Showing posts with label cape town. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cape town. Show all posts
Thursday, 14 April 2022
Behind 'Design principles for developing critique and academic argument in a blended-learning data visualization course'
Written for visual design educators and social semiotic researchers interested in students' use of data visualisations for argument.
Designed by Arlene Archer and Travis Noakes, 2021.
Table 2. Lesson topic changes from 2017 to 2018's course
1) Delimiting the scope of the task
2) Encouraging the use of readily accessible design tools
3) Considering gains and losses in digital translations
4) Implementing a process approach for developing argument and encouraging reflection
5) Developing meta-languages of critique and argument
6) Acknowledging different audiences and the risks of sharing work as novices
Figure 2. Tumi's limitations slide 2018
Professor Arlene Archer and my chapter, 'Design principles for developing critique and academic argument in a blended-learning data visualization course', is to be published in 'Learning Design Voices'. Edited by Professor Laura Czerniewicz, Tasneem Jaffer and Shanali Govender. the book is produced by the University of Cape Town's (UCT) Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT). Its compilation aims to catalyse a discussion of key themes shaping practice in online learning design. Our contribution falls under the book's 'Learning materials, activities and processes' section. The book's other two tackle 'Learning Design as field, praxis and identity' and 'Humanising Learning Design'.
Our new chapter is a sequel to 'Exploring academic argument in information graphics' (2020), in which we proposed the framework for argument in data visualizations shown in Table 1. This social semiotic framework provides a holistic view that is useful for providing feedback and recognising students’ work as realised through the ideational, interpersonal, and textual meta-functions. For example, in addition to the verbal (written) mode that they are usually assessed on in Higher Education, students' digital poster designs must also consider composition, size, shape and colour choices.
Designed by Arlene Archer and Travis Noakes, 2021.
When the course was first introduced, many students' were able to produce attractive posters, but there seemed scope to support them in developing better arguments by revising the course's contents. Our follow-up piece describes how using this framework proved helpful for changing a second-year journalism, blended-learning course and helping students' argument-development:
In five-weeks, the lecturer had to teach novices- data infographics, graphic design and Excel software, visual design aesthetics and multimodal argumentation via data visualization designs. Many changes were considered for improving the posters’ argument and the lecturer changed the 2018 syllabus structure by adding two new sections (for ‘Multimodal argument’ and ‘Creative ideas for infographic design’, see Table 2).
A midway assessment was also introduced in which students’ infographic arguments were tested as works-in-progress. Reviewers’ feedback presented those who went for the wrong goalposts with opportunities for changing their direction by the final assessment. The new sections and mid-way assessment proved helpful for supporting 2018's students on aggregate with developing better arguments via infographic posters. The initial course was arguably weighted too much on using new tools for aesthetic design. By contrast, the new iteration was weighted towards teaching opaque discursive conventions and how to make a coherent, strong infographic poster argument using different modes that travel well as they traverse different formats.
To illustrate the benefits of this shift, our article focuses on two students, whose work differed from those of the 2017’s class in presenting meta-level critiques. As a result of some of the curriculum interventions, students began to engage with normative attitudes and societal discourses that shaped the information they shared. They began to flag how the graphs they shared might represent a numeric simplification of a qualitatively complex situation, and to point to the ways in which the categories for comparison may be blurred.
Before presenting two in-depth student cases, we described how several principles for learning design informed our analysis of student work using this framework:
1) Delimiting the scope of the task
2) Encouraging the use of readily accessible design tools
3) Considering gains and losses in digital translations
4) Implementing a process approach for developing argument and encouraging reflection
5) Developing meta-languages of critique and argument
6) Acknowledging different audiences and the risks of sharing work as novices
"Tumi" and "Mark" followed different approaches to metalevel critique in their data visualization project's. Tumi’s presentation (see Figures 1 and 2) critiqued the usefulness of Youth Explorer for exploring education in a peripheral township community versus a suburban ‘core community’. In contrasting the Langa township ward's educational attendance data versus the leafy suburb of Pinelands, she flagged why the results may be skewed unfavourably against Langa- children from peripheral communities often travel to core communities for schooling, so data for both core and peripheral communities “can be blurred to some extent”. Tumi also flagged that youth accused of contact crime were not necessarily ‘convicted or found guilty’.
Figure 2. Tumi's limitations slide 2018
By contrast, Mark’s poster (see Figure 3) critiqued the statistics available for understanding ‘poor grade 8 systemic results’ and the reasons for higher drop-out rates in schooling between suburbs. His poster explored the limitations of what Youth Explorer can tell us about systemic tests and how these link to dropout rates and final year pass rates. He argued that a shortcoming is the dataset’s failure to convey 'the role that extra-curricular support plays' in shaping learners’ results. Mark's poster reflected the fact that many children from affluent homes go for extra lessons after school to improve subject results. This knowledge of concerted cultivation was based on his personal experience, but is unaccounted for in most official accounts of educational input.
Both cases reveal how teaching a social semiotic approach for analysing and producing argument proved helpful. It informed changes to a data visualisation poster course that could better support students’ development as critical designers and engaged citizens- the two aspirant media professionals' meta-critiques flagged important challenges in relying on data that may be incorrect and incomplete, accurately spotlighting the inherent difficulties of simplifying qualitative complexity into numbers for their audiences.
If you would like to view a presentation on our research, please visit my earlier blog post at
https://www.travisnoakes.co.za/2021/10/the-presentation-developing-critique.html.
Acknowledgements
The research is based upon work supported by the British Academy Newton Advanced Fellowship scheme. Travis’ research was supported by a Postdoctoral Fellowship (2019-21) at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. Both authors thank the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Film and Media Studies for facilitating our research with students between 2017 and 2018. In particular, we thank Professor Marion Walton and Dr Martha Evans for their valued assistance. We also greatly appreciate the feedback from the editors and reviewers at Learning Design Voices.
Need support doing Social Semiotic research in Africa?
Both Arlene and Travis are members of the South African Multimodality in Education research group (SAME) hosted by UCT. Should you be interested in sharing your multimodal research project with its experts, please contact SAME.
I hope that you will read our chapter and find it informative. You are most welcome to give readers and I your feedback in the moderated comments section below.
Wednesday, 6 May 2020
'Exploring academic argument in information graphics' in 'Data Visualization in Society' from @AmsterdamUPress #Academicbooks #OpenAccess
Written for design educators and social semiotic researchers who are interested in infographic design and multimodal argument.
Associate Professor Arlene Archer and I wrote 'Exploring academic argument in information graphics', which was recently published in the book, Data visualization in society. Our chapter proposes a framework for analysing and producing argument in data visualisation. This framework is applied in the chapter for investigating two second-year journalism students’ semiotic and rhetorical strategies in making arguments via data visualisation posters. We then discuss the broader implications in Higher Education for teaching students to become critical citizens via infographic poster production and analysis.
Associate Professor Arlene Archer and I wrote 'Exploring academic argument in information graphics', which was recently published in the book, Data visualization in society. Our chapter proposes a framework for analysing and producing argument in data visualisation. This framework is applied in the chapter for investigating two second-year journalism students’ semiotic and rhetorical strategies in making arguments via data visualisation posters. We then discuss the broader implications in Higher Education for teaching students to become critical citizens via infographic poster production and analysis.
 |
| Figure 1. Data Visualization in Society book cover, Amsterdam University Press, 2020. |
The chapter drew on my fieldwork as a lecturer in the multimedia production course (FAM2017S) teaching infographic poster design to journalism students at the Centre for Film and Media Studies, UCT. I liaised with Professor Marion Walton and Dr Martha Evans in preparing a five-week course for teaching infographic poster production in 2017. Students learnt to explore educational inequalities between two suburbs in Cape Town using youthexplorer.org.za's aggregated data and to visualise their findings via infographic poster design. Arlene kindly volunteered as a guest reviewer of students' poster design progress. As novice designers, students' data visualisation arguments produced some interesting inconsistencies and disjunctures that helped inspire this chapter. Its analysis was also informed by a review of students' final posters and accompanying rationales.
In response to these concerns, Arlene proposed the framework for analysing and producing argument in data visualisation. Its components are illustrated in Table 1 below.
 |
| Table 1. A framework for analysing and producing argument in data visualisation. Archer, A. and Noakes, T. 2020. |
We are very grateful to the book's editors, Professors Helen Kennedy and Martin Engebretsen, for their feedback and help in refining the chapter.
In 2018, I retaught infographic poster design to a new group of second years and adjusted the course to allocate more for considering argument and included this framework and the article's cases for students' consideration. Both interventions helped students to improve the critical arguments in their posters. Arlene and I are writing about these changes in a draft manuscript, 'Developing critique and academic argument in a blended-learning data visualisation course'.
There are three ways you can view Data Visualization in Society digitally:
2. Its Open Access version is at https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvzgb8c7.
3. You can download it as an Adobe Acrobat pdf book via http://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/22273.
Or to purchase it in hardcopy, you can order through your local bookseller, via Amsterdam University Press for Europe/Rest of the World, or via Baker & Taylor Publisher Services for North America.
I hope that you will find our chapter informative and welcome any feedback in the comments below.
Monday, 15 July 2019
Reflections after 'Young black women curate visual arts e-portfolios': a South African cultural hierarchy versus local practices...
Written for media studies researchers and educators interested in the challenges that young people in Cape Town face when formally expressing identities as visual arts students.
My first sole-authored journal article is published in the Learning, Media and Technology journal at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17439884.2019.1640738. Young black women curate visual arts e-portfolios: negotiating digital disciplined identities, infrastructural inequality and public visibility addresses the special issue’s theme ’Global Technologies, Local Practices’, outlined here. Please visit http://bit.ly/2NOxxiM to download one of the 50 free e-prints that Taylor & Francis has made available for download.
Dr Jeremy Knox and a few anonymous reviewers provided in-depth guidance that helped me to better address both the special issue’s theme and its international audiences. Over the course of two revisions, the article’s abstract became:
‘Despite the growing importance of digital portfolios for justifying creative work and study opportunities, little is known about arts students’ creative appropriation of online portfolios in secondary school. In particular, there is a research gap concerning the challenges that young black women face when curating portfolios as visual arts students. This paper describes the key challenges that three such government school students negotiated when taught to creatively appropriate an online portfolio software for curating showcase visual arts e-portfolios:
In formal contexts, art students’ e-portfolios are strongly shaped by assimilatory norms. Visual arts students who want to develop portfolios that follow local or global crafts and fandoms must negotiate their low status in, or complete exclusion from, the national syllabus. Students in under-resourced school and home settings may already be using other online portfolio solutions that suit their purposes better than the particular software prescribed in arts lessons. Online portfolios are public by default and young women negotiated this risk by using pseudonymous self presentations. Each student’s classroom practices were also constrained by a technology selected for its minimalist exhibition aesthetic. Students curated showcase exhibitions, but the prescribed service did not facilitate a wider exploration of contemporary digital practices.’
The case studies for three young black women revealed the diverse, yet overlapping, challenges each faced in expressing their creative identities and interests. It balanced the need to provide a full context with the special issue’s concerns in under 6,000 words. Following this article's publication, I felt I should use this blog post for reflecting more broadly on why so few local practices from Cape Town (and South Africa) became shared by visual arts students in their e-portfolios.
My first sole-authored journal article is published in the Learning, Media and Technology journal at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17439884.2019.1640738. Young black women curate visual arts e-portfolios: negotiating digital disciplined identities, infrastructural inequality and public visibility addresses the special issue’s theme ’Global Technologies, Local Practices’, outlined here. Please visit http://bit.ly/2NOxxiM to download one of the 50 free e-prints that Taylor & Francis has made available for download.
Dr Jeremy Knox and a few anonymous reviewers provided in-depth guidance that helped me to better address both the special issue’s theme and its international audiences. Over the course of two revisions, the article’s abstract became:
‘Despite the growing importance of digital portfolios for justifying creative work and study opportunities, little is known about arts students’ creative appropriation of online portfolios in secondary school. In particular, there is a research gap concerning the challenges that young black women face when curating portfolios as visual arts students. This paper describes the key challenges that three such government school students negotiated when taught to creatively appropriate an online portfolio software for curating showcase visual arts e-portfolios:
In formal contexts, art students’ e-portfolios are strongly shaped by assimilatory norms. Visual arts students who want to develop portfolios that follow local or global crafts and fandoms must negotiate their low status in, or complete exclusion from, the national syllabus. Students in under-resourced school and home settings may already be using other online portfolio solutions that suit their purposes better than the particular software prescribed in arts lessons. Online portfolios are public by default and young women negotiated this risk by using pseudonymous self presentations. Each student’s classroom practices were also constrained by a technology selected for its minimalist exhibition aesthetic. Students curated showcase exhibitions, but the prescribed service did not facilitate a wider exploration of contemporary digital practices.’
The case studies for three young black women revealed the diverse, yet overlapping, challenges each faced in expressing their creative identities and interests. It balanced the need to provide a full context with the special issue’s concerns in under 6,000 words. Following this article's publication, I felt I should use this blog post for reflecting more broadly on why so few local practices from Cape Town (and South Africa) became shared by visual arts students in their e-portfolios.
Overall, such neglect of the local seemed strongly shaped by four cultural hierarchies in Cape Town communities, which may fall under a broader cultural hierarchy in South Africa:
As my essay describes, young black women did face obstacles in using the "global" online portfolio technology, Carbonmade.com, for expressing their artistic identities. This technology was not designed to accommodate their under-resourced contexts.
By comparison, the strong shaping influence of the dominant cultural hierarchy seemed to exert a much greater influence on all visual arts students in my PhD research study. Most did not spotlight uniquely local cultural interests and practices in their portfolios. This suggests how South Africa's cultural hierarchy is a great obstacle for those Cape Town visual arts students and their expression of local practices via "global" technology.
Kindly comment on this post, or contact me with your thoughts.
- South African visual arts education is dominated by a Modernist tastes for expressing a traditional version of aesthetic distinction.
- Cape Town is an important creative hub in South Africa and there are many creative industries producing local content. However, students’ e-portfolios largely ignored it and other (South) African creations. This reflects how better-off homes typically prefer consuming global popular cultures versus local creative industries. Global media fandoms from the United States (such as Hollywood franchises) and Japan (Manga and Anime) influenced most of the fan art in students’ e-portfolios.
- The lifestyle and vocational preferences of the middle-class dovetail with the cultural capital of secondary schooling. By contrast, working class culture was largely excluded in teens' e-portfolios.
- There are 11 official languages in South Africa. Despite several of the students not speaking English as their home language, all used English to present their identities and work.
By comparison, the strong shaping influence of the dominant cultural hierarchy seemed to exert a much greater influence on all visual arts students in my PhD research study. Most did not spotlight uniquely local cultural interests and practices in their portfolios. This suggests how South Africa's cultural hierarchy is a great obstacle for those Cape Town visual arts students and their expression of local practices via "global" technology.
Kindly comment on this post, or contact me with your thoughts.
Friday, 17 November 2017
Designing infographics on educational inequalities in Cape Town's wards- a new #UCT Media Studies project.
Written for Media Studies educators interested in teaching data journalism and infographic poster design.
A new infographic poster design course (FAM2017S)
Professor Marion Walton, Dr Martha Evans and I recently prepared a five week course in which I taught second year journalism students to design infographic posters that focused on educational inequalities in two Cape Town wards.
The course comprised the following lessons (which dovetailed with Martha's on article layout):
week 1: Introducing typography;
week 2: Designing an online identity using type, shapes and paths;
week 3: Introducing infographics and preparing a poster template;
week 4: Exporting data from youthexplorer.org.za and designing charts;
week 5: Short infographic poster presentations by students for assessment.
All students had access to the Mendi lab, where they could learn to use Adobe Illustrator for detailed design work and Microsoft Excel for chart design. Most students had already been to a workshop that introduced them to youthexplorer.org.za. I taught its use for exporting Excel files, cleaning their data and preparing various comparative charts. Students also had the option of using Adobe InDesign in class or a similar alternative at home.
A diverse group of students produced work in different infographic sub-genres in response to the lessons. The posters were shared to their blogs (see my Diigo social bookmark index for the public ones), as well as to other online accounts as part of the assessment process.
Fast facts infographic poster by Ester van der Walt, 2017
Infographic chart diagram by Jamie Kawalsky, 2017:
Academic research poster by Alana Schreiber, 2017:
These three posters exemplified the high-quality work that most students achieved and the innovation of those who departed from my academic research poster that I designed as an example for the course:
Technical recommendations:
#1 Support maximum flexibility in terms of software choice
Many students could not make every lesson due to anxiety over their safety. Violent protests at UCT by the #feemustfall movement and the near-militarisation of campus with private security and police resulted in students feeling anxious and unsafe. In response, they were granted increasing freedom to choose the software they had access to. While most students continued to use Adobe, several chose to use Microsoft Word, one Google Docs and another infogram.com).
#2 Prepare teaching materials on export options for best quality
Students found exporting imagery to be challenging and will require better support materials on achieving quality exports. This is particularly important given the varied software that students may need to use.
#3 Prepare support material on compressing files
For assessment, students had to submit six files to Vula, UCT's intranet. An upload limit of 4MB on particular file formats, meant that several students required email advice on compressing their files close to the submission deadline. Again, support material should be provided upfront for students on compressing the graphics in their files, creating compressed web-friendly, low-res versions and also archiving their work to .zip formats. Interestingly, the students who compressed their work in .zip files could upload large files.
#4 Organise that fewer files have to be submitted for assessment
Students submitted at least five files, which enabled the assessors to appreciate the process behind students' poster, rather than just the final project. While such insight proved valuable, it was highly time-consuming to assess, especially when combined with checking how students shared their work online. Consideration must be given to whether there is a more efficient way to assess the process.
Content recommendations:
#5 Emphasise the importance of curation as a digital literacy with new slides
For students keen to work in data journalism, it’s highly important that they develop digital curation literacies. While this was spoken of in lessons and foregrounded through an assessment process that required students to evidence their process through uploading their source logo, chart- and poster files in addition to final work, it could be better emphasised. For example, the insights of Potter (2012) and his 'Curation and Media Education' manifesto could be drawn on for developing dedicated slides. These should highlight the benefits of having an archive of one's source documents and process, so that they can be refined, corrected or referred back in the case viewers raise concerns about their accuracy.
#6 Provide examples for students' diverse work in the infographic genre
Innovation was an important assessment criteria for students' work. The examples above should be used to suggest to students the wide variety of options they can choose from, rather than replicating my poster's look-and-feel, as a few defaulted to.
#7 Present a work-in-progress for early assessment
Rather than assessing all work at the end, a draft presentation followed by a final submission would work better next year. This will give those students who went for the wrong goalposts feedback they can use to adjust their direction.
#8 Introduce students to how South African sociologists in education explain local educational inequalities
To improve their analysis, students would benefit from being exposed to South African research into educational inequalities and relevant concepts from educational sociology. Students would also benefit from seeing examples of what not to do. For example, do not confuse correlation (i.e. high internet access..) with causation (... supports a high matric pass rate! Rather internet access is a marker of privilege that is often linked to households that can afford better schooling).
N.B. You are most welcome to suggest further recommendations in the comments box below, ta!
The course comprised the following lessons (which dovetailed with Martha's on article layout):
week 1: Introducing typography;
week 2: Designing an online identity using type, shapes and paths;
week 3: Introducing infographics and preparing a poster template;
week 4: Exporting data from youthexplorer.org.za and designing charts;
week 5: Short infographic poster presentations by students for assessment.
All students had access to the Mendi lab, where they could learn to use Adobe Illustrator for detailed design work and Microsoft Excel for chart design. Most students had already been to a workshop that introduced them to youthexplorer.org.za. I taught its use for exporting Excel files, cleaning their data and preparing various comparative charts. Students also had the option of using Adobe InDesign in class or a similar alternative at home.
A diverse group of students produced work in different infographic sub-genres in response to the lessons. The posters were shared to their blogs (see my Diigo social bookmark index for the public ones), as well as to other online accounts as part of the assessment process.
Fast facts infographic poster by Ester van der Walt, 2017
Infographic chart diagram by Jamie Kawalsky, 2017:
Recommended changes to the course
Being the first course of its kind, several ideas emerged in the process that could improve it for next year:Technical recommendations:
#1 Support maximum flexibility in terms of software choice
Many students could not make every lesson due to anxiety over their safety. Violent protests at UCT by the #feemustfall movement and the near-militarisation of campus with private security and police resulted in students feeling anxious and unsafe. In response, they were granted increasing freedom to choose the software they had access to. While most students continued to use Adobe, several chose to use Microsoft Word, one Google Docs and another infogram.com).
#2 Prepare teaching materials on export options for best quality
Students found exporting imagery to be challenging and will require better support materials on achieving quality exports. This is particularly important given the varied software that students may need to use.
#3 Prepare support material on compressing files
For assessment, students had to submit six files to Vula, UCT's intranet. An upload limit of 4MB on particular file formats, meant that several students required email advice on compressing their files close to the submission deadline. Again, support material should be provided upfront for students on compressing the graphics in their files, creating compressed web-friendly, low-res versions and also archiving their work to .zip formats. Interestingly, the students who compressed their work in .zip files could upload large files.
#4 Organise that fewer files have to be submitted for assessment
Students submitted at least five files, which enabled the assessors to appreciate the process behind students' poster, rather than just the final project. While such insight proved valuable, it was highly time-consuming to assess, especially when combined with checking how students shared their work online. Consideration must be given to whether there is a more efficient way to assess the process.
Content recommendations:
#5 Emphasise the importance of curation as a digital literacy with new slides
For students keen to work in data journalism, it’s highly important that they develop digital curation literacies. While this was spoken of in lessons and foregrounded through an assessment process that required students to evidence their process through uploading their source logo, chart- and poster files in addition to final work, it could be better emphasised. For example, the insights of Potter (2012) and his 'Curation and Media Education' manifesto could be drawn on for developing dedicated slides. These should highlight the benefits of having an archive of one's source documents and process, so that they can be refined, corrected or referred back in the case viewers raise concerns about their accuracy.
Innovation was an important assessment criteria for students' work. The examples above should be used to suggest to students the wide variety of options they can choose from, rather than replicating my poster's look-and-feel, as a few defaulted to.
#7 Present a work-in-progress for early assessment
Rather than assessing all work at the end, a draft presentation followed by a final submission would work better next year. This will give those students who went for the wrong goalposts feedback they can use to adjust their direction.
#8 Introduce students to how South African sociologists in education explain local educational inequalities
To improve their analysis, students would benefit from being exposed to South African research into educational inequalities and relevant concepts from educational sociology. Students would also benefit from seeing examples of what not to do. For example, do not confuse correlation (i.e. high internet access..) with causation (... supports a high matric pass rate! Rather internet access is a marker of privilege that is often linked to households that can afford better schooling).
N.B. You are most welcome to suggest further recommendations in the comments box below, ta!
Tuesday, 14 June 2016
Learn to be a design thinker at the University of Cape Town's d-school #dschoolCPT
Written for UCT students interested in doing a design thinking course at its new d-school.
1 Understand the problem;
2 Observe places, people and processes for developing empathy;
3 Exploring different points of view;
4 Ideating widely to explore solutions beyond the obvious;
5 Prototyping fast;
6 Testing the prototypes with stakeholders and communities.
Design thinking is a creative methodology based around 'building up' and integrating conflicting ideas and constraints to create new solutions to problems. In Tim Brown's talk, Designers -- Think Big!, he argues that the broad concept of 'design' should be recovered from its modern understanding. This is as a narrow process that focuses on making objects more attractive, easier-to-use and more marketable. Such a highly-constrained, object-focussed understanding is shaped by consumerism's rise in the late 20th century. An unfortunate by-product of this restricted conception is that design becomes mostly unimportant due to its scope often being unambitious and its outputs quickly outdated.
An earlier, grander understanding of design as catalysing breakthrough systems exists in stark contrast to its present use addressing the small screen issues of image, aesthetics and fashion. As society confronts new, pressing social problems, an opportunity has emerged for 'design thinking' to recover design's earlier, expansive meaning. Design thinking focuses on systems to create impact on big social challenges, such as universal access to quality education and improved healthcare. Ideally, design thinking supports designers in stretching the desirability, feasibility and viability of their solutions to the limit.
I was fortunate to participate in a local design thinking course at UCT. Its new d-school chapter of the Hasso Plattner Institute's design thinking school recently opened courtesy of the 'Beyond 2014 Legacy' project of Cape Town's World Design Capital 2014. UCT's d-school is part of UCT's strategy to become a research intensive university. Like the recent UCT upstarts initiative, the d-school is part of an innovation portfolio. This is intended to leverage the triple helix of academia, research and industry for driving innovation via inter-disciplinary approaches. Hopefully, it can emulate Potsdam's example, where 30 start-ups have emerged with its d-school's support since 2008.
I was one of 30 post-graduate students in the d-school's free ten week pilot course at UCT's Graduate School of Business, which students typically pay 600 Euros to do. Cape Town's d.school will be formally launched towards the end of 2016, joining other chapters at Potsdam and Stanford University. Like both, Cape Town's will be unaffiliated to any particular faculty.
According to the d-school's founding director, Richard Perez, design thinking training’s basic tenets are collaboration, being human-centred, creative thinking and learning through doing. Each feature in the d-school's unusual style of pedagogy: students from varied academic backgrounds are placed in inter-disciplinary teams. These are introduced to concepts via talks and then spend a significant amount of their project time in the field. Each team is closely mentored by a coach in their custom studio space and out in public.
UCT's d-school pilot spanned twenty days (two days a week for ten weeks) and each participant did four projects over 10 weeks:
Project one. Redesign the entertainment experience at the V&A Waterfront (two days);
Project two. Design the d.school studio space into 'we', 'team' and 'me' spaces (one day);
Project three. Redesign the mobility experience at the V&A Waterfront (four days);
Project four. Encourage the development of Plumstead's transport precinct to support the City of Cape Town's Transport Council's Transport Oriented Development Strategic Framework. This final project spanned seven weeks.
In each project, students were taught to apply a design thinking process in response to the problem statement. This highly iterative process consisted of six phases:
1 Understand the problem;
2 Observe places, people and processes for developing empathy;
3 Exploring different points of view;
4 Ideating widely to explore solutions beyond the obvious;
5 Prototyping fast;
6 Testing the prototypes with stakeholders and communities.
For project one, team 'Good Fellows' explored redesigning the Waterfront's entertainment experience. A key insight was that visitors (i.e. the Watershed) had suggestions on what else they would like to do (i.e. participate in African maker space activities), but had no easy way to make suggestions. In response, we proposed a system that encourages visitor's feedback.
In project three, 'Team Not A Shuttle' learnt humility in what we might accomplish in four days in response to a wicked problem. To answer the challenge of improving the mobility experience for the V&A Waterfront's workers, we focused on their walk to and from Cape Town station. We proposed that interested staff be provided with sponsored, seasonal wear to protect them from the sun in Summer and rain and winds in Winter.
In project four, team 'Trains On Time' learnt that users of the Plumstead transport precinct want a safer and cleaner area before they will buy into further development. To promote an active citizenry that might address these needs, we proposed a 'Plum Tree Network'.
Our presentation to the Transport Council suggested that this network could organise a seasonal Open Plumstead festival. This would provide an opportunity for locals to work together for addressing the precinct's basics.
In addition to being tutored by design thinkers during these projects, students also had the opportunity to attend presentations by Tim Brown (the originator of design thinking) of IDEO, Jocelyn Wyatt from ideo.org. Plus, we could also do a one-day workshop led by Stanford's d.global's Tania Anaisse on Freedom Day.
As a designer and researcher my experiences of problem-solving have mostly been limited to small screens. By contrast to this largely linear experience, design thinking is highly iterative. Learning to apply the design thinking methodology has helped me to be more critical of my working process. In particular, I need to include the target of any designs during the project, not merely after it. I should work with an inter-disciplinary team to refine the problem statement and proposed solutions. Their feedback should be used to develop integrated solutions and prototypes that can be experimented with as early as possible. I also hope to take the advanced design thinking course next year, which will be open to graduates of the ten week course. Each of its phases also offer different methods (or 'buckets'). This means one can still learn new methods while repeating the same phases.
A student in any discipline can benefit from design thinking and I highly recommend the UCT d-school course to Fine Arts, Design, Media Studies and ICT for Development students. Most will benefit from learning its methodology, as it can support them in critiquing their projects, whilst stimulating alternate ideas and prototypes to test.
P.S. For Facebook updates on the d-school, 'like' https://www.facebook.com/Cape-Town-d-school-179577095777354/.
P.S. For Facebook updates on the d-school, 'like' https://www.facebook.com/Cape-Town-d-school-179577095777354/.
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