For this next stage of analysis and ideation I am largely following established processes within the fields of UX design, service design and human centred design, which I have experience using both in industry and academically. (These are methodologies which we teach our UX students). Obviously I put my own twists and preferences into precisely how I tackle things, and how I combine methods, but I do follow a broadly established framework for taking initial insights through various processes to land on a number of potential ‘ideas’. There is a bibliography at the end of this blog which notes some key texts which outline these methodologies.
As you may remember, after each piece of research I attempted to draw out some key insights, which I then used to write ‘how might we’s’. These ‘how might we’s’ were:
- How might we foster a greater sense of ownership within the space
- How might we make students aware of the potential of what they can do within the space
- How might we help students understand the benefits of working in a collaborative way
- How might we offer greater choice to students when it comes to their experiences in our studio
- How might we offer students greater control over the sensory environment in the studio space
- How might we better demonstrate to students what the studio can offer that they cannot get at home
- How might we demonstrate to students the value of collaboration and peer learning
- How might we enable students to adapt the studio space to meet some aspects of their own comfort needs
- How might we take inspiration from the archetypal studios as defined in this workshop, combining the best elements of all of them to create an adaptable space
- How might we support students to build their collective vision of what a studio should be, and empower them to adapt our space accordingly
- How might we foster a sense of ownership of our space in our students
- How might we explore all different dimensions of comfort within our studio space
- How might we understand students ‘desire lines’ and use them to shape our space
- How might we build a studio culture that focusses on collaboration
- How might we create more opportunities for the different year groups to mix
- How might we, taking into account staffing and budgetary limitations, make the space feel like it has more ‘going on’
- How might we encourage students to spend more time in the studio, while respecting that it is not the right workspace for all kinds of work
- How might we make the studio flexible and adaptable to individual student needs
- How might we help students find the space and quiet they want
For this next stage of the process I used Miro, a tool which I always find useful for this stage of analysis. You can view my Miro board for this project here.
On the left, you will see all these ‘how might we’s on individual post its. Alongside them are the recommendations I drew from my interview coding (let’s ignore these for now as they start to stray into ideation, but they’ll be useful later!)
My next step is to take these ‘How might we’s’, and group them by theme.
As you can see, some clear themes start emerging: ownership and customisation (these two connect, I think), community, and collaboration. I also note one outlier, which discusses students access to quiet space, and reflect that though this is undoubtedly a student need, it may be too much at odds with all the other findings of the research to be the correct thing to attempt to pursue here, so I lay it to one side.
After this, I group my initial recommendations within those broad themes.
After this, I reflect on the three core themes, and write a final, cumulative ‘how might we’ for each of them.
Then, I start to ideate. I start trying to answer those ‘how might we’ questions with ideas. It is worth noting, that in true ‘human centred design’, this entire process, and particularly the ideation phase, would be done in collaboration with stakeholders (so in this case, staff and students). However due to the scope of this project, I have carried this out as a solo task, but once I have concluded this bit of the process, I will take these ideas to the UXD staff team (particularly our course lead) for discussion about what we can implement.
You’ll see that on the diagram above I’ve connected some of the ideas which are essentially the same thing, just for my reference.
My next step is to place these ideas on a value/effort matrix (you can see an image of the blank matrix here)
Armed with this, I will meet with my course leader to explore my research so far together, and discuss what might make a suitable intervention as part of my PG Cert (as well as potentially other high value, low effort tasks that we might undertake anyway!)
Bibliography
How might we activity (2022) Co-op Experience Library. Available at: https://www.coop.co.uk/experience-library/ways-of-working/activities/how-might-we.html (Accessed: 22 November 2024).
IDEO (2015) The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design by IDEO.org. San Francisco, Calif.: IDEO.org / Design Kit.
Thomas, S.E. (2020) The Practical Guide to Experience Design: A Guidebook for Passionate, Curious, and Intentional People Who Enjoy Designing for Humans. Artificial Publishing.
Stinkdorn, M. et al. (2018) This is Service Design Doing Methods: A Companion to This Is Service Design Doing. 1st edition. Sebastopol, CA: O′Reilly.
Stinkdorn, M. et al. (2016) This is Service Design Doing: Applying Service Design Thinking in the Real World. 1st edition. Sebastopol, CA: O′Reilly.
Rosala, M. (2021) Using “How Might We” Questions to Ideate on the Right Problems, Nielsen Norman Group. Available at: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-might-we-questions/ (Accessed: 22 November 2024).