On the Fringes of Service Design and Arts/based Research Methods
Satu Miettinen and Melanie Sarantou, University of Lapland, Finland
9 Dec 2019
The last event of SDM in 2019 explored creative approaches and artistic expressions that are expanding the boundaries of service design.
This hands-on workshop explored creative approaches and artistic expressions that are expanding the boundaries of service design.
Led by Prof. Satu Miettinen and Melanie Sarantou from University of Lapland with expertise in social and public service development through digital technologies, they guided the participants on storytelling with mobile devices that people had on hand already. Through interactive discussion, we considered how such creative methods could be used in the context of participatory work with communities.
The politics and power of intervening in systems and structures were raised in the introduction to consider critical questions between participation and partnership. Some of the questions were:
• How to create more equity?
• How to create partnership rather than participation?
• How to enhance more equitable relationships?
• How to address and identify harmful structures in society?
• How to enable voice being heard equally?
• How to enable meaningful self-expression?
• How to enable meaningful consultation?
• How to leave enough open space for participation and partnership?
• How to embrace ethical consideration?
• How to support free prior and informed consent (fpic)?
Differences between conventional service design and arts-based methods were also introduced:
Service design
• Strategic tool focusing on way forward and solution — “Let’s make a plan”
• Helps in concretizing the process and the outcomes: how to enable access from the citizen point of view
• Places people in the centre of the process
Art
• Facilitates storytelling and building on existing skills and capacities
• Allows free expression of opinion and point of view
• Enables resistance
• Re-humanizes one another
The interactive part of the workshop introduced the notion of ‘cultural probes’ to collect insights. Cultural probes involves the use of a set of stimulating tools and materials that may possibly offer a strategy for experimental design (Gaver, Dunne, Pacenti, 1999). Strengths of such methods is that the forthcoming outcomes are specific to the purpose, people and environment of a research context (p. 29).
Groups were formed to undertake the following activity:
Aim: Collecting insights, discovery, documentation and reflection through storytelling, supported by art and creativity.
Brief: What kind of service journey will make you feel more engaged and welcome when entering the university building.
Focus: How to use cultural probes to create more pleasurable experiences when entering the university building? How storytelling can be used to reflect on, concretise and express a short service journey? How to use service touch points to explore emotions through empathy.
Probing kit: Mobile devices and all its functionalities (visual, sound, text/writing/drawing).
Outcomes: Sharing insights through storytelling utilising the documentation and creative contributions as part of the story.
A video story of outcomes by the facilitators and participants are captured here:
References
- Eade, D. 1997. Capacity-building: An approach to people-centred development.Oxford: Oxfam.
- Gaver, B., Dunne, T. and Pacenti, E., 1999. Design: cultural probes. interactions,6 (1), pp.21–29.
- Hemmings, T., Crabtree, A., Rodden, T., Clarke, K. and Rouncefield, M., 2002, June. Probing the probes. In Proc. of PDC 2002 (pp.42–50).
- Leavy, P. 2015. Method Meets Art: Arts-based Research Practice. New York & London: The Guilford Press.
- Leavy, P. 2017. Research Design: Quantitative, Qualitative, Mixed Methods, Arts-Based, and Community-Based Participatory Research Approaches. New York & London: The Guilford Press.
- McNiff, S. 2008. Art-based research. Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research , pp.29–40.
