Reflection — week 5

Human Centred Design — Montsalvat is all about the people

Fig 1. Week 5 reflective journal — by Kate.

5th week reflection

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This week was time to consolidate what I had gathered from academics and design practitioners, and also an opportunity to delve into gaps that existed in my understanding.

Key insights from the week:

• Revising literature plan — building on last weeks diagram, I added a bunch more thinking and started aligning literature and themes around the central disciplines my inquiry involves.

Fig 2. Revised literature plan, basis of meta-map of ideas — by Kate.

• Building out a meta-map of ideas — This then emerged into a more detailed meta-map — which is still in progress, my plan is to continue adding to this document so it can become a record of the complexity and possible future opportunities for further work.

Fig 3. Meta-map of ideas, linking together the literature, insights and gaps to be filled — by Kate.

• Filling in the gaps — last week had me ending on a note that I’d found some breadcrumbs to link the appropriation of Design by Anthropologists for change. Like most things I wanted to understanding it more thoroughly, and published the first piece about Design Anthropology’s application of design for change. Dense material, but super interesting and provided a much needed context for Sensory Anthropology’s emergence, and pursuit of new ways of knowing.
• Phases are now overlapping — I have a solid base to move into phase 2 from, but wish I had a little more time to consolidate the literature for a clean break before getting all underway. The stuff of life I guess, but this will mean I need to be a little more focused with what I’m writing here — which is a shame, as the wider topics were super interesting and really useful for me to have a solid understanding of how Design Anthropology and Sensory Anthropology have emerged, what they are and how they relate to Design Futures.

Key themes:

1. The inquiry is as much about my practice and development as a reflection on a technique immersed in lived experience and embodiment for understanding, a phenomenological approach linking all.

2. Service design really needs to be considering how to move into the design 3.0 land and not be so focused on 2.0 methods and tools. So the approach is really key here, and I think the contribution of sensory perception to the method of embodied understanding also incredibly valuable to producing knowledge and understanding between people for change.

3. The place of Montsalvat is like many a collection of people and experience overtime, it is built on collective memory and stories, and in this timespan of memories and experiences — the answer to “What is Montsalvat?” is found. Just like human centered design, Montsalvat is as much the people who have been a part of its history from inception, through its stages, to today. It is in the past founders, the families and collective who began the tradition, through to today’s artists and all the people who continue to walk the paths contributing to its being.

4. It is a collection of peoples experiences, diverse and dynamic in the many it represents. My job is to obtain a meta view and then isolate one customer experience to begin experimenting with sensory walking research across the next few weeks.