Running Hot! 2010 started this afternoon with an Early Career Researcher Symposium on “careers, communication, and the changing research environment” in NZ.

Di McCarthy, Chief Executive for the Royal Society of New Zealand, opened the event by introducing what the RSNZ does, especially in terms of supporting emerging researchers through the new Rutherford Discovery Fellowships (ace!) and Marsden Fund Fast-Start programme (which funds my Counting Sheep project).

As many academic researchers will tell you, our career paths are rarely straight or straight-forward. Robin Peace spoke about her “convoluted” career, starting with Danny Dorling‘s interesting research on why inequality persists and how her interest in social exclusion led her through university teaching and administration, policy work and evaluation. She explained that researchers are generally expected to be curious, persevering, specialised, disciplined, focussed, creative and independent–although most of us are only some of these things, some of the time. (As an aside, I was thrilled to see her illustrate this point with Theo Ellsworth‘s Capacity!) She suggested that the traditionally elite professoriate are now better understood as part of the global “precariat” and New Zealand would do better to support international, multicultural, interdisciplinary, mobile and collaborative work that combines specialist know-how with soft (people) skills; minutia and big-picture research; modesty, pragmatism and practicality; familiarity with natural and urban environments; as well as a genuine sense of, and value for, practice and craftsmanship in our work.

Lisa Matisoo-Smith began talking about how her “convoluted” life–that is, her inability to give clear answers to the questions “who are you?” and “where are you from?”–led to a “convoluted” career in biological anthropology. (I’m pretty sure this is why most anthropologists become anthropologists!) She discussed her research into how ancient animal DNA can be used to track early human migrations, and how she built a career by “occupying” university space or doing the work, getting the money and doing more work until she found that she had a lab of her own. (I also know a few people who have been quite successful at this approach, so it really can work!) More specifically, she spoke at length about her research into academically unpopular topics such as ancient contact between Polynesia and South America, and how difficult it is to find what we aren’t looking for or don’t believe exists. She emphasised the importance of grounded research that actively engages local communities and how it can result in opening up entirely new areas of knowledge and practice. She also stressed the importance of lifelong learning, multidisciplinary work, thinking about old questions or problems in new ways, talking to new people, asking “stupid” questions and trying new things. And last, but not least, she reminded us of how incredibly important it is to be able to explain our research and its relevance to other people–all sorts of people.

Q: How do we make multidisiciplinary/interdisciplinary research work when it’s not supported?

A: Make it happen! Surround yourself with people who support this way of working. If not officially, do it on the side. Find space, make time. And when you’re in charge, make sure others can do it.

My current research investigates relationships amongst people, animals and the land on NZ sheep stations. In the new year I’ll start fieldwork in places likes these:

Sheep Station NZ

Bendigo Merinos flow across the land

Shearing a Merino

Cummunities & Technologies 2011 will take place 29 June – 2 July 2011 at QUT in Brisbane.

Paper proposals are due by 10 December, 2010.

The first workshops have been announced, including ours (below) and others on digital cities, semantic ambient media experience and making sense of Twitter.

Ethnographic Fiction and Speculative Design: Supporting Community Participation in the Development and Implementation of New Technologies

Anne Galloway (Victoria University of Wellington), Ben Kraal (Queensland University of Technology) and Jo Tacchi (Queensland University of Technology)

“In the tale, in the telling, we are all one blood. Take the tale in your teeth, then, and bite till the blood runs, hoping it’s not poison; and we will all come to the end together, and even to the beginning: living, as we do, in the middle.” – Ursula K. Le Guin

While pervasive technology development and implementation proceed apace, the potential social and cultural implications—including the ways in which end-user communities can be active participants in these processes—remain thoroughly underexplored. The inherent invisibility of the technological infrastructure required to support these emerging networks makes it difficult to identify which objects around us might have computational capacities, or what those capacities might be. Without that sort of tangible knowledge, it is also difficult to imagine how such networks stand to reconfigure individual identities and social interactions, or how access, data privacy and ownership might be managed. Manifesting this knowledge in concrete, but not necessarily real, ways can be seen as a crucial first step in providing communities the means to productively engage such issues and concerns. This full-day workshop aims to explore how grounded ethnographic and action research methods can be transformed into fictional and speculative designs that provide people the kinds of experiences and tools that can lead to direct community action in the development and implementation of new technologies.

Hope to see you there!

My plans to participate in the “Speculation, Design, Public and Participatory Technoscience: Possibilities and Critical Perspectives“ (pdf) track at EASST 2010 were foiled, so I was happy to read Nicolas Nova’s post on Designing alternative presents and speculative futures in which he talks about a design matrix presented by James Auger:

“At the origin we have the here and now; everyday life and the real products that are available on the high street. The lineage of these products can be traced back in time to where the technology became available to iterate them beyond their current form. The technology element on the left hand side represents research and development work, the higher the line the more emergent the technology and the longer and less predictable the route to everyday life (domestication). As we move to the right of the diagram and into futures we see that speculative design futures exist as a projection of the lineage; they are developed using a methodology that consciously focuses on contemporary public understanding and desires to make these speculations both tangible and desirable. Alternative presents step out of the lineage at some poignant time in the past to re-imagine our technological present. These designs challenge and question the existing systems and objects that arise from current modes of manufacture.” (emphasis mine)

Auger’s use of the phrase “alternative presents” resonates deeply with me for two reasons. First, I come from a discipline that showed me so many different ways of doing and being in the world that I never doubt that we can be other than what we are. (In an inspiring lecture, Anthropology and the Passion of the Political, anthropologist Ghassan Hage asks how the discipline can help us do just that.) Second, my research deals with emerging technologies precisely because I’m interested in identifying those “poignant times” when change can happen, and my interest in speculative design is driven by my belief that imagined futures can be used today to build different tomorrows.

What’s given me new food for thought is Auger’s claim that the word “speculative” is problematic because it suggests that the designed artefact doesn’t exist, and if it doesn’t exist then people won’t take it seriously. Given my commitment to applied sociology and anthropology, it’s very important that my design work also encourages and supports direct action. In fact, I’ve asked many designers how they know their speculative/fictional/critical designs are successful, and I’ve never actually received a satisfactory response. One of the things I plan to do with the Counting Sheep project is find ways to systematically evaluate the impact of our future scenarios, and I imagine it will be the most difficult part of the whole project. But I do believe that good future scenarios are like good science fiction: they help us understand the present and orient us in new directions for the future. And that means that the words–as well as the objects and images–we use to tell our stories are crucial to their success. So now I think I’m going to spend a little time with the OED…

In 1971′s Design for the Real World, Victor Papanek proclaimed that “all men [sic] are designers” and “all that we do, almost all the time, is design.” This understanding of design is broadly consistent with what I learned as an anthropologist; Homo habilis (“handy man”) was the first species of the genus Homo, originally distinguished by the design and use of tools. (We now know that pre-hominids developed tools.) Aligning design with some sort of innate creative ability or desire makes sure that it is placed within the realm of basic “humanness,” inseparable from everything that we do.

In contrast, defining design as a professional activity clearly separates particular aspects of this desire and ability, and ascribes them to particular people with particular kinds of training and jobs. As Guy Julier puts it in The Culture of Design,  some individuals and groups “have attempted to identify themselves and their practice as something which bestows things, pictures, words and places with ‘added value.’ Design becomes the range of goods, spaces and services that are shaped by the intervention of professional designers. It no longer refers to the countless objects which are formed and consumed within everyday life and which do not, of themselves, carry that level of cultural capital.” (p. 40) But these values and beliefs can be conflicting and contradictory. Professional designers, like Bourdieu’s new petite bourgeoisie, act as “cultural intermediaries” that create and perpetuate hierarchical distinctions and tastes consistent with consumer capitalism and social conservatism. And yet, like the new petite bourgeoisie, designers also “desire to maintain a more ‘creative’ drive, unfettered by procedures and hierarchies.” Together, these practices can result in a “self-marginalizing” professional and social identity. (p. 45)

In “Cultural Capital: A Thesaurus for Teaching Design,” Megan Strickfaden and Ann Heylighen describe how design educators rely on the use of examples from design practice and thought as a primary means of demonstrating their cultural capital in the classroom and, by extension, enculturing students into a shared worldview that reinforces design-specific knowledge and practice. Examples from outside design are also used in teaching, but usually only for inspirational purpose. The desire to “teach students to control and direct their inspiration, instead of passively waiting until they are struck by a bright idea,” (p. 127) can be seen to add structure or rigour to the more generalised creative process described above without rejecting the privilege of “free” creativity. This kind of reflexive agency is a distinguishing feature of professional design education, although how this differs from reflexive social science deserves further exploration.

What really concerns me is that when other domains of knowledge and practice are seen as things that can be controlled and directed, if not completely opposed or excluded, design tends to encourage asymmetrical and hierarchical forms of interaction and exchange. When this is the case, non-design knowledge and practice are only deemed valuable insofar as they reinforce existing design knowledge and practice or, put a bit differently, if they do not threaten the cultural capital of designers. All professions, to greater and lesser extents, are protective of what they consider to be their unique skills and contributions to the world. But it is only within design research that I’ve seen an explicit distinction made between research by design and research for design. In the latter, non-designers are most often relegated to the position of supporting cast; interesting and useful, but not to be confused with the lead actors. And when this happens, I believe that research collaboration and design innovation are effectively impossible. But more on that later…

Questions for further research:

• What are the differences and similarities amongst research by design, research for design and research on design?
• Is “good” design research something that only designers can do? Who decides?

I’m very privileged and excited to announce that “Counting Sheep: NZ Merino Wool in an Internet of Things” has been awarded a three-year research grant from the Royal Society of New Zealand‘s Marsden Fund Fast-Start programme.

“The Marsden Fund invests in investigator-initiated research aimed at generating new knowledge. It supports excellent research projects that advance and expand the knowledge base and contribute to the development of people with advanced skills in New Zealand. The Marsden Fund encourages New Zealand’s leading researchers to explore new ideas that may not be funded through other funding streams and fosters creativity within the research, science and technology system.”

The $300,000 award will be used to support multi-disciplinary international research activities and fund a student in the School of Design’s Master of Design Innovation programme.

Special thanks to the Research Office of Victoria University and the School of Design for their support. I’d also like to thank Dr Jean Burgess for her unfailing encouragement and valuable feedback on my proposal, and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and thought-provoking questions. I hope to do everyone proud in the next few years. Thanks again.

Update: 2010 Marsden Fund Awards

Given my Webstock Mini presentation,”iPads Are For Ladies: A Brief History of Feminine Hygiene Products,” it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I instantly clicked on a link to Steve Portigal‘s “Lunapads or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Discomfort” post at Core 77.

I have to say that I found the tone and content of his cultural commentary on gender and menstruation so incredibly off-putting (hot lesbians?! are you frakking serious?!) that I had to read the piece several times before I could get to the point where I was able to draw out some ideas that could help my research and teaching. But there are some important observations in his article that I think are worth acknowledging, supporting and developing further.

First of all, Portigal does a good job of demonstrating how quickly things can go downhill if a designer is tasked with designing something she or he doesn’t understand or appreciate. While empathy is something that social scientists and designers usually understand to be necessary for working with people who are different from us, teaching and learning empathy is notoriously difficult. (On the other hand, one of my favourite qualitative researchers, Patti Lather, makes an interesting case against empathy that’s well worth considering.)

More to the point, Portigal makes clear what can happen when we encounter things that don’t fit into our worldviews: we marginalise or dismiss them. He challenges designers to question how they react to discomfort and to ask if or how their discomfort leads to the marginalisation of particular needs, target users and design solutions. And that’s an awesome challenge!

In my classes, I try to teach students to treat ethnographic work as an opportunity to learn with, and from, other people. Portigal calls this learning opportunity a gift, and he goes on to describe something I see happen over and over in design research:

“Unwrapping this gift, we see that real people don’t use the proper terms for our features, don’t understand how our products work, and don’t actually care about what we want them to care about. And so we marginalize the messenger instead of embracing the message.” [my emphasis]

Now, the exclusion of “anomalous” data is relatively common in science-based and quantitative research, and some of us regularly dismiss people and ideas we don’t like. But what’s important here is acknowledging that it happens and acknowledging that changing this behaviour is hard.

“Consider the eureka-evoking experience of discovering a new customer attitude and uncovering a new behavior, and then coming to grips with the opportunity this affords. That forces everyone in the organization – at some level – to examine their personal and organizational values, hidden beliefs and unarticulated expectations around the fundamentals that get them up every morning. You’re damn skippy that’s going to be uncomfortable.”

Yup, and in my opinion, worth every second of discomfort. As the lovely Lunagals put it, “change and progress are often accompanied by discomfort.” And in the end, Portigal notes that “addressing this discomfort (and the limitations it gives rise to) is a process” and that “recognizing these breaks with reality takes practice, advocacy and leadership.”  I completely agree.

But no matter how much I appreciate Portigal’s call to action, I find his interpretation of the Lunapads advert seriously undermines my confidence in his ability to practice, advocate and lead this charge.

First of all, I think that admitting that this advert makes you uncomfortable is a great place to start a conversation. But I fail to see how calling out those “empathy-free women and overly-enlightened men” who aren’t uncomfortable with it helps make a case against marginalisation. And I was truly flabbergasted when Portigal went on to describe the women in the advert, and his reaction to them, like this:

“[H]ere we have two enthusiastic, potentially sexually aggressive women … If I’m accurate in picking up (subtle for someone with my too-too-straight life) lesbian cues, then even more so. I’m kinda freaked out by these women, but mmm, sexy.”

If Portigal is icked out by pad adverts, I’m really icked out by his attitudes towards women and his apparent belief that identifying one’s biases adequately compensates for the effects they can have. Perhaps it is as simple (and complicated) as having different political views, but it’s my belief that effective leadership actually models the change we want to see. To this end I think that Portigal’s case study works better as one man’s journey towards (partial) self-discovery than it does in providing an example for me to follow.

After all, asking that we bring on the discomfort requires that we articulate concrete ways of doing it that don’t create further marginalisation. And perhaps the first step in that direction is moving beyond simply admitting our biases and limitations to identifying how they affect others and how we might change them.