Intertwi­ngle

In order to gather relevant data about work experiences, we split into two groups, one focusing on workshop activities and the other experiment activities.

We aligned them in reference to Lockton D. and others' Tangible Thinking: Materialising how we imagine and understand systems, experiences, and relationshipsin which their half-day workshop asked how we can use methods drawn from design, art, and craft, informed by interdisciplinary and systemic design thinking, to materialise not just envisioned ‘things’, but abstract or invisible ideas and relationships. In particular, they paid attention to the materials used, and their properties, alongside the affordances of physical modelling itself, as a way of externalising thinking in ways which could be shared and discussed together.

We conducted different experiments to investigate how people interact and collaborate with each other under varying circumstances and environments:

AirDrop your favourite photo

We came up with an idea of using Airdrop to send photos to random people at the LCC library and canteen. On the photo we prompt those people to also share some of their photos, just to see if people are willing to interact with strangers in the same room. We found out that only about half of the people accepted the photo, but most of them are not willing to share their photo back.

Share your favourite Song

We start thinking of ways to bring together people with different backgrounds/interests. Linking back to our personal experience, we believe music, movie, and games bring people together the fastest. We tested this idea by putting up a bulletin board in the canteen corridor. This is the result we get; people are very generous to share.

MA UX & User Interaction

During our discussion, we realized that despite our MAUX classroom and MA Interaction classroom being so close, there was little to no interaction between students from both courses. To encourage engagement and bridge the gap, we then designed this as a way for the students to interact, communicate, and tell stories in a natural way.

Our first stage of experimentation was to try and align the MA User Experience class and the MA User Interaction design' to get us to collaborate together. The way we experimented with this was first, to try out an common board that anyone from both courses could interact with and seeing what the level of engagement comes with it. We were not intervening but we were fully letting it happen.

If this did not work, we would then have confirmation that within this specific scenario, an external object like a board did not encourage interaction as much as perhaps any another method we could try. We were basically testing out various methods of collaboration with ma interaction design to see first‐hand what works and what doesn't.

We were also aware that it were in a University environment and we would most probably get different results in an office space, but by testing both we gathered valuable data and ideas as to what we could make, that is fun, engaging and really works in every situation or space.

Questions & Answers workshop

Team‐Tac‐Toe

Metaphor Workshop

The metaphor workshop helped us understand how people around us view their world, what their beliefs and cultures are. It encouraged them to think deeper about their own selves and their working mannerisms. For example, a group of film students did this workshop, the DOP described their conflict like the central line, where everyone was yelling at one another but no one could hear anything. This helped the group understand that they need to listen to one another more.

Insights from the activities

• Engaging in activities that are enjoyable can effectively enhance interaction and foster the initial stages of a collaborative relationship.
• People are more willing to share personal information anonymously in public settings and prefer indirect interaction with strangers rather than face-to-face interaction.
• People are less willing to interact when they feel the information reception is unequal.
• In a public setting, individuals often find themselves hesitant to approach others due to uncertainty about their availability.
• Any quick activity just should not take too long.
• Maybe the size of the chart was intimidating and that is why the Team-Tac-Toe activity did not yield any results.

With insights from the experiment activities and workshops, we had an Crazy 8's ideating session where we came up with ideas from 5 minute–10 sketches session.

Amidst questions on how to make smarter decisions before the mid-point reviews, we had an evening video conferencing call with John through which we realised the following:

• Do some design work this coming week.
• Research work is great but diffused (not targeted enough). There was a lot going on.
• Creating lot of work for yourself with too much research for example: "here is what I want to find out" and asking the right kind of questions.
• Make some choices on what is useful to you and what is not useful to you.
• The conveyor belt should be treated as a metaphor.
• Is there an idea with which all are excited for?
• The convear belt and match making. What is a distribution Chanel? Matchmaking becomes the conveyor. (l never knew this person before)
• How many conveyor metaphor you can think of? (3 way football, Circular).
• What is the scale of our design's reach?
• Idea for matchmaking. Dematerialised of conveyor. Supermarket Nematic tubes
• Levels of seniority rather than physical?
• Kaizen Toyota. A Chanel to make it better.
• Playful thing going on.
• We had to stop all forms of research at this point.
• Need to have an idea first. First write we need to find out? What people like about things?
• You'll be less fragmented if you have know what you want to do.
• You are asking general questions about their workplace.
• Don't show your data, Show what you find it.
• An interpersonal encounter. (Low-fi).

Here was the feedback from Week Three's round‐table presentations:

• The interaction design poster did not have a clear prompt message and we could have though about designing it in a much better non-excluding way.
• To think about utilising more visuals.
• It was good that we had set ourselves up a place to fail with some of the workshop activities than heading straight to the council or other workplaces.
• In what other ways could we explore interactions?
• The workshops were not really workshops but more of a testing or experimentation phase.
• Our workshop methods were a little restrictive and unconventional for the people we were involving.
• Looking at precidents or others ways of attracting people for example putting on a t‐shirt, grafitti, tags, invitations over coffee and other incentives.
• How do you make a communal space more inviting?
• How would you smuggle in your personal story, referenced from Mengdie's narration of her friend's work experience.

Lockton, D. et al. (2020) “Tangible Thinking: Materialising how we imagine and understand systems, experiences, and relationships,” ResearchGate [Preprint]. Available here.