The morning poster discussion session was quite good. Stefan and Joao coordinated a session where people would go around and put comments and chances for collaboration on each others posters, then we had a chance to digest a bit the things that were put oni our posters then we had a kind of unconference style discussion on topics proposed, two sessions of 20 minutes each. I tip my hat to Stefan for making it all work.
After the coffee break we’re coming into the next session given by Joao on Qualitative Analysis: Structure locations. The why and how choices of desire. Qualitative research is the method of inquiry that invetigates the why and how of desig, choices, decision making, not just what, where, and when. Smaller but focused samples are more often needed, rather an large samples. The results of such are only hypotheses says Joao, not real conclusions, and I would agree that is true if they are taken outside of the context originally being studied.
What approach will we take in qualitative research? A grounded theory practice, ethnography, organizational narratives, shadowing, etc.
The why and how, while dealing wand collecting data from people with different backgrounds. We use words in different ways, use different words for the same concepts etc. A context for this, the vocabulary/language issue. A Design Dictionary by Michael Erlholf and Tim Marshall is a very interesting attempt to make a kind of universal set of meanings.
Analyzing enormous amounts of data: use systematic terminlogy, then validation, and we’re going to talk more about structural common places and isotopes. Isotopes, from the greek, “at the same place” The research from Raquel Antunes (who presented her work here at the summer school via a poster and with whom I think my project may have some interesting overlap is studying this. It’s a case study of 26 medium and large companies that make decorative ceramics. Structural Common places is an idea talked about by Salana and Albarello et al (in pratiques et methodes de rescherche en sciences sociales) Finding these structure common places may be better according to Joao because the “original meaning” of the person interviewed may be lost in codes and the inexperienced researcher may have a hard time.
From the slides “However we may assume, that a possible path is that the interpretation of data is a process of translation. The terminology used for those structural locations comes not from the specific vocabulary used byu the interviewed/researcher, instead comes form the terminology used by the stakeholders of the field of knowledge in discussion. at the same time that new structural locations are added, they are by inherence shaped by the previous ones. A collection of interdependent structural locations shape an isotope.
Now a picture of the isotope of design engineers a 3d hill plot of various terms such as product development, aesthetic, product quality etc. Each of these terms has a consistent place across various isotopes like designers, creative managers etc.
The audience is fairly confused on why the 3d plot is used, as it doesn’t seem to add any layer of meaning, and 2d would be clearer. I’m also quite confused on what the difference is between these isotopes and coding is, how it really helps in the way described. Joao says we’ll see as we go along.
The 3d plot “Fails the law of parsimony” says Erin, and I agree, Stefan Sloegl is agreeing with this as well and trying to explain that it’s just kind of confusing. Joao says that this is a kind of stepping stone, part of a work in progress.
Now we’re seeing a stratified representation of the structural locations of design management definitions by all interviewees. It has a number of different layers with the various terms listed by frequency in various layers.
He’s now giving us a kind of “homework” to use a more traditional coding method and this method.
This seems to be the end of the session, and we’re heading to lunch soon.
Now up is Alan Dix, he’s talking about what he won’t talk about, but are his other interests. From conceptual to computational models. What do I mean by computation model?
1) I don’t know just a title
2) A model of a phenomenon (creativity!) that can run on a computer.
3) using a computation analogy to understand creativity.
150 years ago we used electricity to understand our world, 300 years ago it was steam, now it’s computation, none are better, but it’s helpful to understand things. The moment we think we truly understand something that’s when we’re on dangerous ground.
Ways of using computation model?
- Simulation (a model for the phenomenon of interest only accurate to the level of interest)
- Inspiration (maybe existing algorithm technique as analogy)
- Prediction (often, though not always, quantitative)
- Insight (qualitative)
Simulation: The example of rabbits on an island and how populations relate to grass on the island and how they alternate between across years. so while the simulation is quantitative you can get qualitative ideas from it too. Hilliard, a syntax of space. They model people going from one intersection to another in a city and individual behaviour is not realistic, aggregate behavior is.
Inspiration from computation. Finding good/creative ideas, it’s a bit like optimization/solution finding. Lots of algorithms in AI and operation search. So if you have similar problems you often have similar solutions. Generate and test.
Prediction: Prototyping as hill-climbing, you need to start at a good point, you need to understand what is wrong. a clever person will look at the map. Genetic algorithms.
Is all of this reallyt like human creativity? What’s different?
Guided, not blind. I.e. we can step back, look outside of the process and evaluate, understand the territory. So we’re better. ’Best’ design, or some design? Evaluation: hard, word suggests a fixed context but there is co-evolution of problem and solution space. From evaluation to en-valuation: in what context does it have value, what are the values in it?
Modeling regret
It’s modal/counterfactual ‘what if’ analysis, it’s worst when you ‘nearly’ averted disaster, it seems to be about learning. So how do we learn…?
Now a break then a workshop, no notes on the workshop for now.
