Week 10

Lecture Material

Hefin Jones – service design and practitioner, working with communities between cultural and educational institutions and public.

Cosmic Colliery – “Cosmic Colliery involved working with communities in the Rhymney Valley, South Wales, to speculate on the possibility of the local abandoned coal mine becoming an underwater astronaut training centre. Acknowledging that this may never happen, we collectively explored how close we could get to something like that.”

Us campaign: “The Design Museum’s Young Creatives programme is for young people aged 14-19 years. Young Creatives meet and work alongside designers on projects, are inspired to develop new interests and skills and to explore their own creative ambitions. Young Creatives meet on a regular basis to participate in free short courses, regular meetings and weekend masterclasses.”

Crossbencher
“This idea of a crossbencher – in the House of Lords you have the crossbenchers, people who aren’t affiliated, or aren’t supposed to be affiliated to either side. They sit in the middle. The idea is that you are someone in between that can provoke. You can ask the questions that either side might not.”

  • This is what the role of a service designer should be. It is beneficial for you as a service designer to explore all options and sit on the fence; the overall project will be insightful and created to its full potential this way as you are more likely to encounter scenarios which you wouldn’t encounter if you were picking sides.

“At the very start I was very much present, whether it was meeting all these different events.I was very much the one leading those conversations. Then at the end, I tried to do things like support other people in the area to then lead those meetings. In the final town hall event of the project, Dr Elin Jones, who was a local historian and the chairperson of the youth centre, facilitated the meeting, facilitated this big town hall event and Iw as then having to be more in the background.”

  • Kickstarting the research process by being completely involved, talking to people and customers, gathering as much fundamental research as possible to generate lots of ideas and scope out different solutions the the problem

“I’m here as one person talking about this project, but I can never convey the reality of that work because I’m one person within 40 people’s experiences. With this work, people will often project their own ideas of what it is, what it is going to do, onto it. Those things have to be managed and they often can’t be because of the pace of things, because of how things are happening, but they should be acknowledged, especially when working with young people for example. What are the voices of the people that are part of these projects? How are they acknowledged? What did we talk about? When we’re talking about these projects whose voices get heard? For me, it’s been really interesting to hear those conversations. What people’s experiences were; maybe what some people’s expectations were, in terms of what was going to happen, and actually seeing somethings that did maybe align with what I thought happened, but other things that didn’t.“

  • Checking back in with the audience after the project could influence the final outcome to make improvements and ensure the research is thoroughly considered. There could be research that was made during the project that didn’t get explored and could be explored at the end of the project to tie back in.
  • It’s all about perspectives and getting different angles on the project. There is immense value in critical feedback and constant evaluation.
I have screenshot this image as I think it captures varied research really effectively – there is an assortment of material, primary and secondary research. Books, notes from third party discussions and articles.
• This diagram feeds back into itself in one continuous cycle. There are new possibilities to be explored not only at the beginning of the project, but also as it develops all four other factors need to be considered to keep the project fresh, innovative and respectfully appropriate; form meeting function etc.

“…in terms of who is acknowledged and what voices are acknowledged within a work, you can never involve everyone. There have to be certain decisions that you make. I think the rationale for these decisions, for yourself, have to be very clear. For me, I’m very much interested in the acknowledgement of young people, specifically at the moment, young people that are unable to vote. How their ideas and how them and their agency is acknowledged. Then I think for me, it starts with that question and then everything falls into place around it.”

  • Be clear from the start what the important considerations are for the project. Identify your audience and stick to it.

“Part of the mission will be to look around your locality that surrounds you. How do you start that process off? It’s a big question.
HJ: It’s an important question. Maybe I can approach it in one way. How do you begin to
consider how you might act, what you might do, who you might involve? I think this comes back to the idea of responsiveness. …it’s about being honest with yourself, what you’re comfortable with, what you’re actually interested in and what gets acknowledged. We maybe also have a tendency to focus on people within a given place, but also then we can think across different scales. Within the Cosmic Colliery project I could have actually
really focused on the different species of animals that lived around the mining building, although I didn’t because I was very much interested in working with young people. But I think this idea of these scales of involvement, and what is acknowledged, is a really important question to ask.”

  • For the locality project, pick something worthwhile that is interesting and something you enjoy/are passionate about. Also consider the various directions where to take the initial proposal ideas. I think a spider diagram or even a star burst would benefit me at this stage (I will do this, for the challenge this week).

“Then also there’s an interesting thing around design which is, we don’t have ethics committees. That’s an interesting thing to think about in terms of there’s no one way of working. It comes back to this question of being responsible. It’s not about you with an ethics committee approach saying, okay right now I can get you to sign
something and then you give yourself over to me to be filmed. It’s actually in that moment to ask, in that moment with that very person you’re with to ask, what are you comfortable with? It’s that constant negotiation and that sensitivity to that specific situation.“

Handbook for Research Integrity and Ethics (Falmouth):

I have had a look through this handbook to understand more about research ethics. I know to ensure when interviews or discussions with other people are concerned about sensitive matters then consent forms are distributed and signed. I also thought it was important to highlight whether the project could include access to commercially sensitive information or even cause negative environmental impacts/damage to buildings/artefacts and wildlife. These are all really important for creatives to consider and adjust their research to be appropriate; a service designer should be sensitive and aware of all of these ethical considerations. I know personally, when I have had consent to record a regular discussion by telephone that was right on the edge of my boundaries; I doubt I could consider stepping beyond that line of consent myself but of course there are artists/designers who cross that line all the time to create controversial and shocking content.

An introduction to ethics in graphic design / Lucienne Roberts

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1 – this is a great example of how designers must practise what they preach! As designers we must be so careful with our positioning and approach to projects; what materials we use, who we work with, why we design in this way etc… If you claim to care about the environment but then promote an environmentally harmful product you aren’t being transparent and the clients will see right through you. Sustainable design is not just about being sustainable in the product/service itself; but the whole process. For instance, the price can be affordable and doesn’t have to be some off the shelf bespoke one-off product. In fact as a sustainable designer, products/services should be affordable so more people can purchase and raise awareness. As Michael Marriott states on this page – if a product is memorable and it fulfils its function, the price will be forgotten with time.

2 & 3 – I couldn’t agree more about the Germany/Scandinavia comment; we should be taking more inspiration from companies located there in the UK. Design is an umbrella for all things design related and is probably not what people who aren’t designers think it is. Design is evolving. It’s becoming multi-talented and providing multiple services for the client. Marketing has tainted the design industry and actually had quite a significantly negative impact to designers, in that the line seems blurred to those who aren’t in the middle of either practise… and sometimes even to us as designers.

4 – the term ‘good designer’ is so vague. ‘Good’ can mean a variety of things internally and externally; is the work that is being made ‘good’, or am I a ‘good’ designer? Maybe the question needs to be rephrased as ‘are you making progress as much as you would like to be?’ or ‘how satisfied are you with your work and its impact on the world?’. I picked this page to talk about because it got me thinking about how as designers, we are put in the spotlight all the time with our work and actually, the viewers/clients/audience are our critics. You could argue a) ‘does it really matter what I think, because people are going to have an opinion anyway?’ or b) well yes, I will most likely get criticism for my work however I strongly feel it’s the best it could be’ – I have met the objective through ethical practice.’

Bibliography

Hefin Jones. (n.d.). Glofa’r Gofod / Cosmic Colliery. [online] Available at: http://hefinjones.co.uk/cosmic-colliery [Accessed 8 May 2021].

Hefin Jones. (n.d.). Us? / Design Museum. [online] Available at: http://hefinjones.co.uk/us-design-museum [Accessed 8 May 2021].

Research Integrity and Ethics Handbook (for students on taught courses). (n.d.). [online] . Available at: https://www.falmouth.ac.uk/sites/default/files/download/handbook_for_research_integrity_and_ethics_for_students_on_taught_courses_april_2020.pdf [Accessed 8 May 2021].

http://www.bloomsburyappliedvisualarts.com. (n.d.). Section 4: Being good/practitioner experience. [online] Available at: https://www.bloomsburyappliedvisualarts.com/encyclopedia-chapter?docid=b-9781350088795&tocid=b-9781350088795-chapter4&pdfid=9781350088795.ch-004.pdf [Accessed 8 May 2021].

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