Research Tool for Community Growth

Design Research Method to Promote Community Growth

Wonderlab Designed By: Danielle Parnes

Gabrielle Williams

Jiwon Choi Mentor:

Laurene Vaughan Fall 2012

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Hi, we would like to richen our community — how do we start the conversation?

Let us help you get the conversation started.

Introduction Phase 1

Stage 1a Stage 1b Stage 1c

Observe Systematize Identify

Stage 2a Stage 2b Stage 2c

Formulate Ask Organize

Stage 3

Synthesize

Phase 2

Stage 4a Stage 4b Stage 4c

Determine Strategize Gather

Stage 5

Conclude

Introduction

Introduction

Hi there, In this ever-expanding world, we strive to look for meaningful relationships with people. We dwell on the missed connections, could-have-beens, and lost opportunities — economics 101 states that losses loom larger than gains.

We have collaborated on a design research method that intends to explore ways to richen the relationships within a community. Specifically, what keeps residents together?

Where do conversations begin? What invites families, friends, and neighbors to sit down together for a nice lattĂŠ?

This research method tries to make the intangible more physical by facilitating community-based organizations to pinpoint exactly where opportunities present themselves. Our research is special in the way that design-thinking drives our decisions and results in meaningful findings, iterative processes, and conceptually-driven thinking. We like to compare design research to panning for gold – it is a long and often complicated task but usually brings forth golden ideas.

This manual is comprised of two phases that are designed to reveal opportunities through purposeful wandering and collecting pertinent data. it is tailored for community organizations that strive to better the communications and lifestyle of residents through service. it requires a lot of conceptualizing, information sifting, time, and ability to read between the lines to realize chances. This method hones in on what is necessary to cater to your specific community and recognize what your community really needs.

We hope you find our methods useful, applicable, and accessible.

Who Should Use This?

Community Development Corporations Local Governments Non–Profit Organizations Concerned Citizens Concerned Business Owners Activists Entrepreneurs How Do You Use It? This manual consists of two phases, which are each divided into multiple stages, that should be followed and discussed with a group of committee members. For each stage, you will be prompted by checkpoints at the beginning and the end that are useful to ensure you are on the right path. We have included conceptual models, figures, and definitions at each stage to facilitate and richen your understanding. Furthermore, we have included a case study that describes our own use of this research method on an example problem. At each stage, we describe how we worked through the case study to serve as reference for your own work.

How Long Does It Take?

This process can range from a few weeks to many months, depending on the amount of time and resources available.

At least two weeks are needed to work through this method in order to take full advantage of what this method offers.

Optional steps are provided throughout the manual for customizing your process based on how much time you have.

Why Should You Use It? Community development corporations Local governments Non-profit organizations Concerned citizens Concerned business owners Activists Entrepreneurs

Phase 1

Phase 1 Inhale

Stage 1a Stage 1b Stage 1c

Observe Systematize Identify

Stage 2a Stage 2b Stage 2c

Formulate Ask Organize

Stage 3

Synthesize

Phase 1: Inhale

Triangulation: Using multiple methods on the same question.

Conceptual model of triangulation

* Bella Martin, Bruce Hanington: Universal Methods of Design (Beverly, MA: Rockport Publishers, 2012) pp.188-189.

Phase 1, made up of Stages 1 – 3, is focused on learning about your designated community by exploring with an unbiased and open lens. We like to call this phase of the process the inhale, as this is when you are taking in your surroundings, being receptive to the physical, social, cultural and unseen occurrences.

In order to get a deep understanding of the problem space, in other words the physical and social space in which you are working, we make use of the method of triangulation* using multiple methods of inquiry of the same question. You will go through a process of observation, systemization, and further contextual research, speculation and then confirmation through conversation in order to make sense of your surroundings.

CASE STUDY: Photos taken throughout Bloomfield ranging in scale and subject.

Documentation of a record store in context (outside view)

Flyer collected from a bookstore we explored

People gathered outside of local grocery store

Picture frames that showcase members of community in a cafe

Business card from local gallery

Letter to public from community member placed in a cafe

Whimsical flyer tear-offs found in a second-hand store

Public flyer-space near enterance of a retail store

Stage 1a Observe people, place, environment

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This phase is about observing your surroundings in an immersive and experiential manner. It is not about the small details individually, but instead about getting an overall feel of the neighborhood. Focus on the variety within the space of both the physical artifacts and the relationship people have with them.

Explore: Powers of 10 is one method of considering problems at varied magnitudes and scales. Can be used to ensure full understanding of context.

Model below illustrates this concept.

Focus on public spaces. In our example, this was mostly streets frequented by pedestrians and individual businesses, but depending on your context this could include places such as parks, schools, or other existing institutions or organizations.

It is important to carry this style of observing and documenting throughout the project, as continuously being open to new information will be beneficial to your project’s development.

Community Bus Stop

Block

Business

Documentation: There are many ways to document, each tool offers certain advantages.

Explore: It is your choice which places you visit, but some good rules to go by are choosing locations that seem to be distinguished, ones that are either always busy or never busy. When you are within these places, act as if it was your first time there. Feel free to ask employees, business owners, or customers casual questions. Do not attempt to gather specific information nor act as if you are working on a project.

Photography: Gives visual documentation of places visited.

Video: Captures observable body language, cohesive visual and aural feedback.

Audio: Records ambient noise in the environment.

Documentation: It is important to document what you observe, capturing the physical spaces and artifacts within them, as well as any social interactions you observe. This can be done through a variety of methods mentioned on the left sidebar. We recommend doing at least one form of visual documentation. Note your observations and feelings either while you are there or immediately after your visit while it is still fresh in your memory.

Live Notations: Records feelings and cultural nuances.

Artifacts: Physically archives collected things and represents places visited.

Wander through neighborhoods, stop at places that catch your interest, document the neighborhood without a filter, experience the natural setting in which you are working

Examples: Brochures, business cards, posters, flyers from the business and surrounding community.

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While you are observing people, be sure to respect the privacy and their personal space. For example, ask permission to record and take photos from back of the room.

Have you collected artifacts, images, and observations that would give someone unfamiliar with your neighborhood a full sense of it and the diversity it encompasses?

Stage 1b Systematize collected observations

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Print photos and stills from video, organize and filter the information that you have gathered, pull out patterns and interesting findings

The next step is to organize the information you have collected so that you can begin to understand the connections within what you have seen and experienced.

In the chart on the left fill in descriptive words, collected artifacts, and photos or stills from videos. The categories provided should inspire you to think about a variety of factors that make a place what it is, including both its physical and nonphysical traits.

Method: This step was developed with the concept of thematic networks in mind, a method that helps break down themes. Basic themes refer to the actual pieces of data, which in this case could be a photograph or a written observation. Organizing themes are the basic themes clumped into like groups, which in this case are the categories provided in the chart. The next step will be looking at global themes, which are the concepts that relate these clumps of information to overarching ideas*.

* Martin, Hanington: 178–179

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Have you given each observation and piece of documentation a place to live on the chart? Could you describe the overall feel of each respective place to somebody?

CASE STUDY: Global themes present in our observations included: Niche, Audience, and Communication

Stage 1c Identify gaps + opportunities

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The next question to ask yourself, what is the importance of this organized information? At this point you are going to pull out global themes, or the overarching patterns that are present as social themes. They generally have to do with human and social interaction with a space or business.

WHY

JUSTIFY

Find themes and patterns, notice differences, develop leading questions

VERIFY

Are there common themes and ideas that are present across different environments? Can you find both obvious and subtle differences between them?

Fig. 1 This conceptual model prompts you to ask the question “why�� by justifying and verifying; it serves to help you break apart the problem and determine viability.

This step should result in themes about factors that influence each other. After generating many themes, ask yourself why each theme would have opportunity in your community. Refer to Fig. 1 for a way to prioritize themes. Keep this in mind as you move forward.

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Were you able to reveal big-picture opportunities from your research?

CASE STUDY: Ideation of relevant questions to ask various stakeholders within our problem space.

Stage 2a Formulate relevant questions

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Identify your audience, develop questions relevant to themes, contemplate possible opportunities that exist

After identifying broad opportunities and themes within your initial observations, it is necessary to gather some more detailed information relating to them. It is helpful to begin this stage by identifying your potential audience. Who did you notice in your observations? What people or institutions might be affected? Essentially, who will you be asking these questions to? Focusing on these stakeholders will allow you to brainstorm questions surrounding their needs and actions within the community. Your questions can ask about the details of something you observed, something that you noticed was missing, or anything else that you feel is relevant and important to understanding the themes that emerged from your observations.

Hopefully developing a set of questions will cause you to wonder about what you observed, and from this you can create some hypotheses to explain your thoughts. Why did something look the way it did?

What drove someone to behave a certain way? These thoughts will help you focus on relevant details while asking your questions.

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Do you have better scope and understanding of what kinds of questions you will ask to the appropriate people?

CASE STUDY: Stills from videos of interviews document occurances that are important to notice during inquiry, including facial expression and body language.

Stage 2b Ask questions to selected sample

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Ask questions to relevant audience, document the interviews appropriately and thoroughly, gain outside perspective and insights

Now that you have developed the questions you want to ask, it is time to ask them! In order to do this, revisit the area where your initial observations took place and find people who fit your defined audience. The aim of these questions is to deepen your understanding, so ask with the intention of learning about the people you talk to and their role in the community.

Shadowing A method to gather answers to your questions. By shadowing a stakeholder for a certain period of time, you will be able to gather insights and familiarity that are more in depth with the user group than you would through an interview. The first hand experience of shadowing will allow you to observe decision patterns and actions that can help you to better understand your target audience.

An interview in person is the best format to ask your questions because it allows you to gather answers but also observe body language and the nuances of the conversation. When you go out and ask your questions, take note of those that elicit a stronger response as well as recurring themes in conversation. It is crucial to document interviews through photographs, video recordings, or audio recordings. Not all interviews have to be planned, but be aware of the context. For example, it is courteous to call a business beforehand to set up an interview, but a more candid approach would be appropriate for a passerby.

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Have you collected a rich amount of information from all target audiences?

CASE STUDY: The image below shows the matrix we created while organizing the data from our interviews. The themes we pulled from our data are labeled on the left-hand side of the matrix while the media used to collect are labeled along the top.

Stage 2c Organize gathered information

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Sift through information, design a matrix that best organizes your information, place the research collected into the designed matrix, notice popular responses and patterns.

Before you can make sense of all the information you collected, it needs to be clear and visible. This step allows you to organize your information in a structured format specific to your inquiry.

Create a matrix with categories relevant to themes you have seen emerge through your questioning and observations. This matrix allows you to categorize information within the collected responses by content as well as by how it was documented. This also makes referring back to your interviews helpful if you need to find a specific response. After filling out the matrix with all of the responses, it is helpful to go through and highlight key words and observations.

This will help in narrowing down the design opportunity.

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Do you understand the voices and opinions from the community?

CASE STUDY: For our case study, we decided to empathize with the Bloomfield Development Corporation and come up with actionable questions.

Philip Lombardo Profile: 23 year old male Carnegie Mellon University Alumni Self Proclaimed Titles: Native Bloomfield Resident Community Volunteer Native Pittsburgher Enjoys: Writing Concerns: Notices a lot of empty spaces on Liberty Ave. “The Concerned Youth”

Rachel Farrel Profile: 35 year old female University of Pittsburgh Alumni Self Proclaimed Titles: Cafe Owner Bloomfield Community Member Mother Enjoys: Sketching & Drawing Concerns: Notices younger people don’t come to the old Italian market “The Concerned Business Owner”

Brynn Kelly Profile: 29 year old female Ohio State University Alumni Self Proclaimed Titles: Fair–trade Enthusiast Bloomfield Community Member Community Service Volunteer Enjoys: Working with Other People Concerns: There’s no place for us to host events “The Concerned Volunteer”

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We have a lot of vacancies, can you help us determine what they should be to benefit everyone?

We have a lot of old businesses.

How can they reach out to new, younger generations?

How do we attract the correct businesses?

Stage 3 Synthesize data

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Break down broad opportunity, create focused problem statements, empathize with stakeholders

Now that you have all of the collected data organized you can begin making sense of it. This stage focuses on breaking down a broad design opportunity from previous stages into smaller, more focused problem statements specific to your community. Think back to the initial question of “How can we richen the community?� How can we break down that abstract question to truly understand what the community really means by using the iterative-oriented research we have collected thus far? Ask yourself how you can richen your community in the context of the words and observations highlighted on your matrix.

Empathy: Understanding the perspective and feelings of others in order to be more sensitive and avoid generalizations.

After brainstorming some possibilities, it is time to view each possibility from multiple angles. Empathy is extremely important in this step. It is beneficial to imagine yourself as one of the stakeholders and ask questions from their perspective. The goal of this stage is to have translated all of your collected data into something more actionable in the form of statements that we will call problem spaces. Make sure that you take into account the views of all stakeholders involved in order to avoid a biased conclusion.

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Have you narrowed down your scope into a manageable number of prompts?

Phase 2

Phase 2 Exhale

Stage 4a Stage 4b Stage 4c

Determine Strategize Gather

Stage 5

Conclude

Phase 2: Exhale

Phase 1 results in a more focused problem space. Phase 2, made up of Stages 4 and 5, is then focused on revealing the opportunities within that space. We like to call this phase of the process the exhale, as you will take everything that you have absorbed and re-frame it with intent. This is when you are synthesizing the large breadth of research collected into an actionable form.

You will go through a process of discovering what information you need, as well as who will help you find it. You will then develop a method that will allow you to gather this information. The last stages encompass carrying out your developed method and drawing conclusions based on what you find. Your conclusion will result in a visualization that will allow you to communicate your conclusions to others.

CASE STUDY: Our process to figure out what information we need to collect in order to connect older businesses with the younger generation.

Stage 4a Determine appropriate information

to gather

> For our case study, we wanted to focus on the lifestyle of the younger residents in Bloomfield, Pittsburgh. We needed to know this kind of information to best understand how we can get the conversation started between the old and the new. We wanted to know when the young adults got out of school, work, and other chores to see at what times they are available.

Some questions we needed to answer before designing the research questions were: Are you trying to figure out their schedule?

Their lifestyle?

What kind of useful information can you gather that will provide you with rich insight to understand how opportunities can be best utilized.

Define information needed to answer the questions framed, define who you need to talk to

Looking at the statements you developed in Stage 3, determine what information is necessary to gain a deeper understanding of each. Evaluate the opportunity of each statement, asking yourself how the result of pursuing it could richen your community. You should be able to state strong reasons for how each would benefit a variety of people within your community. If you are unable to state these reasons then there is little viability, and therefore little design opportunity, within that problem space. Also consider the realistic constraints of your project, such as time and money. This thought process will help you eliminate the problem spaces that you do not want to pursue. You can narrow your scope down to one or more problem spaces depending on your project timeline and resources.

Now that you have decided on a few problem spaces to delve deeper into, ask yourself what further information is necessary to gain a better understanding of each problem space. Then ask yourself who you might want to contact in order to find this information.

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Have you chosen a few viable problem spaces to further explore?

CASE STUDY: After pinpointing what information we needed to gather, we brainstormed methods to collect it.

Stage 4b Strategize method for gathering

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Explore possible methods of inquiry, choose method(s) relevant to your problem space

Methods of Inquiry: Each method varies in accuracy of information, scale of research, funding, time, and other resources.

Now that you know what information you need to gather, the next step is to figure out how to get it. There are a variety of existing methods for you to choose from, but some will be more appropriate for your context than others.

Exploratory (Direct Insights): Focus Groups, Personal Interviews, Surveys, Shadowing, Community Interactive

In considering what methods would be appropriate, first consider that there is often discrepancy between what people say and what they do. Therefore, consider methods that allow you to ask questions as well as observe individuals in their natural environment. It is also necessary to consider what methods people would be comfortable or uncomfortable with. For example, some individuals prefer to write responses rather than verbalize them. In this case, using a diary method would be more appropriate than a think-aloud protocol.

Descriptive (Detail-oriented): Observational Studies, Surveys, Scanner/Sales Data, Diary, “Want� Ads, Persona Causal (Tests Hypotheses): Lab Experiments, field experiments, Scanner and Sales Data*

* Kinshuk Jerath, January 31, 2012.

Refer to the Methods of Inquiry for a list of possible methods to use.

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Do you have a method(s) to effectively look into your chosen problem space(s)?

CASE STUDY: The two photographs below capture shadowing and diary studies.

Stage 4c Gather pertinent information

> CASE STUDY: In our case study, our methods to gather information involved Shadowing both community members and business owners to better understand the nuances of their daily lives.

We also asked community members of varying ages to record their daily schedule over the course of a week to learn about their respective lifestyles – a method known as Diary Studies.

Carry out your chosen method(s), document details in the process

Document your methods while in progress using the same methods of observation and documentation discussed in Stage 1a. Be sure to get consent before video recording, audio recording, or photographing. The more information you can collect while carrying out your method, the better, as learning the details of your problem space will begin to inform design decisions in your solution.

Shadowing: “Shadowing provides key insight into a participant’s activities and decision patterns as the researcher follows him or her closely throughout his or daily routines.” * Diary Studies: “Diaries or journals are guiding artifacts that allow people to conveniently and expressively convey personal details about their daily life and events to design teams.” **

* Martin and Hanington, 158-159 ** Martin and Hanington, 66-67

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Have you gathered sufficient detail about your problem space?

CASE STUDY: The infographic below visualizes the number of people at a particular location categorized by age. From this we were able to distinguish “hotspots”. We saw that bus stops were frequented by a variety of ages in comparison to bars which were frequented by the younger age groups.

13

21 7

3

37 13

bus stop 26

bus stop 21 22

4

grocery

40

15–25 yrs

25–35 yrs

38

35–50 yrs

dive bar 50– 65 yrs

Fig. 1

65 + yrs

33

13 7

7

15

7

Stage 5 Conclude + Clarify

> CASE STUDY: The Fig 1. on the left visualizes the research we collected. We wanted to figure out the locations the young and the old in Bloomfield frequented. We were able to see the patterns in the data and see where opportunities exist. For example, we labeled locations that appeared to be “hot spots” and we noticed that these areas were near bus stops. Our next step would be to add a layer displaying time.

Word Cloud: “Word clouds are a method of information visualization that organizes text-based content into interesting spatial arrangements.” * Stakeholder Map: “Stakeholder maps help to visually consolidate and communicate the key constituents of a design project, setting the stage for user centered researched and design development.” **

** Martin and Hanington, 166–167 *** Martin and Hanington, 18–19

The next step of the process is to sift through and synthesize the mass of information you have gathered. Try to visualize it and pull out patterns. The goal is to make an infographic of the information and to see what areas show strength and opportunity. The end result should be a synthesized and detailed view of the original question posed from Stage 1.

Summarize the big points that you found. A good way to do this is to verbally review your process and identify the major outcomes of each step. Through this you should be able to identify any information you feel is missing from your conclusion, as well as any outstanding questions. If you do find any questions or holes in your process, be sure to go back to the relevant stage and work through it again until you are comfortable. This is an iterative process. You will find something new each time you go back in your work and take another look at what you have gathered and synthesized.

Once you feel comfortable with your conclusions, create a visualization that will communicate your thoughts to yourself and others. You can make as many visualizations as are helpful, updating and revising them as needed. Some examples of visualizations include word clouds, stakeholder maps, and behavioral maps.

Behavioral Map: “Behavioral mapping is used to systematically document locationbased observations of human activity, using annotated maps, plans, video, or time-lapse photography.” ***

* Martin and Hanington, 206–207

Draw conclusions, visualize your findings

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Does your visualization effectively communicate your conclusions?

Now that you have uncovered the root of a complex problem, we hope you have gained a better understanding of the problem space and the design opportunities that exist.

You are now knowledgeable and prepared to move forward in designing an effective solution.

Thank You.