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Week 6: Interdisciplinary Insights – New Approaches and Creative Partnerships

Updated: Sep 27, 2023

Objectives:

  1. Research and analyse how interdisciplinary collaboration can form exciting partnerships in graphic design;

  2. Research and analyse new genres of design specialism;

  3. Identify a discipline and specialist who could help you to reflect from a dynamically opposing position on a specific problem;

  4. Find, manage and record your cross-disciplinary discussion in relation to the specific problem;

  5. Manage your independent learning effectively.


RESEARCH //

Lecture

Louise Harries specialises in Material Futures, which is the intersection of craft, science and technology to explore possible futures through a transdisciplinary practice, with expert collaborations.

Transdisciplinary refers to more than one branch of knowledge. In the lecture, she refers to the Bauhaus school of art, which had an interdisciplinary approach between art and engineering science - students would collaborate to explore form, materials, tools and construction. How has Bauhaus influenced interdisciplinary today?


Red Rains of Change 2017

I was very interested in Harries' 'red rains of change' project, which triggers red rain wherever pollution rose above the EU legal limits, which occurred on 5th January 2017. It acts as both a protest and heath warning to London citizens. The drone is equipped with the bacteria P.syringae to induce rain (a natural pollution suppressor) and algea spores from the lichen T.annulata that turns this rain red, the science behind this invention is backed up by scientists at UCL and the University of Montana.


She came into regular contact with Dr Ian Medway (a lung toxicologist), Elliott Treehorn (air quality manager) and PhD students (bacteria). She found that communicating with people from a different disciplinary uses a different language, so I need to makes sure I do research on their language. In order to make each interview as efficient as possible is to make notes on what I want from each conversation, how to approach it and how to go about it.

The 'expert' in this video is clearly Louise playing dress-up and responding to her own questions, however, this has given me a fresh perspective on how I could respond to this brief; she is using conversations in her research and acting out the words. It is probably due to ethical reasons or time restrictions that has stopped her from showing a recording of the real experts, so if I chose to interview a vulnerable person, would I need to do the same as Louise has done in this video?


My First Subconscious Shopper

Subconscious Shopper aims at tackling textiles and environmental problems. It seeks to engage in conversations around technology ethics and concepts of free will in a consumer society by showing the public how neuromarketing works. Neuromarketing is where you study biometric responses towards advertising and brands, which was used to study consumer behaviour and identifying factors that contribute towards the problem.

She collaborated with people that specialises in brain computer interface to help build the EEG prototype, however, she also used her neighbour's children to gain feedback and make sure it appealed to them as the target audience. I think she aimed it at children because they are the next generation of shoppers that influence their parent's purchasing decisions, and they are more exposed to positive brand association.


Talking to Dr Medway also gave her ethical perspective on her 'my first subconscious shopper' project, which is why she used her own brain waves and kept everyone else's anonymous rather than letting the data be shown live. So it is important to make notes on the boundaries and how you have adapted the project around it.


Bill Gates

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is a non-profit fighting poverty, disease and inequity around the world.

Louise mentions how working with other specialisms allows you to take your idea and adapt it to the broader considerations. Bill Gates didn't collaborate with anyone, which stopped his water project 'PlayPump' from being usable to the African public because there was no holistic consideration.

Playpumps involve children playing on merry-go-rounds, which converts into energy and generate water (Tom Murphy, 2013). The problem was Playpumps need to be spun 27 hours a day in order to provide water for the 2,500 people in the community, which meant playing turned into labour (Guardian, 2009).


This shows how collaboration saves time and money, and also informs your project in the right direction to make a large impact in the world. Additionally, Laura Freschi (2010) attempted to contact the charities responsible for installing the PLayPumps (Case Foundation) to explain why only 13 out of 42 were working, however. they refused an interview. This is an excellent example as to why it is important to reach out to more than one person, but I also think it is important to reach out in a way that is less intimidating. The Guardian (2009) has clarified this problem by stating the project was too complex for local maintenance and too reliant on child-labour, which also shows lack of research into the community environment.


Recommendations:

  • Policy Lab

  • Design Against Crime

  • Designers on Holiday

  • Dave Hakken's open source Precious Plastics Community

  • Maker Spaces

  • Fab Labs


Comedy Carpet in Blackpool

Comedy Carpet is a £2.6m collaborative project between Gordon Young and 'Why Not Associates' group, containing over 160,00 granite letters embedded into concrete to celebrate Blackpool's love of British comedy. This is permanently installed in front of the Blackpool Tower, where the public can see the project from a different perspective.


Gordon Young is a UK artist that has been specialising in public art for over 20 years. Gordon has a collaborative approach to all his project, which has enabled him to grow a network of architects, graphic designers, engineers, code breakers, historians, etc. In his interview with Design Boom (Andy Butler, 2013), he says the key to good collaboration is empathy and respect. Before collaborating with why not associate, they met at the art's festival where they were carrying out seperate projects, so both have similar interests and natural interaction with one another.


Andy Altmann is the co-founder of the group 'Why Not Associates', which is celebrated for their experimental approach to design.

Letterpress
Linoprinting

They started their process by studying how type and their structure was used to promote comedy. You can see how the design how as the Letterpress dead out, Linoprinting changed design.


There were a lot of sustainable considerations within this project as the computer would reconfigure the designs to save granite and water pressure was used to cut through the granite. Other considerations involved was making the project last longer, which involved making sure there was enough space inbetween each tile for when it expands in the cold weather, and making sure the dye wasn't manmade; manmade dyes fade within two years, which is why chemists had to get involved for this process.


Troika

  • I liked the V & A project

  • Plants on the building detects diseases - a visual warning. Collaborates with scientists

  • Spinning project - collaborate with structure engineer.

Do designers make a positive impact to the community?

Mexican olympics case study



WORKSHOP CHALLENGE //


What are the advantages of interdisciplinary provocation and how could you utilise this approach in your practice?

Put theory into practice and spend an hour brainstorming ideas based on the following challenge and who you would choose to work with.

  1. Identify a discipline and specialist who could help you to reflect from a dynamically opposing position on a specific problem.

  2. Pick one of the issues below and discuss with your chosen individual how you may solve the challenge. This should ideally be recorded as an audio podcast. Our interest in this also relates to the way in which different disciplines discuss an issue and their manner and approach in communicating differently, as well as how you would capture this.

  3. As a guide, please evolve your own strategy for bridging the questions. Equally, you may wish to also consider the core issues: how would your specialism solve this and how different is this to the expected design thinker?

  4. Do not forget to consider the communication style you would use to encourage interdisciplinary dialogue.

  5. Finally, how do you summarise these findings in a way that is acceptable to both collaborators?


Interview someone outside the design sector. How would you talk to them? What language do you need. Interview needs to be recorded. Contact more than one person. Can interview relatives or neighbours if wanted. Design questions


Subjects to consider:

  • Improving mental health in young adults

  • Reducing pollution in inner cities

  • Encouraging greater engagement with galleries and museums

  • Reducing isolation and loneliness

  • Promoting greater community cohesion (conflict in communities)


My first thoughts are between community cohesion and mental health in younger adults. Mental health because it is an area Ive always been interested in. And community cohesion because I am considering creating on online community for my business plan, so would like to learn more.


How could I relate this to my business plan in brief 1?

Mental Health in young adults

Maybe I could be more specific by asking about link between mental health and learning disabilities?


Community Cohesion

Types of conflicts in communities:

  • Age

  • Race

  • Identity

  • Religion


Reducing pollution in inner cities

  • What kind of pollution is this? Noise, plastic, smog, etc?

  • Could interview my boss - she runs an online community to reduce fast fashion.


What industries would have perspective on this subject?

Mental Health - GPs, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, peer workers, therapists, recovery ad rehabition workers, counsellors. https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/servicesandsupport/whos-who-in-mental-health-services#general-practitioners


Mencap has an online community and especialises in learning disability and mental health- https://www.mencap.org.uk/learning-disability-explained/research-and-statistics/health/mental-health Looking at their website has made me consider the wording of Brief 1 when presenting my business plan as learning disability and learning difficulty are two different things. Additionally, this has also influenced my research because now I will be looking for specialists in 'mental health and learning difficulty'.


Community cohesion - Police, Social Cohesion Specialist, Corp B employers, The Local Strategic Partnership (LSP), Elected Members, community cohesion programme. http://www.tedcantle.co.uk/publications/015%20Community%20cohesion%20seven%20steps%20%20Community%20Cohesion%20Unit%20.pdf


Pollution - Eco Charities, PhD


Why can't I go for all 3 subjects? I know I need to connect these subjects to my business plan, so it would be easier to design more than one interview due; Im spending more time researching how to communicate with people rather than wasting time figuring out how to go deeper into a specific subject; these subjects are quite open.


Community cohesion for learning disabilities



Promoting community cohesion: the role of extended services. TDA 2010 (Training and Development Agency for Schools).

Case study: The Ashley School, Suffolk

The Ashley School is a special school with a college status for 127 students with moderate learning difficulties. Through collaboration with other schools, the weekly after-school sessions help break down barriers between students and the volunteering stand has a positive impact on the local community.


The school has started providing support for students at risk of becoming unemployed or not moving onto the next stages of education by making the decision making process easier and informing them about life subjects such as health and drugs.


Case Study: Fiveways and Fairmeads special schools, Somerset

These are special schools for students aged between 4-19 with moderate to severe learning difficulties. Coffee mornings are offered to parents, which also involves guidance on topics chosen by them.


how learning difficulties are a barrier in communities?


  • The evidence points to a well-established link between socio- economic deprivation and the prevalence of mild or moderate learning difficulties (Emerson 1997). The link is reflected in lower income, poorer housing, higher unemployment and a greater reliance on welfare benefits. Some evidence of a link between severe learning difficulties and poverty has been reported in a US study (Baumeister et al 1993, noted in Hatton and Emerson, 2001 forthcoming)

  • Much of this applies to people with dyslexia — our community faces higher dropout rates, mental health issues, abuse and homelessness, un/underemployment- and the list goes on.




Contact

  • Alan Johnson, Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Guidance on the Duty to Promote Community Cohesion (DCSF, 2007)

  • Jo Armitage - Consultant for Specific Learning Difficulties

  • Developmental Disorders (Learning Difficulties) in Education and Employment - a group for researchers on Linkedin

  • Phil (friend) - he has severe dyslexia and dropped out of school. He does fencing / landscape work.

  • Adam Nash (friend) - He has experience working with dyslexics at Frazer Nash, a carpet and floor company. He mentioned how his employee didn't tell him he was dyslexic, so he couldn't bring changes in place for a smoother process. I think looking into this


Final objective:

In brief 1, my concept was to create a consultancy that helps employers understand what systems/ techniques need to be in place in order to create a smoother workflow. However, looking back on one conversation I had a few weeks ago, it seems one barrier is employees not telling employers that they require special needs.


So, my aim for this week is to search for employers and talk about this barrier. I have Nash as a contact, however, since my consultancy is aimed at the creative industry, I should speak with local marketing companies. Although, maybe speaking to Nash would give me perspective on non-creative industries and give me an idea on how learning difficulties impact those sort of jobs.


Questions:

  1. What do you do when your employees don't tell you that they have learning difficulties? And has this happened often?

  2. How does this impact your work flow?

  3. Do you think there is still a stigma about learning difficulties? Doing my research, I noticed that learning difficulties are still mistaken as learning disability, which are completely different things.

  4. Are there any other barriers that might stop them from disclosing their difficulties? Because some people can go through life not knowing they have a learning disability. In my experience, I only started noticing it at 22 when life presented new challenges such as having to write a dissertation or keeping up with work demands.

  5. What do you think needs to be done to help employees feel more comfortable disclosing this information?

Ideas:

  • In my experience of receiving my diagnosis report, it took me a while before I could read all of it because the document isn't designed for people with low attention or memory problems; the advise for the individual is often hidden amongst all the test results and analysis. So would a service that redesigns diagnosis reports help people identify what they need to do to improve?

  • people working in the creative industries are three times more likely to suffer from mental health problems than the general public.


Reaching out

Message to Adam Nash

hey Adam, I was wondering whether you would be interested in helping me with my project? I am suppose to record an interview with someone from a different industry and thought you would be perfect because you had some interesting comments on learning difficulties within the workplace and how some employees dont tell you they have special needs. The purpose of this interview would be to inform myself about your industry, identify problems and come up with ideas together on how to solve it. Would you be interested


Public Facebook & LinkedIn post

Evening everyone!

I am a student looking to interview employers that have experience of working with employees with learning difficulties such as dyslexia. This interview will be recorded through audio.


We will talk about your industry, your experiences of working with employees and identify barriers in the workplace/recruitment process.


Please comment or PM if interested in participating


Sarah Lincoln

Sarah Lincoln is a theatre director , NLP Practioner, Agile Coach, CEO of AvatarJo and Associate Lecturer at Falmouth University. AvatarJo is a bank of actors that allow people to practise different situations (interviews, consultation, difficult conversations with a loved one, etc).


Current roles within AvatarJo include Administration Manager (finances and admin), Learning Co-Director, Web Application Developer, Experience Team Project Manager. Before the interview, I will examine what each job requires and see whether I can come up with questions regarding the process and how to overcome learning barriers.


My own experience working with Sarah at AvatarJo was as a Marketing assistant. This was before I found out I had dyslexia, so I didn't have the techniques in place to make the communication a smoother process. I often had to ask instructions to be repeated and was often asked to repeat the instructions after hearing them - I recall one time I said the words backwards.


Reaching out -

Me - Hi Sarah! Thank you so much for reacting to my post! What days are you available for a web chat?

Sarah - Hi Tramaine, next week some time, can you message me on Tuesday and I can confirm a time then?




Questions

Hello, I am Tramaine Berry, a student of Falmouth University and part-time marketing executive with Swopz Shop.


And today I will be conducting an interview with Sarah Green to talk about her experiences with working with employees with learning difficulties, discuss barriers within the industry, and potential collaborative tools used to help with the

workplace.


Hi Sarah, how are you?

  1. Could you introduce yourself and tell me more about your industry and the story behind AvatarJo?

  2. Did you start off collaborating with practitioners or was this later on as the business grew?

  3. So in AvartarJo, there are a lot of admin roles to play such as Marketing, Web Development, Finance, etc. When you do come across employees with learning difficulties, do you have a work system in place? Is there a preferred collaborative software that helps with this?

  4. I ask this because when I was working with you in the marketing team, I didn't realise I had dyslexia, and I found there were a few things in the working process that helped a lot such as verbally repeating instructions, listing achievements at the end of the day and having a system where everything was in one place. Is that normally how you work with people?

  5. As a lecturer, are the learning strategies different and if not do you think more needs to be done in the workplace?

  6. What do you do when your employees don't tell you that they have learning difficulties or don't know they have them? And has this happened often? How does this impact your work flow?

  7. From an employer's perspective, when you are going through the recruitment process, what are the general thoughts when someone does disclose that they have a learning difficulty? Do you think there is still a stigma? What can be done by either fellow employers or employees to get past this?

  8. When you were a start-up, I can imagine it's difficult organising people at first, and developing a system that works. What advise would you give other start-ups?

At the moment, this is acting as research for my business plan, which is a consultancy that helps employers (especially start-ups) develop a working system suitable for learning difficulties because people with learning difficulties don't tend to sustain their job for very long, and this is mainly down to lack of consideration for how they process things.


Based on what we've discussed so far, is there anything you would like to add? Would be interesting to hear if those experiences have influenced your management of people and how you work in AvatarJo.



Notes from interview:

  • Software: Trello helps with project management and very visual

  • Strategy: Understand how the person works and understand what you need from them. Two-way problem solving, its not just up to the manager to problem solve.

  • Transparent process. Feedback loop. Teaching good habits when working as a team.

  • Checking-back helps clarify instructions for employee and gives manager an idea on how well they communicate.

  • When people don't know they have dyslexia, Sarah feels it depends on the attitude of the employee, be humble and curious - dont that your work seriously or be too precious about it, be willing to adapt your learning and skills. Look at the strengths, and ask yourself whether there is enough work for that person.

  • Does the employer ave the resources to help employees succeed in the business. Fear factor for the employer of getting it wrong.

  • Conversation about the ways you are going to work - what processes are you use to. Communication is key - always aim to improve communication and schedule conversations

  • Simplified information is unusual for dyslexics, so I need to ask the employee how they prefer to work. Core is reducing anxiety.


REFLECTION //

Louise Harries talked about how collaboration with different disciplines can create a holistic approach towards the project you are doing by adding more context to how it would be used and what kind of factors need to be considered for it to be a sustainable/concrete idea- she uses the PlayPump project as an example due to the lack of understanding on how the community is going to maintain this and ethical issues around child-labour.

Additionally, the collaboration process also comes from your target audience, which allows you to test out what they are looking for in a product or service, and gain perspective on a specific subject. She also talked about the need to consider what I want to achieve when interviewing people, which is very useful when designing the interview questions. Other advise included researching people's work before reaching out to them, so you can talk about their work, but I think it also gives you a better idea of what kind of information you could achieve in the upcoming interview. Looking at Louise's red rain video did make me question whether my workshop would allow me to act out a transcript if there were any ethical issues involved.


I thought about linking this week to my first brief so I spend less time contemplating what my interview was going to be about because the subjects given were very broad. Once I established I wanted to speak to employers, a few came to mind were in my network; I wanted to gain a employer perspective. It was easy coming up with the questions, however, I had to cater them to the interviewee's knowledge on learning difficulties - would they actually know that learning difficulties have a hard time getting use to the working system once they start their job? Additionally, I also had to break down my double questions and reduce my opinion/ experiences of working with the interviewee because I don't want to influence their answer and I want to make sure they don't get selective over which question they answer.


REFERENCES //

Lecture

PlayPumps


Research

Comedy Carpet

Troika

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