Marketing and Participatory Design Thinking Practical

Follow-up to Marketing and Participatory Design Thinking from Inspires Learning - Robert O'Toole

Following on from my lecture...

In just 45 minutes, we responded to this creative brief...

With small teams each creating mind maps of their proposed campaigns, and presenting them to the rest of the class (with the maps displayed through the projectors). The maps were created using the Mindjet app on iPads (connected to the screen with a VGA connector). Mindjet is available for free from the Apple App Store for iPhone and for iPad. The Mindjet Mindmanager Windows and Apple desktop software is available for free to all Warwick students and staff.

Some very good initial campaign ideas were presented. It was suggested that they would form the starting point for a participatory design process, bringing in customers/stakeholders to test and develop the ideas further.

Click on each image to see it full size.

The materials that were created for the real Warwick Blogs publicity campaign can be viewed here.

Robert O'Toole : 21 Oct 2011 16:27 |  Tags: Video |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Marketing and Participatory Design Thinking

I taught a session this week as part of the MA in Global Media and Communication (Cultural Policy Studies). It started with a 1 hour long lecture and discussion, followed by a practical session (see the results here).

Here are the slides and videos from the lecture. The mind maps, and links to the software, will be uploaded in a separate entry. Click on the thumbnails to see the full size slide...

	Companies, governments etc are prepared to spend staggering amounts of money on advertising.
	Asking this question leads to a better understanding of the complex social and cultural dynamics of business and the media.
	We could naively accept a simplistic view of advertising: consumer has specific well understood need, producer has the product, consumer buys product, need satisfied.

Intel has global domination of the desktop and laptop processor market. But they still need to create amazing adds like this.

	Asking the question leads to some interesting insights about business, society and culture. There are many motivations, explicit and implicit, behind spending on advertising.
	Advertising might play a significant part in the internal strategic work being done in the comany. It might have a significant internal focus, for example trying to stimulate motivation and allegiance amongst the work force. There are many possible reasons.
	A recent trend has been the move from a product-oriented business model to a service-oriented model, in which consumers become participants in the cultural and industrial production, co-creating brands, designs, markets etc. Marketing campaigns need to help to build this co-operation and participation.

The DHL That's Logistics campaign makes people feel part of the logistics operation. Perhaps this will result in greater client-service cooperation, contributing to avoiding problemsor resolving them faster?

	This is the name for a range of approaches that aim to bring product development, design, support and marketing into a single well-integrated whole, with active participation from all stake holders. The IDEO design partnership are key drivers behind this.
	IDEO members have published and spoken about their methods. See the work of Tim Brown on Design Thinking, and David Kelley on Prototying in the Shorthand of Design.
	At Warwick we have used these approaches to design new services and courses. For example, a design workshop brought together students, managers and teachers to create and test lo-fi prototypes for possible distance learning courses. We started with creating fictional but realistic potential students.
	We then considered how they should have changed having undertaken the course.

We built a prototype timeline of resources and events, to show how the course might achieve these changes, and to ensure that the vision of the teachers and the admin practicalities could work towards these ends. We then filmed a walk through of the timeline, narrated by the students. This could then be shown to other potential students, teacher, funders and managers, for a next iteration of prototype and test. Thinking about marketing was an essential part of this process from the earliest stage.

	Understanding and engaging with real people is ob absolute importance. Don't just build products, services and adverts, build communities.
	Bruno Latour's actor-network-theory approach offers a powerful approach to understanding how real people build real communities, how they get things done with their network, how they theorise about them, and how technology plays a central role.
	Finally, the creative brief for the practical session.

Robert O'Toole : 21 Oct 2011 16:26 |  Tags: Video |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

What I am doing this month – September 2011

Implementing:

Evidence-based service design for learning technology at Warwick. Initial surveys of learning technology activity in all 30 departments. Writing initial reports to be fed back to departments. Designing student surveys and interviews. Developing the methodology. Creating a maturity model for classifying the status of existing and developing technologies, and a maturity model for describing learning technology use in academic departments.

Designing:

The E-learning By Design Tool-kit. A set of Open-space Learning style activities to help teachers in designing e-learning enhancement projects. To be used by participants on the E-learning in Academic and Professional Practice course.

Enhancing:

• History of Art undergraduates, creating an online exhibition.
• MA in International Performance Research, using Webex videoconferencing in live sessions with students at Warwick, Amsterdam, Belgrade and Helsinki.
• Thinking Aloud, humanities PhD students creating audio and video podcasts that investigate academic topics.
• E-portfolios for History undergraduates.
• Virtual Research Environments (History, French Studies, Theatre Studies).
  
• Using Mindjet Mindmanager on iPads to transform a research-based module in French Studies.

Teaching:

How to support student academic film making (techniques, issues, copyright, technologies), for the Learning Grid Advisors.

Presenting at:

A conference on Teaching Political Economy, about Virtual Learning Environment v Extended Learning Ecology.

Creating a presentation on:

1. Research-based learning - what this means at Warwick.
2. Telepresent Tehran - using WebEx for inter-cultural research-based learning.
3. Going beyond the early adopters.
4. Meeting the challenge of creating and sustaining an Extended Learning Ecology.
   

Writing about:

How an Extended Learning Ecology both requires and enables design thinking.

The Constructivist Epoch: design thinking, learning, thriving.

Read:

Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn by Cathy N. Davidson, Duke University.

Learning Futures: Education, Technology and Social Change by Keri Facer, Manchester Met.

Taking notes on:

How Designers Think (Fourth Edition): The Design Process Demystified by Bryan Lawson, Sheffield University.

Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory by Bruno Latour.

Reading soon:

Excellence by Design: Transforming Workplace and Work Practice, Bridging the Boundaries of Work, Process and Space, by Turid H. Horgen, Michael L. Joroff, William L. Porterand Donald A. Schon.

Creating and supporting Service Improvement Proposals:

• Wizards and Templates in Sitebuilder, supporting students in creating their e-portfolios.
• Extending Formsbuilder to assist research projects.
  
• System for generating online snapshots of research databases, to support community-research engagement and impact.

Planning:

• Battle of the Presentation Tools - a balloon debate considering which presentation tools we should encourage students to use (Powerpoint v Prezi v "naked human") - as part of Warwick's Postrgraduate Certificate in Academic and Professional Practice. Probably lunchtime 23rd November in the Teaching Grid.
• Running a learning technology design competition for students at Warwick.
• Design thinking sessions for the MA in Global Media and Communications.
• Teaching film making as part of a Politics and International Studies module that will investigate the use of documentary techniques.

Robert O'Toole : 19 Sep 2011 11:32 |  Tags: What I Am Doing Now |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem