Reflection — week 6
Learn to change course - design your purpose and direction into the heart it
6th week reflection
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Last week began with admin stuff to set up phase 2, a workshop to obtain better insight into the organisational context and goals, consolidation of the meta-map and planning for AT2 — our midway milestone assignment. A review of my AT2 draft structure has guided me to scaffold the findings together, and call out a pivot midway through the process. It sounds so simple when I write this… but at the time — I was unsure how to move from one to the other.
Key insights from the week:
Maps as boundary objects — I have been fortunate to have some very generous people invest themselves in my project so far, one of them has been Susan Reddrop, who is a friend from high school days, and a studio artist at Montsalvat.
True to form, Susan has generously offered me use of the 3D model she made to obtain a better understanding of the environment that she creates within. I can also use it as a boundary object to improve my understanding and knowledge of service experiences from walks, but potentially also to communicate these back to stakeholders. Susan’s model is a service designers dream ;)
Stakeholders and drivers of change — I worked with Anthony (Montsalvat GM) to map out the stakeholder environment, with focus on customers conducting self-guided tours. We also reviewed drivers of change impacting the organisation more broadly, with consideration of the 2021 strategic plan. The work revealed the limited resources that NFP’s have at their disposal, and the need to cleverly plan and deploy those available to best advantage.
The session was an enjoyable, fast paced way to obtain and translate knowledge about the complexities of this dynamic environment. It was also a new way to approach planning business strategy, and I hope one that has legs for wider team members to become involved in.
Amongst other things, these sessions supported me to draft the diagrams below— I plan to use them on walks to generate discussion about key moments within service experiences, understand better how people and processes relate to key stages in the journey.
Coming unstuck — To retain an overview of the conversations, data and insights from many different areas I’ve been investigating during the past 6 weeks — I’ve continued to update and build a meta-map of ideas. But during the process of synthesising key findings to date, I’ve ended up with two steams or directions and a rather clunky outcome for the AT2 assignment — and probably myself too when I look back now.
It seems I should have merged and bound the two directions together, to pivot towards a new future. Perhaps turning up the volume of the little voice in my head that was already planning potential executions of some of the more interesting aspects of these futures — and calling myself out on the daydreaming about this future view. Perhaps the lesson is to recognise the moment of disconnection — notice the act of imagining, and consider it against my day-to-day action?
By pushing aside the automatic creative response to an inspiring moment, I moved through a process to the next stage, and disconnected from larger possibility and outcome. I closed down what I’d started to imagine into a neat box that wasn’t really serving anyone, least of all me.
- 1st direction = an audit of the current state — focusing on the application of sensory walking research to service design.
- 2nd direction = a collection of opportunities ripe for future development, documented in response to the organisations 2021 draft strategic vision (shared in week 5). Kernels of ideas that represented a possible future research partnership and PhD.
My draft structure for AT2 saw me consolidate this approach and seek guidance from Marius (my supervisor). I wasn’t sure it was right and was curious to know, what did he think.. is this where I should be?
What I can see now, (and I also felt at the time, but didn’t give enough focus), was that my confusion existed because it was significant, difficult and a point of turning.
The benefit of two brains! Being able to bounce ideas off another person is something that I’ve come to miss on this journey. But by being alone, I’m also able to appreciate how my skills have developed through the Master of Design Futures program. I’ve built onto and extended a really strong base from the point of entry — but the next step needs to be how to incorporate & harness instinctive thoughts and imagining into my process.
I think the amount of data I’ve collected had me bamboozled when it came time to synthesise a view for AT2. The process of the past few weeks also reminds me of Tristan’s words from our earlier discussion about research and synthesis:
- its not doing the research, its the analysis of it, and stepping through the insights that’s important.
- when you get to the synthesis piece, you need to go really deep to get a piece of knowledge — you can’t synthesise properly without the depth around it.
- when you get to this knowledge you know its right because it holds an unintuitive contradiction in it, but it still holds true — and when you have that, you have something.
- And then the insights that you exit with they are so specific they are unfair — and that thing that you know is unfair — that’s your unfair advantage…
- the really good insights always scaffold back and build the whole picture.
Getting it together — The outcome of last week was a draft of AT2, and its review yesterday rounded off an important milestone to the project — and calls out a pivot in direction for the project and myself.
The process of review has pointed to a possibility about how to merge the many threads into a larger future view, one that has rightful context and place within this project.
Now my task is to bring this view to life, and lay out the possibility of an experimental design approach to secure an artistic institutions future. The proposition of the approach needs to be as enticing and beneficial for the audience I am addressing as it is for myself.
I’m about to embark on designing a value exchange between an unexpected group of people to build a web of future services. And here I thought I was reviewing the effectiveness of sensory walking research within the context of service design’s exploration stage…
References
- 3D model of Montsalvat by Susan Reddrop — all round awesome school friend and fab glass artists — studio artist at Montsalvat.
- Weekly chat with Marius Foley for this project.
- Phase 1 interview with Tristan Cooke for this project.
