Blog Task 2

This is a cross post from my MSc Student blog which we use to chart our progress through our final projects. This year marks the beginning of my project work and these Blog Task Posts form part of our initial scoping and project planning.

What approach do you want to take to your research?

I know I want to look at how we might use design research methodology to help children and young people (C&YP) articulate their preferred educational futures. There are a few key questions I am currently working through. Namely:

  1. Do I concentrate on one method (for example using design fiction) or use a range?

  2. Do I concentrate on thinking about educational futures generally or take a specific practical element of educational policy currently being worked on? Here in Scotland, we’re currently thinking how we might design and implement new forms of national assessment – specifically an e-portfolio for all learners aged 3-18. Using this approach my first question would again come into play do I use one method, or a range?

  3. More generally I have been struck by this article¹ on involving children in the design process. The authors argue for an understanding of children as protagonist and;

encourage children to be the main agents in driving the design process and thereby to develop skills to design and reflect on technology and its role in their life. (Iversen et al, 2017)

In this was I think I can begin to make connections between design research and my ultimate goal of helping C&YP articulate their preferred futures.

What methods interest you?

The two main strands are speculative and participatory methods. I think the Scottish Approach to Service Design is helpful here as it gives a formal, ethically appropriate approach to this work. Looking specifically at methods; design fiction and diegetic porotypes as well as storytelling around utopias seem promising as do more participatory methods like some of the activities from the Liberating Structures work as well as Lego Serious Play. I found Nesta’s Playbook For People Power a helpful overview on the practicalities of using some of these types of methods

What training or development are you pursuing to support your project and why?

I’m very much coming at this as a teacher who is new to design research. To this end I am grateful to have had the opportunity for some informal coaching from a colleague in the Scottish Government’s service design team who has experience of using exactly these methods in the educational futures space. I have also reached out to academics here at EFI who have been generous with time and advice.

¹Ole Sejer Iversen, Rachel Charlotte Smith, and Christian Dindler. 2017. Child as Protagonist: Expanding the Role of Children in Participatory Design. In Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC ’17). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 27–37.