This is a good way to understand systems!
Everything that influence the process is part of the… system!
May 5, 2011
Understanding the context
At the beginning of the spring semester for methods class, I was told that I was going to look for three different context. These contexts needed to be unfamiliar for me, needed to be interesting and wide enough to be able to work with it.
In my mind I was wondering how wide can a context be? and how narrow a context can it get? However my 3 choices at the beginning were completely unfamiliar for me. One was planned parenthood (at the beginning), Children’s bureau and Indiana School for deaf. After having a personal and a group reflection, I realized that probably these organizations were to broad, that perhaps I wasn’t going to be able to have completely access to it. Then I went out with the idea of finding new ideas for my contexts. Wow! that was an excellent idea…. going out talking to random people, getting to know what they do, was amazing. At the campus center at IUPUI, I got to know two girls who were talking using sign language…at first I thought they were completely unable to speak so in my mind I said: I wish I could find the way to introduce myself to them, I would like to get to know their experience as a student in IUPUI. Suddenly, they started laughing!! and talking… it was then when I got into action and talked to them. They were IUPUI American sign language students, once in a while the offer support and practice at the Indiana School for deaf. That was awesome! I mean, it seems to be the same context but narrowed to the point to understand the experience of sign language students and not the school per se.
Later on the same day, I saw a girl carrying a guitar in IUPUI campus. Guitar? Music? IUPU? I wonder what she is studying?, well in order to know what was her mayor, there was no other option but to talk to her, right? That was another whoa! moment in my life, she was studying music therapy and she was actually doing her internship at an IPS school within a special education class. So, there was another opportunity, understanding the experience of teaching in a special education class.
The last but not least, Children’s bureau… I didn’t have that much success with this institution, although they told me that I could be able to talk to them and to make appointments to volunteer, I didn’t have a good feeling for possible collaboration.
However, I already had 3 different options to start my research project!
Reflection: there is a world out there!
May 5, 2011
The story of Co-Design
This is how I see the importance of designing for people….. with people!
October 6, 2010
Morning Hunch!
Oh! After few weeks of discussion on Design Research, the morning of September 7 something came to my mind and I made it visual. My understanding where Design research (about and In) go through a process, for the process we need methods, and everything is part of a system, where the main purpose is to acquire/increase knowledge and that will give us a grade of expertise as design researchers. I was close, but until here the topic still fuzzy, we need more analysis.
October 6, 2010
First Framework ~Third week~
After the first two weeks of reading, discussing and trying to understand what Design Research is, we came up with our first framework. The idea isn’t quite clear yet, but we are getting there. We are trying to define the difference between Design Research as (about), and Design Research as (in). Some other experts argue that we can also define Design research as (through). We will continue developing this fuzzy topic.
September 22, 2010
50 Things to change
First week.
When you are asked to make a list of 50 things that you would like to change within your universe, and then, when you categorize each possible problem to change, you realize that sometimes those are not just problems, those are possible solutions.
Finding patterns, finding relations will allow us to see clearly our target which can be either finding a solution to a problem or finding new facts for a new problem.
September 21, 2010
Anybody said Design Research?
Design Research… how different is it from regular academic or scientific research?
That was our first task, to understand the meaning and uses of Design Research. There is no correct or incorrect answer to this question. What matters is to be able to understand that there is something different and unique about it. We got confused at the beginning, then everything got better until we came up with our first understanding framework.
September 20, 2010
Grad school, the journey through it!
August 2010…
Shaping:
A new way of thinking….
A new way of leading…
A new way of designing…
A new way of researching…
A new journey in my life!
