Field Kits

I spent my Christmas holiday learning how to sew again. Thanks to my mom and her new machine, we were able to produce my ideas into a workable prototype. The bag is made of a wool blanket and is secured on the inside by a button and loop. The top flap has a cardboard insert to act as a drawing board while in the field. The other side of the bag holds what you need it to: pencil crayons, pencils, cameras and notepaper.

I still need to create the belt for the back loops (as the women might have to carry children, I opted to create a kit that would go around the waist). But I have that concept sorted - just need to do the work of stitching them up. Ironically, at the end of all this thinking, some may end up carrying it on their heads (since I witnessed people doing this with backpacks).

So you want a website?

I'm amazed at how often I'm asked for help to make a website. This idea that a website will do the trick every time sort of gets under my skin. Don't get me wrong, I see the value of having internet presence. But it's only as good as a) the information you've got to share and b) the number of people who will actually take time to read it. And it requires an internet connection (obviously). In my ongoing work on ideas for the developing world/periphery where the access isn't always reliable or available, I have come to appreciate the value of other notions of technology that might be more helpful. And the value of thinking beyond a website when you are trying to get the word out.

This piece from GOOD Magazine's Transparency section is one more reminder of this.

Someone else's interpretation

Someone took the time to read through all my blog posts and summarize my thesis project and ideas. I am delighted with what surfaced. Thanks, Helen!

"Your thesis/project supports a number of Rwanda’s 2020 development goals and the MDGs by supporting a group of rural women to develop weaving skills that will help them generate income. One major additional benefit of this weaving enterprise is that it uses for raw material the invasive water hyacinth plant. This plant is degrading the environment on which people in the Bugasera region, where the weaving cooperative is located, depend for basic survival.

The situation for the weavers at present is that, although a number of organizations have helped them to learn weaving skills, start a studio, and a business cooperative—COVAGA, the women are still in the early stages of weaving skill and design development; consequently, their production is limited in quantity, variety and quality.

The women need further support to (?)
(I inserted: Build a suitable factory, design and create their own products, an understanding of quality and market needs, business planning)

Kara, when you got acquainted with the women, you were becoming aware of how so many development “solutions” are imposed on the “beneficiaries”. Often, little, if any, effort is made to consult the beneficiaries about what they need and want, what their ideas are about how their lives might be improved.

You also discovered that language was a significant barrier. Even when words alone might not be a barrier, there’s the language of culture that cannot necessarily be transmitted through words, especially the words of a foreign language and a foreign culture.

So, Kara, as a person who’s interested in how images convey values and persuade, you want to create the means, “a cultural probe,” in the form of a kit, which the women weavers can carry with them as they go about their lives, to enable then to convey their aspirations for COVAGA via media consisting not of words but, rather, drawings, photos, found objects, and (more?). These things, you believe, will give fuller expression to what words can only partially express about what the women see, feel and think."

Currently, I'm researching materials to make my bag for the field kit. I have started by looking at the blankets often used by NGO's in humanitarian aid. From what I can gather, this material seems to be accessible in many countries thereby making it possible for the kits to be made in the respective country of research. Next step is to find the appropriate strapping material for the handles.

While the focus of my research isn't on the bag itself, I am pleasantly surprised by the process I've had to go through in thinking through the functionality of these probes in a rural situation. Gaver's examples used a Ziploc bag as a simple inexpensive way to give the probe to his participants. In my case, this isn't really an option (especially since plastic bags are technically banned in Rwanda!) How will they carry it? How will they write or draw if they are not sitting at a table (which isn't a guarantee)? I am most interested in the visual outcomes but without the infrastructure to acquire these, I would likely be wasting my time. It is as though the bag has as much to say about this research as the contents that will go into it. I can imagine something extra emerging just by engaging the process of making and sending them out.

Still to go:
1) Finalize probe activities
2) Translation where necessary
3) Sew bags

Carry this, please?

In developing the probes for my lovely women in rural Rwanda, I've been thinking about the ease and practicality of how they will engage these exercises that are asking them to document their needs, desires and wants via image, texture and color. And I got to thinking that maybe having this "kit" in the form of a carrying case might be:

a) more useful and
b) a bit more practical.

Since they might be attending to the farm or weaving at the shop, my typical assumptions of how they complete these activities seems to require a different approach. So here's a very rough prototype of my thoughts about how I could make a simple case for this. Once the activities are complete, they can keep the pencils and "purse" for something in the future?

Think fabric, think the size of a Moleskine, and think reusable. Or so I hope.
Thoughts? Ideas? Feedback?



Inspirations came from:

Prototype

I am working on getting a cultural probe (Gaver) developed to send out into "the field". This probe is meant to use creative activities to see how people process the information. I'm curious to know if this concept could be developed into something that helps the periphery in areas of governance. To me, the idea of governance relates to Ideo's work on Design for Social Impact.

Enzio Manzini references the ideas of 'governance toolkits' in a wonderful book, Design Research Now . Beat Schneider is also quoted:

"With the trend towards a globalised, standardised cultural mishmash, people have an ever-greater need to communicate their own regional cultural identity (for example) to others. What part can visual communication play in this process? How can international communication between different cultures be structured in a way that primarily employs images rather than words? And how does non-paternalistic visual imagery in local development work look at the level of development cooperation?"

My only wish right now is that I could fund myself back to Rwanda to be in the field working on this. I'm giving these probes (Lord willing) to those who work in the development arena to see what comes of their process. My hope is that by asking the people they work with about their needs, desires and beliefs that they might find creative communities that already have some good ideas about their own futures. And I'm seeking to do all this where language is not shared so the notions of image, texture, shape and color become new forms of language investigation for me.



(These all have to be translated. While I'd love to get away from language in all forms, it simply isn't possible. Thankfully, I have support!)

Big Question

Ideo has always been a hit with me. Love what they do, how they do it and then some. And I love their widget. What's your big question? I'm still working mine out but apparently I can look ahead in time to find out if someone else already wrote it. Phew.

( ) space: Legal Size

Last night, the grad program hosted an opening event at the new ( ) space at the 1612 West 3rd Studios. The exhibition put us all on the same page. Literally.

We were invited to use a legal sized piece of paper to make something that represented where we were at in our research. I opted to create a piece of origami, interactive in nature, to show how I am investigating communication when you don't have a shared language (as a designer who has trusted this more in her previous work).

Origami, as a pattern language, is interesting to me in as much as demonstrates how art and math can work together to create objects both functional and beautiful. My last post identifies the ways that health and science are benefiting from the principles of this ancient art form. I learned how to make this piece without a manual or words. I watched videos or looked at the fold patterns as a means to consider how I can learn something without text.


Kara shows Rok her interactive piece, Without Words. Photos courtesy of Defne.

The art and science of Origami

I have been completely taken with all things origami recently. I'm not good at it like Lang, but I am keen on how this is being referenced as a language. I respect and am interested in the connections between art and science that are discussed in this TED talk. I am blown away that these items can be made with one uncut piece of paper.

Even more fodder.

Peripheral Participants

These are the ideas I'm after.

When I think of how the periphery have the potential to contribute to the whole (specifically in the context of those who face challenges in the developing world), I start to consider how this model could be translated back in Rwanda.

Because it speaks of good governance. The fact that citizenship is developed "by the people for the people" is recognizable. I realize we live with incredible freedoms to do so, but if this idea could be shared with a rural town in Rwanda, would the same potentials be realized? I get a bit of hope inside thinking about the "what if's".

The tools I'm trying to figure out in the process of this are being considered and evaluated through a lens that isn't my "home town"(like this Vermont case), which adds some complexity to my process. Language, beliefs, needs and values are relevant in this research (for them and me). In my case, I want to consider how a cultural probe (Gaver) might illuminate ways to bring a community on the other side of the globe into their own change (without assuming I know what that change should look like). Because many initiatives are developed without consulting the people who will be affected by them, I like what this town in Vermont is suggesting by including their peripheral actors. And perhaps by understanding deeper needs, future innovations can be approached without messing with what already works.

By the people, for the people.

Notes on a Conversation

Contradictions

This work fascinates me.
I think it highlights the tensions I am interested in. How can design really address the needs of those on the periphery when my idea of technology isn't available? Not all progress is good progress, in my estimation. I don't claim to know the hierarchy of "good progress". But I do know, from watching and immersing myself in the various communities I've engaged with both here and abroad, that some of the best ideas aren't always the best for everyone.
How to know what is best? My research is attempting to ask questions of the individuals who don't always have people around them to help them find their best answer.

"The idealization connected with these experiences provokes a small-but-important detach of the perception of reality and what i want to do by writing the names of anything connected with the 2.0 life we are living in the slums of the third world is to point out the gap between the reality we still live in and the ephemeral world of technologies." --Filippo Minellis
Wooster Collective Article

Design Research

Firstly, ‘research for design’ refers to ‘R & D’ or background research undertaken that is directed towards a particular design project: such as testing the performance of a glaze by an industrial designer or user testing the clarity of a brochure designed by a graphic designer. ‘Research into (or about) design’ includes the various accounts of design phenomena usually done by other disciplines – such as a sociological, historical or economic account of design – which are straightforward dissertations since they can adhere to the conventions of their respective disciplines. Finally, the most contentious but potentially ground–breaking possibility is ‘research through (or by) design’ where a degree may be awarded for a project and is often labelled ‘practice-based’ or ‘practice-led’ research (Frayling 1993/1994, Findelli 2000[1999], Newbury 1996).

This has provided great inspiration in the directions design research can take. I'm most keen on the last idea.

[There] is still a widely held assumption that though sociologists may study and analyse visual representation, the resultant analysis itself is separate from the visual domain: the verbal analyses the visual...But...the distinction between social analysis and visual representation is becoming less clear-cut...social analysis is beginning to make more use of visual representation, and indeed should make more use of visual depictions, unconventional typography and page layout in its analysis. (Elizabeth Chaplin)

Chaplin asserts that visual representations contribute to the social argument in themselves, capable of ‘[telling] us a good deal we did not already know about a particular society.

(Excerpts taken from Helen Box's PhD thesis on design)

Equal Conversations

Thinkpublic created this toolkit "to help instigate conversations about subjects common to everyone or shared interests." Their kit relates to my ideas if how to provide a method of communication that can be applied for understanding in the rural village.

Can visual communcation be open-sourced?

Like this?

Quote(s) of the day

Because sometimes you need reminders...

Graduate design education is one of the most promising possibilities for the development of new information in the field and for the creation of ambitious models of operation.

All objects with which we surround ourselves are a language beyond language, an extension of ourselves, a visualization of the invisible, a self-portrait, a way of introducing ourselves, and an essential dimension of humanity.

Even though there can be beautiful computer keyboards, excellent typefaces and magnificent dining-room furniture, we concentrate on our typing, reading and eating.

1) Visual communication design is centred on human behaviour and not on visual forms.
2) Visual communication design applied to solve social problems can learn from [other disciplines].
3) The evaluation of the outcome of a communication campaign must be an integrated part of the design plan, and it requires achievable objectives and a substantial , reachable, reactive and measurable audience.
4) A thorough knowledge of the problem and of its socioeconomic impact is necessary to secure the resources required for the support of appropriate action.
5) Visual communication design is a professional responsibility that overflows the technical. A technically excellent but ethically and socially irresponsible designer is a social, cultural and ecological hazard.

Visual communication design has to strengthen its concern for what really matters: life, death, pain, happiness, and the welfare of people.

Jorge Frascara
User-Centered Graphic Design: Mass Media and Social Change

The Word of the Day: Ethnomathematics

Ethnomathematics is the study of the relationship between mathematics and culture. It refers to a broad cluster of ideas ranging from distinct numerical and mathematical systems to multicultural mathematics education.

I was introduced to this idea today and find it so curious. Math is a language in its own right so how can one learn from this as it relates to design? Sort of like a biomimicry meets language and culture? I dare you to try using it in a sentence: "Isn't that so enthomathematical?"

Design Difference: Hippo Roller

Internship Talk: Stories from the summer

Four of us will be sharing about our experience working as designers or film makers in another country. If you want to know more about my experience working in Rwanda, this is your chance!

Design, The Future and the Human Spirit

...designers have to seek autonomy and use it, if possible, for socially and environmentally productive ends. They must confront a world that is becoming increasingly polarized: wealth versus poverty; fundamentalist religion versus secular humanism; environmental sustainability versus ecological destruction; and technological utopianism versus technological resistance. To position one's self among these and other oppositional forces requires an intensive reflection on one's own values, goals and social concerns. It also calls for an operational strategy to align one's self with other social actors and institutions, whose concerns are compatible with one's own.

by Victor Margolin
Design Issues: Volume 23, Number 3, Summer 2007

Research Process 20.11.08

These images reflect a thought process. I am looking at how a "village" can be involved in the creation of their own communication tools. With difficult issues like climate change, how can someone aware of the related problems create a meaningful message that will help a community move toward a healthier and sustained life? Using my experience in Rwanda as the backdrop, I want to see if visual communication design tools can assist in the development of understanding where the content is inherently difficult information. Ideas that have surfaced by others in the field are the use of probes (Bill Gaver) and the concept of co-creation (as being discussed by Liz Sanders). These approaches could serve as methodologies that would create a non-verbal outcome while empowering the ideas of those who often don't have a voice (or technology).

Much of the research I come across has situated itself in a context of a Western or European arena. Conversely, projects that the industrial design community have attempted (Design for the other 90%, as a case study) seem to touch on these ideas in an attempt to take design tools and apply them to contexts outside our own (some successfully and others less so).

Ultimately, in anything cross-cultural, there are nuances (some big and some small) that impact these endeavours. The most significant and obvious is a shared language. This is where a new depth of understanding about visual representations become valuable. Other areas that emerge include identity, power and politics. While I can't address all of these in one thesis, I am aware of their impact on the tools I am aiming to create in order to involve those on the periphery the opportunity to understand how they might come up with ideas for their own concerns/circumstances.

I am investigating how designers in other countries, where the rural poor are significant members of a population, are using their skills to engage with meaningful experiences that help to shape difficult information into something accessible. From their research, I hope to see how this idea could be applied in contexts where a government is seeking to communicate policies but perhaps without success.

Everything's amazing and nobody is happy

My friend sent me this. And I cried because I laughed so hard. And it fits perfectly into my current analysis on how to communicate in a world that assumes technology is a given.

Stories from the front

illustration by Keri Smith

KARA: In my research, I'm considering the role of communication design in development where language isn't shared and often that means varied perceptions on issues. Can you give me any examples of what could help you in work if someone could come in and design something useful for you? Just want to make my research relevant even if I can't be back on the continent!

BEV: In development (more than relief) communication is vital. We have seen in our water projects that when things are not communicated in a tangible, cultural context, they are often misunderstood.

Example: explaining to women that if they lay their "washed" clothes on the ground to dry they can still get bugs in them and they can get skin diseases such as scabies. Now, most women in Africa - especially West Africa, have never been told that:
a) there are bugs that cause disease (they just think its from the 'gods')
b) the link to the bugs on the ground getting into clothes on the ground (the whole germ theory of just cause you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there is not understood at all)

So how do I tell them what they are doing is not good for them?

Solution: We often make simple posters to explain the germ theory, or how disease is spread. We are thinking more to doing skits, as African's in general LOVE skits - to portray a message. Also, in Liberia proverbs and parables are a huge way of communicating in the village - it's really cool actually. An example of one would be "Don't sell your tooth to buy a palm nut" a palm nut is really hard and it needs all of your teeth to crack - so if you sell you tooth, how can you eat the nut you have bought?

Your research: The first thing for designing something would be knowing the specific culture - there is African culture, and then there is West African culture, and then there is Liberian culture. You probably saw that in East Africa, and then in Rwanda on a micro-scale. Then there are cultures of tribes - and this gets tricky! In Niger where I am right now, we are working in the north near the Mali border along the Niger river. The Zarma people are Muslim (mostly by tradition) and have lived along the river for generations. The river is their friend, they bathe in it, drink its water, put their animals in it, wash their clothes and dishes in it. You get the picture. But their kids have dysentery, some have died and they attribute it to, "It's the will of Allah". You and I know it's the water from the river.

Now here is the challenge: How do you communicate to them that the very thing they have been told is their friend and has given them so much, is actually causing sickness and death?

Sigh. When you find an answer to this please let me know! We have filters in that village and people still go to the river. It's behavioural change and that takes time, lots of it, and capacity building, and creative ways of communicating to them the importance of water and sanitation.

So what is your idea for the design? Do you need a country to test it in? I know of one;)

I would love to talk to you more about it. There is so much more I can say especially in regards to gender, HIV/AIDS, health. Yeah, I could go off.

Thanks for seeing the bigger picture of this. It makes my heart happy;)

Design Thinking

A video about the need for design thinking in business. A great way to look differently at what design is about: creative thinking and innovative ideas. I can't help but filter these ideas through the lens of the rural community that is looking for economic development solutions.