And what is the outcome of what we are doing?
Informed consent- As a rookie designer, the ethics of taking consent gets tricky especially while dealing with the marginalised groups, who may not realise the importance of consent. How do we tackle these situations with informed consent? Building Trust came to our aid. I had to ensure the domestic help (participants) at an apartment complex time and again that we were here to favour them and not harm them in anyway. It helped that we spoke the same language.
Language as a barrier- As designers, we are faced with a lot of limitations and language barrier being the most essential while conducting the experiment. Although we can ask a key person to translate our queries on the field, that might not be enough. Can we look at this limitation and design a system around it? How can we design a framework that takes into account not what is stated but revealed through their actions as good research data?
ITERATIVE THROUGH FEEDBACK
How and why should CARE be defined and attributed?
What does CARE really mean in the context of domestic help? It didn’t occur to us earlier that this word itself could be replete with so many meanings and that could be interchangeable with kindness, concern, and regard.
The constant gruelling in the class finally led us to rest in the definition of CARE attributed to different authors like Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, Laura Forlana, Shanon Mattern, Fisher, and Toronto and finally, Korth’s typology of care. Attribution is essential as it guides and validates our research through the research and discoveries by these authors.
Through these definitions, we could identify the various types of care and design the care matrix. This will make me question my future project and will make me aware of already existing work by ethnographers, anthropologists, and sociologists.
Problematising the Topic
It’s a method of defamiliarisation of common sense. Problematization is a critical thinking and pedagogical dialogue or process and may be considered demythicisation. Rather than taking a common knowledge(myth) of a situation for granted, problematization poses knowledge as a problem, allowing new viewpoints, consciousness, reflection, hope, and action to emerge.
While designing for care, we used the method of problematisation by posing questions such as-
- Who is getting affected by the non-care framework?
- Who has the agency, and control?
- Why do we need a care framework?
- For whom do we need it?
- Whom does this benefit?
- Whom does it harm?
This understanding will help us deal with our own biases and ask more questions before jumping to take a stance. It is, in my opinion, an objective way to understand a problem area.
Understanding the moral stance as a designer?
As designers, we are often guilty of deviating to unknown territories and attaching moral stance to our design and problem statement. But then the question is where do we draw the line? Should we draw a line? I think we as humans tend to sometimes bring up our own personal biases in the picture.
In the context of CARE, where do we draw the line between professional care and personal care? Can care be devoid of personal engagement? These were the thoughts that were prevalent during the entire process.
The Role of Caste/ Class in designing a system for the Domestic Help
role of casteism and classism entrenched in our social fabric cannot be avoided while designing services for the gig economy. Understanding the power dynamic through a sociological perspective became unavoidable in this instant. The behaviours and responses of the domestic help that were recorded during the Research through Design sessions were through their learned social behaviours. The domestic help is conditioned and bound by their social norms and it will take time to evolve from this conditioning.
POWERED BY MASTER CLASSES
Politics of Power- Gopinath’s classes on power relation was very useful in uncovering the power dynamic shared between the residents and domestic help. It brought to the fore many tangled relations seen through the lens of power. The major take away was that design is political and it’s never neutral, though they can appear neutral.
Through his master classes, we came to terms with the power relationship existing between the residents and the domestic help. We needed to unpack the black box and question, who is the primary caregiver? Or should there be a position assigned to it? Where does the power lie?
This held true when we were designing the care package as an artefact for RtD. We looked at ways in which the power of choice and agency can be given to the domestic help. This had to be incorporated into the care rubric as well.
Designing for Future Works-
Prateeksha threw some light on how to go about creating for futures of work. This ties in with our idea of the Care Rubric and its implementation in developing a service. She spoke about a few pointers that we tried adapting to our context of CARE. She mentioned that while making something for the futures, it requires going to the past and creating trust. She said, “We are so fascinated with the future, that most of the frameworks that we use to imagine the future disregard the past, which is a mistake because events and processes that originate in the past have real and ongoing effects on the way we think & do things even now”. She also believes in the idea that when designing for futures we need to account for probability, possibility, and plausibility of the futures.
In her presentation, she mentioned that having a scarcity vs abundance mindset holds us back from imagining better options for the futures. People feel that there’s only one future or that they’re running out of options. And how do we overcome that? We did try and incorporate a few of these learnings in our research. For instance, using Giga maps, which didn’t come naturally to us. Although we attempted to create one, we realised that, as an output, Giga map gives you a whole new perspective on your system design.
Data Visualisation- Information indeed is beautiful, but its representation and communication matter a lot. Thus, Venkat’s class on data visualisation was a game changer. For instance, looking at data of Srishti’s library in terms of what books were purchased over the years can determine its history- How it emerged to be what it is today? I didn’t get to explore more with ‘R studios’, and I hope to utilise this in the future.
VALIDATED BY TEAM HUDDLES
Using different Service Design Tools to Think- Using service design tools such as Service Blueprint, touch point matrix, stakeholders map, empathy map among others helped us think on paper. We didn’t see its novelty lest we tried it. Through these tools, we were able to draw upon our knowledge and synthesise research into concrete insights and then understand the system from there. We then designed a multistep framework to understand the different forms of care existing in the resident-help dynamics and was then mapped onto the service blueprint, which eventually led to the Care Rubric.
Output and Outcome- The output of this studio was very organically developed, we were more focused on the outcomes that we laid in our process. It was iterative, involved a lot of ideating and constant stimulation with materials, videos, and small interviews.
For now, the Care Rubric stands as a scaffolding that needs inclusion while designing any service system. We want to further develop and make it into an evolving tool/framework.
CONCLUSION
These reflections were a form of documenting and decoding the different learnings at various points and it is subjective to my understanding. While designing any service system, I will go back to my introduction for whom am I designing? And do I care enough about CARE?
