Cense

Innovation to Impact

Better Data Collection

by

With so many people working from home and using their communication devices to do many of the tasks we once did in other ways or are now doing much more often or differently it’s tempting to think: it’s a perfect time to reach people for my research project.

That might be true, but it’s also fraught with problems. Before you set out on your ethnographic journey through the lives of your stakeholders or prep Surveymonkey for its journey through the jungles of the Internet we suggest you take a pause and consider the following before venturing forward.

  1. Context counts. Every time we engage in social research we must account for context. In the current situation with a global pandemic, we don’t know what the context is. The epidemiological, social policy, economic, and communications landscape is changing day-to-day and is influenced on a global level. With so many areas changing at once, the ability to gauge or even state the context becomes nearly impossible without resorting to over-generalized or vague statements like “complex” or “uncertain”.
  2. ” Seeing is not the same as looking”. Physician and economist Anupam Jena provides a great example of how we can miss the forest for the trees without examining some of the things that are hidden in plain sight. In times of profound transformation, we might need to re-think what it is we see as that will shape what questions we ask, what data we gather, and what answers we discover.
  3. User-experience. What is the state of mind of those who are answering your survey or responding to your interview? You might be speaking to someone who hasn’t left their house in three weeks. They might have people nearby all the time. This will determine the willingness or ability to respond, the kind of answers that are provided, and the openness of the response (for example, people might not want to share highly personal data on a shared computer or where people might see them entering or speaking about it).
  4. Sensemaking. When we don’t understand the context or its entirely new we look for what we know. The challenge right now is that we don’t know what it is that we’re looking at. Unless our research or evaluation work is focused on the now and understanding how and what we are doing at this moment, about this moment, and for this moment we risk developing data that is examined through the lens of history (what we’ve done before), which will be another context altogether. We’ll be making sense of the past through the lens of today.
  5. Attention. Are we paying attention? When so much of what we are exposed to now is coming through screens — big and small — there is a likelihood that we are reading things quickly. Electronic reading is not the same as reading paper-based text and tends to encourage skimming. When what we have read is — save for the back of the cereal box at breakfast — almost entirely digital (for many of us) the likelihood of instructions being skimmed might be higher. Proceed with caution.
  6. Health. Lastly, how well are we? When the effects of being inside, isolated, and perhaps exposed to a virus are real, present and pervasive, your audience might not be in the state where the depth and quality of thought are what we need to get the responses we want. Many of us are not our usual selves these days and our responses will reflect that.

See differently, think differently and that goes for how we assess and do our social research.

Photo by Stanislav Kondratiev on Unsplash

What is design thinking? A look at universities

by

Our principal, Dr. Cameron Norman, was recently interviewed for University Affairs magazine on the topic of design thinking. Speaking with journalist Tim Johnson, Dr. Norman discussed what design and designers offer those seeking to tackle complex, thorny problems.

[Dr Norman] notes that designers, especially product designers, are typically experts in conceptualizing problems and solving them– ideal skills for tackling a wide range of issues, from building a better kitchen table to mapping out the plans on a large building. “The field of design is the discipline of innovation,” he says. “[Design thinking] is about taking these methods, tools and ideas, and applying them in other areas.”

The concept of design thinking is something that’s quite new within the academic world and Johnson’s article highlights some of the academic work that is taking place in universities and beyond to understand the role that design thinking can play in tackling complex, even wicked problems.

What presents challenges and opportunities for academia is that problems and design thinking require, by necessity, collaboration and interdisciplinary contributions:

Proponents of DT posit that, with its emphasis on teamwork and its problem-based approach, design thinking is particularly well-suited to solving “wicked problems” – those big, ill-defined, complex, multi-faceted issues that don’t have a clear solution. U of T’s Dr. Norman points to climate change as an example. “There’s no climate change discipline,” he says. “We need everyone from scientists to citizens to politicians. And within universities, you have geography and sociology and biology – you name it – there’s somebody who can play a role.”

However, it’s the approach to the problems itself that also changes the perspective as noted by Greg Van Alstyne from OCAD University’s sLab:

[Design thinking] focuses on collective goals and places a premium on sustainability, community, culture and the empowerment of people, says Greg Van Alstyne, director of research and co-founder of the Strategic Innovation Lab, or sLab, at OCAD University. “It means you go about your problem-solving in a more holistic way. We can say ‘human-centered,’ but it’s actually ‘life-centered,’

By taking a systems perspective on the problem, the problem solvers and the solutions, design thinking is opening up new opportunities for academia and business alike. Indeed, the future of both institutions might be designed quite differently as design thinking moves between them, through them and from the outside to the mainstream.