Reflection week 9 & 10
Exiting with specific insights and tacit knowledge
9th and 10th week reflection
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Two massive weeks again, week 9 began with the wrap up and submission of my assignment, I also attended several well timed events across both weeks, with week 10 signifying movement out of phase 2 and into the final home straight.
Key insights from the fortnight
Submission of A2 — marked the wrap up of this phase, and I can’t say I’ve absolutely mastered Adobe Premiere, but I’m better at editing together audio, video and powerpoint than I was before I started. And the next one has got to be better ;)
Future Audiences — I attended Future Audience hosted by RMIT for Knowledge Week, it was a perfectly timed discussion and pushed phase 2 to a close. The event featured an awesome line up of experienced change makers including Dan Hill, Seb Chan, Ewan Mc Eoin, Priscilla Davies and Professor Martyn Hook, sadly Justine Hyde wasn’t able to be there.
Two members of the Montsalvat team joined me for the event, and we all left with minds abuzz. For them I think it was exciting to hear how other organisations (galleries, museums, libraries and media), were designing an approach to reach and engage audiences in different ways. And for me, a wonderful affirmation of the approach and methods that I’ve been using in my research, with spoken lived experience from the panel about material I’d also been passing the team from phase 1 discussions with Edward Blake and Angelina Russo. The event marked a great ending for my projects second phase, and I think was an excellent primer before I present in draft findings and problem areas that are emerging from my work.
Research insights & building experience map — As useful as it was to get A2 out of my body and park it, (it certainly contributed to me being able to move through the vast amount of material that I’d collected, and land on a succinct understanding of what sensory walking research supported me to do as a method). A2 also distracted from the task of moving directly into collating insights into an experience map, and honing in on problems for focus.
I found this distance between the act of creating the research and synthesising it (transcribing interviews, finalising personas etc) jarring. It felt a lot more difficult than it might have if both acts were closer to each other. During week 10, I also dedicated time to considering how to present the research insights so that they both suited the needs of the Montsalvat team, and my final exegesis structure. And although it took a while, I think it will be worth it.
Exegesis structure & This is Human — SDM Bookclub meet up — Since starting this course synchronicity has played its part, and revealled information to me that is both timely and relevant — or perhaps my bower bird eyes are subconsciously looking for that information and I’m not tuned in yet… :)
Service Design Melbourne held a book club meet up towards the end of week 10.
We used the first chapter of Melis Senova’s ‘This Human’ book, to inspire some really rich conversations about design ethics and humanity, which also related to some of what I’d experienced during the past 10 weeks, but also extended my thinking beyond. It was nice to see there was a group of people there interested in the physical and the spiritual aspects of design and how this related to the discipline and their practice.
For me I guess I was hungry to know what people were actually doing out there to embody this way of designing with each other, and how this knowledge about yourself and others could be developed to improve the outcomes of groups of people working together, but also the type of design outcomes you could produce.
These connections were also related to a conversation I’d had the day earlier about the structure of my final submission. And how it could lead with my development through the project and MDF process — reflecting on what I’d learned about myself, my practice and how it related to the investigation into sensory walking research.
Senova’s first chapter is focused on Insight, its was fascinating to see words on a page that gave form to feelings I’d had about my process but hadn’t quite glued together. I’d voiced them in conversations, but felt like the end section of this chapter was validating the experience as being real for other people too.
It was also exciting, to be putting this stuff together for myself, it mean’t I’d grown a lot, and come a long way from when I’d first started this course — this mastery of a practice and discipline was what I’d been looking for when I first enrolled. Not to mention of myself and my place within it — understanding my style of research and design as a physical and sensory act was certainly not what I’d learn on entry to the program!
“There are many skills you need to develop as you become a masterful practitioner in human-centred design. One of them is knowing how to use your body to help make sense of what you are observing, or help you to create something meaningful. You can leverage your subconscious in ways that your conscious mind can use” (Senova 2017, p. 21).
So my exegesis will discuss my intuitive road to a place where yoga, Sensory Anthropology and human centred design meets. It feels pretty satisfying to be able to say that I’ve worked that out for myself. Now onto figuring out how to articulate it in 8,000 words… ;))
“We live in a world where we are taught from the start that we are thinking creatures that feel. The truth is, we are feeling creatures that think”
(Jill Bolte Taylor in Senova 2017, p. 23).
References
- Senova, M 2017, ‘This Human’, BIS Publishers B.V., Amsterdam, Netherlands.
