Participatory mindsets
I was commissioned by an arts collective called Blind Ditch to do the research, UX, design and build for a digital archive of 20 years of experimental performance and social art.
I had worked with Blind Ditch previously as a technologist on their Museum of Contemporary Commodities project. I was familiar with the type of work they create and the audiences and participants they tend to engage.
This was one of the last projects I worked on as a 'one man band' and therefore one final exercise in wearing too many hats. The main challenges of working this way are that you have to impose your own structure (process, deadline, standards) and the lack of immediate collaboration with other designers.
Self-imposed structure is something I've become accustomed to as a freelancer designer and developer. That is reasonably well justified in a UX case study I wrote about this project. It was also this project that I presented at my interview for my role at The National Archives 🥳.
July 2022 - National Archive - Senior Interaction Designer Application.pdf
The other challenge, a lack of collaboration with designers, gave rise to a working relationship with the client and users that was more involved and productive than a typical client and service provider setup. And, in fact, the loss of any specialised, 'professional design' collaboration was more than compensate by the attention paid to collaboration and co-creation processes with Blind Ditch.
I have been in various activities in professional environments labelled as and intended to implement 'co-design' methods. It was interesting and concerning that in most of these experiences a genuine sense of co-creation was often missing. Or not achieved to the same degree as we managed in this project with Blind Ditch. I am not self-aggrandising my skills in facilitation (although I hope they were part of the ingredients for success) but pointing out that the mindsets of these participants were particularly suited to a productive, co-creative process. (I'll return to mindsets shortly).
I have often reflected on why this was such a productive collaboration. I have had very similar positive experiences working as a collaborator or technologist on art projects in the past. In my opinion the common denominator is how artists are already well practiced in co-creation, although they wouldn't necessarily label it this way. Admittedly, this is not a universal truth, but still something I am interested in trying to understand and adopt through my own facilitation work in education or service design.
The majority of the art projects I'm talking about here have a significant social or participatory element to their outcomes/outputs, therefore the normal mode of working is explicitly inclusive, without hierarchy and emphasising the social elements of the creative process. It also doesn't hurt that there are a group of people who are all working towards something they genuinely care about.
There are some mindsets that are perhaps obvious but still important that come through in these experiences:
- Being comfortable with uncertainty
- Valuing a wide range of experiences
- Curiosity
- Hospitality
I have two rambling final points here. Firstly, creating a hospitable environment is last in the list but is really important for creating a feeling of respect and safety, ensuring that the generosity of participants is clearly valued.
- is that although these mindsets seem like obviously positive conditions for a co-design or almost any creative
Social Sculpture
When reflecting on this it reminded me of artist and teacher Joseph Beuys' idea of social sculptures. He saw the educational space as something shaped together by the ideas, actions and interactions within it. He would have a semi-prepared structure for his lecture actions and document them on a blackboard.
At it's best, a classroom is an inclusive social space where positive outcomes (learning, confidence, engagement) come from a certain amount of instability or uncertainty. Individual learners bring unknown experience and knowledge to these spaces and their participation determines an unknown outcome from the group and individuals. It's chaotic and exciting.
Returning to the example of participatory art practice, my instinct is that there are a similar set of parameters and variables. There is a balance of intention and intentional openness, control and chance, that has emergent properties.
Control and chance
What does this have to do with design practice? Working in digital product design there are many, many ways that we try to orchestrate collaboration with each other and learning with our stakeholders. It is however unfortunately common that teams and institutions are not comfortable with this level of openness except in specific and sanctioned circumstances, like the occasional workshop.
It is in the nature of artists be more comfortable with the unknown, to trust the process and see what emerges.
Control and chance is a good description of the collaborative process and also how we learn.
It has been one of my ambitions in my current role to capture the [[complexity of our service ecosystem@#complexity of our service ecosystem]] but also to open up the creative process to a broader, more inclusive spectrum of people within and beyond the immediate team, as well as users and other stakeholders.
I'm not convinced that there is a great deal of attention paid to the scenarios where we can learning and collaboration. They are far more balanced toward control and in my experience there is not enough intentional openness. Within the user research space there is nothing but openness
- Attempts to make space for this include design forums, design meetups and co-design
A combination of control and chance is a good description of the collaborative process and also how we learn.
and to an even greater degree what the expectations are when we facilitate workshops or co-design sessions. Co-design is a slippery term that is over used in design projects to signal inclusion of some sort. To bring this back to design practice
working with artists > participatory art > education spaces > collaboration in design work > co-design
Resources
effectively "that life is a social sculpture that everyone helps to shape".
There is something maybe to naive
There is no lack of efforts in the design, digital and UX arenas to forcibly encourage collaboration, and a lot of them are quite successful.
Both education and truly co-creative work reminds me of the
- demonstrates a comprehensive research and process
- combined a couple of my favourite things…working with artists as collaborators, creating archives of work, and learning new web technologies
Why build a micro-design system?
- For many years working as an independent contractor I have found myself working mostly in established teams where design process is well established (albeit not always effective) or as an individual, sole design working direct to clients. In neither case is there much opportunity to build best practice from start
- Working on a small scale project as a sole producer there i