All 40 entries tagged Ideation

A short and precise definition of design thinking–learning

1. Learning is a process of finding and resolving confusions, contentions and complexities through the creation of designed innovations (including essays, performances, films etc) within specified non-negotiable bounds.
2. A designerly approach to this iterates in a reflective and evidence-based manner through three distinct modes of activity (or ‘spaces’):
   • inspiration (mixing information from the problem domain and potentially useful patterns and ideas from elsewhere),
   • ideation (prototyping, ‘building to think’, making ideas tangible, sharable and subject to testing);
   • and implementation (building a good, reliable, quality, innovative end product) with the emphasis shifting over time to implementation.
3. Designerly thinking is also powerfully reflexive in designing the conditions for its own success (or the conditions for its own ability to learn).

Robert O'Toole : 27 Mar 2011 21:01 |  Tags: Ideation |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Innovation and the (HE) business – 4 essential activities

This simple diagram illustrates the four essential activities that must be undertaken concurrently and jointly to enable effective innovation. The four activities should be well described and managed. For example, forms and standards of evidence must clear and effective in design and business case development. The design principles and business principles vary between organisations. For example, in a university, quite complex and often ill-specified pedagogical principles must guide the  design of services that are used within or have an impact upon teaching and learning. At the same time, a "business context" may disrupt pedagogical principles - redefining what we aim to achieve and what is possible.

Robert O'Toole : 22 Mar 2011 15:15 |  Tags: Ideation |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Presenting an interaction design for a Virtual Research Environment, Warburg Institute

On Saturday 19^th March I gave a talk at the Warburg Institute in London, as part of the conference on Spanish/French Marriage Festivals and Politics 1612-1615. I am most grateful to Ronnie Mulryne and Margaret Shewring of the Society for Festivals Research for giving me an opportunity to test-out some ideas on virtual research environments with such an esteemed and international audience (English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, American and others). Ronnie had asked me to address issues concerning how researches might make better use of digital resources. My talk was part of a series that included responses from Kristian Jensen (Head of Collections at the British Library), François Quiviger (Warburg) and Jill Kraye (Warburg). All four speakers emphasized the need to support international and inter-disciplinary research with imaginative and innovative user-centric (not tech-centric) designs. My presentation consisted largely of a fictional (but feasible) narrative. The aim being to provoke the audience into being more demanding and more ambitious: “now is the time to demand more from your IT departments and libraries!”

I described the following scenario. The audience responded positively, saying that it is the kind of activity that they want to do. When asked if anyone would be able to go back to their institution and ask their IT people to make it happen, unsurprisingly, the answer was a unanimous NO.

Here’s the story…

Step 1

The participants are three sets of researchers based at Warwick, Madrid and Rome. They are a mix of PhD students and early career researchers, from a range of disciplines including theatre studies, history of art, musicology and architecture. The architecture students are interested in and competent with computer modeling. The participants have initially made contact with each other through the Festivals Research networking site, upon which they have registered an interest in the topic of "naumachia" (pageants in which naval battles are performed using realistic, manned models), and in the use of computer modeling of historical places and events. Using a simple and fast Twitter-style tool, they have agreed to form a collaboration to explore their shared interest further.

Step 2

The participants select the option on the Festivals Research site to create a Virtual Research Space (VRS) for their collaboration. They give the space the name "exploring naumachia with computer modeling". To begin with they restrict membership to the small group, but also invite a small number of other experts (including PhD supervisors) as observers. They immediately hold an initial online conference using the VRS, so as to agree on dates for live collaboration events, and to describe some initial topics, methods and resources. They also agree that, as an output, they will write a set of three reports based upon their explorations. The planned events are added to the calendar in the VRS.

Step 3

The participants prepare for the first live event by collecting resources, writing short texts, and in one case, creating a mind map of resources. The resources include documents and images from digitised archives (including the British Library and the Warburg), as well as maps, computer models of "naumachia" locations and the types of model boats that might have been used. A Google based map, with the locations of "naumachea" has also been created.

Step 4

The participants gather at the alloted time in collaboration suites at their institutions. One of the researchers in Madrid is co-ordinating the session. They begin with each of the participants taking a turn to share and present selected resources that they think will be of interest. Each resource is seamlessly transferred from the participant's device (a variety of devices are used, according to individual preferences). The resource appears upon a wall-sized touch screen in each physical collaboration space, and can be manipulated by the participants (rearranging them, zooming in, scrolling through, annotating etc). All of this, including the presentations and comments, is recorded into the VRS on to the session timeline, to be viewed by the invited observers or revisited after the session. To compensate for language barriers, in each of the locations one participant writes a stream of text notes to immediately translate the proceedings as completely as possible. They then agree that the group of architects based in Madrid should begin by demonstrating their computer models. Other participants respond by relating the models to images and texts so as to evaluate the historical evidence for their design.

Step 5

The live session resulted in several strong ideas being investigated. The session coordinator listed them in the VRS. Each idea was adopted by a participant, who agreed to write a short report on it. These were written and uploaded to the VRS for feedback and review. Over several weeks, feedback comments were posted, further links suggested, and on a couple of occasions, live discussions held to refine each report. Finally, the group reconvened in a live session to agree that the reports were finalised and could be released publicly. This last action saw the reports compiled into a single report and published into an online journal, with active links to the relevant resources and (on this occasion) a link to the recordings of the VRS activities, now made public.

Robert O'Toole : 21 Mar 2011 18:28 |  Tags: Ideation |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem