Co-creation

Let’s Shift Power Together! An EPIC Co-Creation Activity

To shift power in a complex system, try these power-shift techniques with power holders in different layers of the system
CHELSEA MAULDIN Public Policy Lab NATALIA RADYWYL Today This wildcard session was a conference-wide co-creation activity. Together, EPIC attendees reflected on the dynamic relationship between resilience and power. Then, through a facilitated, real-time activity, we collectively generated an actionable power-redistribution framework—a set of strategies for EPIC members to embed social resilience in their work, whether at a major tech or consumer firm, a government agency, or a consultancy. A designed artifact that captures this framework was produced and distributed to the community. Citation: 2022 EPIC Proceedings pp. 338–344, ISSN 1559-8918, https://www.epicpeople.org/epic...

Physicalizations of Big Data in Ethnographic Context

JACOB BUUR Design and Communication, University of Southern Denmark SARA SAID MOSLEH Design and Communication, University of Southern Denmark CHRISTINA FYHN NIELSEN Design and Communication, University of Southern Denmark With the Big Data hype, making digital data accessible and relatable for non-data experts is becoming an increasing challenge. In this paper we suggest Data Physicalization as a novel approach to facilitate conversations with collaborators about the meaning of data. While this challenge has been approached with data visualizations before, we propose that Data Physicalizations can bring stronger engagement and even more depth to the data than visualizations can offer. Based on four design examples, we investigate how data, when made physical, can be used to instigate valuable reflections between field researchers and non-data experts, and can serve as a platform for design. In all cases we worked with Data Physicalization to enhance our own understanding of the field, to engage collaborators in sense-making, and to...

Map Making: Mobilizing Local Knowledge and Fostering Collaboration

NORA MORALES UAM Cuajimalpa, México SALOMON GONZALEZ UAM Cuajimalpa, México Participatory mapping—the production of maps in a collective way—is a common activity used for planning and decision making in urban studies. It started as a way to empower men and women, usually from rural vulnerable communities threatened by climate change, degradation of their landfills or any other conflict related to access to their land. It has been considered a fundamental instrument to help marginal groups represent and communicate their needs within the territory and augment their capacity to protect their rights. (FIDA, 2011). Why is it that in some cases participatory mapping works and in others fails? Why do these initiatives not trigger local action? Or even end up being counterproductive, when authorities use the map made by locals, to validate their points, causing conflict instead of negotiation? As a research team of designers and social scientists involved in the creation of participatory mapping workshops, our goal was to analyze...

Redefining the Ivorian Smallholder Cocoa Farmer’s Role in Qualitative Research: From Passive Contributions to Passionate Participation

HANNAH PICK CALDERÓNInsitumLANDRY NIAVA Insitum Provider and researchers from the University of Cocody in Abidjan were faced with the challenge of adapting a user-centered approach to qualitative research endeavors in Côte d’Ivoire. Our cross-cultural team with expertise from multiple disciplines developed a novel approach for the cocoa sector. In observations, interviews, and co-creation groups with cocoa farmers, we explored concepts of success, productivity, and profitability both orally and visually. The resulting quality and level of farmer participation was enhanced, therefore improving research results....

Co-creating Your Insight: A Case from Rural Ghana

EVAN HANOVER As Africa becomes the next frontier for consumer innovations, researchers and designers will be faces with a challenge: how can one get deep and meaningful insights on ever-accelerated project timetables? The following case study offers one such possibility. Drawing on work in rural Ghana, I describe my team used co-creation as a means to generate insight, as well as iterate on concepts. Particular attention is paid here to challenges that are unique to Africa (and the base of the pyramid in general), such as how to construct a ‘third space’ for co-creation when the participants may have no cultural referent for the roles and responsibilities inherent in a market research interaction. Once this third space was established; however, we were able to leverage storytelling and technology to rapidly and co-creatively generate actionable insights....

Valuable Connections: Design Anthropology and Co-creation in Digital Innovation

METTE GISLEV KJÆRSGAARD and RACHEL CHARLOTTE SMITH This paper explores challenges and potentials for innovation and co-creation within an increasingly interconnected and digitalized world, and its affect on ethnographic practices within the field of design and business development. Our discussion is based on material from an interdisciplinary research and design project with a leading computer game developer, exploring opportunities of involving online gaming communities in innovation processes and product development. Based on our case, we argue that in a world with increasingly blurred boundaries between physical, digital and hybrid contexts, as well as design, production and use, we might need to rethink the role of ethnography within user centred design and business development. Here the challenge is less about ”getting closer” to user needs and real-life contexts, through familiarization, mediation, and facilitation, and more about creating a critical theoretically informed distance from which to perceive and reflect...

Friday in Tokyo: Co-creation – Ethnographer to Change Agents

by STUART HENSHALL & DINA MEHTA – Convo How can we move from observation to co-creation? Or, from observer to co-conspirator and change agent? This post shares part of a project design that took that journey. It was Friday in Tokyo. We had been there just six days and this was the second country in thirteen. It was Friday, almost 1:00pm and the Co-creation Workshop with 18 young mums, our clients (8 attending) translators (4) and ourselves (3) was about to begin. We were in a large room. A part had been screened off earlier for “baby care”. The majority of the room was filled with three large stations (large round tables and rolling whiteboards and a large U for 18 people with whiteboard and instructions up the front. Planning: We’d planned the Co-creation Workshop to follow a series of days immersed in-home. We ran a prototype workshop that morning with the local moderation team and translators. After four hours they remained skeptical and not 100% confident about the instructions. We apparently were about to break...

Opting Out Of Stasis: Using Integrated Techniques to Create Sustainable Change and Renewal in Healthcare Organizations

LINDSEY MESSERVY and BETH WERNER In recent times, hospitals and healthcare organizations have become more accepting of using human-centered approaches, including ethnography, to lend insight on how to prevent risk, increase efficiency, improve staff experience, and advance delivery of care. But often times, these approaches lack the tools and techniques needed to carry these insights to implementation. This paper identifies and reflects on the hurdles that make change and innovation difficult and how the integration of practices, such as quantitative, co-creative, and change management, with ethnographic methods can help facilitate responsive and sustainable transformation in healthcare organizations....

Ethnography and the “Age Wave”: Knowledge Capture for Succession Planning

KRISTINE MCKENZIE GENTRY The “age wave,” or aging of the population and concurrent increase in retirees, is creating a loss of knowledge unlike that experienced in the American work force to date. Since many Baby Boomers are loyal employees who have worked for the same employer for several decades, the knowledge, both tacit and explicit, contained within this single generation is vast and integral to the continued success of many organizations and industries. While Knowledge Management (KM) has become a priority for many organizations, several studies have shown that current KM methods and technologies have not proven effective as a means of transferring knowledge between workers. Ethnography offers some advantages as a technique to capture, record, and transfer tacit and explicit knowledge. This paper uses two case studies to examine how ethnography and a co-creative method can b e utilized to assist with knowledge management and succession planning....

What Happens When You Mix Bankers, Insurers, Consultants, Anthropologists and Designers: The Saga of Project FiDJI in France

ALICE PEINADO, MAGDALENA JARVIN and JULIETTE DAMOISEL This essay explores an initiative carried on by a group of three banks , two insurance companies and a consulting firm, European leader in the field of innovation, towards the development of a methodology aimed at innovating through a user-centered approach in design. The project, baptized “Projet FiDJI – Finance, Design et Joie d’Innover”, brought together sponsors of the banking and insurance sectors with ethnographers and designers within an academic lead context. The aim was to develop a methodological approach that would push banks and insurances to shift their focus from the more traditional, marketing lead quantitative studies towards a more qualitative appreciation of their clients. In so doing, it tried to re-position the main strategic approach of the institutions involved from that of product focused companies to user focused, service oriented ones. Project FiDJI was awarded the highly competitive label of “innovative and strategic project” by France’s “Pôle...