Reflective thoughts on “Probing into Service, System and Infrastructure”
About probing into a system: an Iterative Process
First day into the studio and the discussions about what do you mean by ‘Probing’ starts. Probing, to me sounded like a very interesting approach to any system. Earlier, when working on introductory studios for ‘Human Centred Design’, we always talked about ‘solving’ a particular issue or set of issues. Probing then, would take place in more or less all the stages of developing a design. Here, probing was a sole purpose of the project. More research methodologies, more synthesis — i was amazed by the idea.
Talking about the brief, ‘Domestic Helpers in Gated Societies’ seemed like a peculiar kind of brief for research, as it is not a “well-structured” system per se. However, as the story kept unfolding itself, everyday I was finding out overwhelming amount of news in the system. With all the new things, even my methods of questioning a scenario kept changing. Hence the iterative methodology and also iterative research area. From analysing WhatsApp chats to thinking about various “what ifs”, the studio brief kept amazing me at every level. However, the brief demanded participatory research and due to lack of knowledge of local language and lack of time, I felt that I couldn’t seize the research opportunity enough.
Although, speaking of participatory research, it was an interesting opportunity to go out and start conversing to people from different backgrounds, doing different things than myself. During the final interactive activity, when some of the domestic helpers actually got my questions and responded to them, giving me thoughts to speculate upon — it felt like an achievement to finally have brought myself to their level to understand them.
“Whenever I saw any kind of gap in the participatory research, instead of blaming them for not understanding my context, I started changing my methods of enquiring which turned out to be a very helpful methodology.”
Field work becomes much easier when done in a team. Also, working in both a team of four and a team of two consecutively, I’d say smaller teams are easier to manage, communication gaps are also lesser. However, according to ‘more the merrier’ concept, documenting falls on just the two of team members, which can become hectic.
The studio gave me an opportunity to explore different system design tools. These tools helped me along my way in exploring a system thoroughly. Putting information in structure of tools and analysing the patterns brought out significant insights. For example, only when I mapped Actors’ Map of MyGate data-flow, I came to know that very little qualitative data is flowing out from domestic-helpers. Which in time led us thinking into the scenario reversal for two extreme actors- residents and domestic helpers. Also, we presented system blueprints as an output. These blueprints were indeed a transparent way to pen down our thoughts in organised manner. I feel, It is also easier for a reader to understand with very little or no explanation. This and more such tools I learnt during the studio which seem very helpful for my coming studios.
A very little part of this studio was also devoted to learning R language and data visualisation on R studio. However short my involvement with R studio was, I enjoyed knowing R and I believe that it is a powerful method of analysing huge data sets and I’ll be using it in coming studios wherever gotten a chance.
Lastly, I’d like to mention the interactive feedback sessions held during the studio time. We’d get only 5 minutes to present our work done and we’d get short feedbacks from mentors and our peers.
“The idea of power-pitching our work in a presentable way and handling questions from our peers somehow tamed me to work neatly.”
Also, the discussed feedback sometimes is so important for taking next step into the project and sometimes a feedback would totally change our direction of research. It was indeed a roller-coaster which continued for 5 weeks.
Thank you note:
I’d like to thank the studio facilitators Naveen Bagalkot and Venkat Chilukuri for giving us this exciting opportunity to learn. A big thanks to my teammate and friend Sweta Bisht for making work fun at every stage. Also, a big shoutout to all the domestic-helpers and all my peers, the batch of Human Centred Design at Srishti Institute, Bangalore for sharing their insights and feedback with us!
