The brief.
Using provided topics, we reflected on our tool and how well it fulfilled our design purpose.
The purpose:
The purpose of my tool was to design a professional development experience for NSCAD’s faculty and technicians to address problem areas generated from multi-stakeholder roundtables called Learning Circles which took place from mid-November to mid-December 2022. The tool is designed to encourage solutions to specific problems of community, engagement, and space through generating constructive conversations via a set of theoretical lenses. I used a visual platform to achieve this purpose, taking the idea of looking ‘through the lens’ literally in creating two sets of ocular devices. The tools are not interactive but are meant to provide an immersive interface through which to consider and discuss solutions both intimately and collectively. Though the development of the tool only progressed as far as simulation, the purpose appears to be well-integrated into its form.
The audience.
The tool assumes no prior knowledge on the part of participants of the theories used to consider and configure solutions. I thought that regardless of place in the teaching staff (full-time faculty, regular part-time, contract, technician, administration), and the multitude of lenses the participants already bring to the experience, that by flattening and distilling the theories into prompts the theories might be more approachable and usable for a broad audience. With regard to accessibility, the tool currently relies on sight alone to work. Future iterations of the tool could easily include an audio component that reads the experience aloud from alt text for each spatial image, and the prompts that overlay the spaces. Future iterations of the tool could also bank overlays for more theories, such as culturally responsive learning theory, or indigenous principles of learning. The current iteration focused on theories used classically in higher education, but this is far from the only way the tool could be configured. I should say that the decision to use those theories was intentional as they tend to occasionally be inaccessible in language and form, and I was interested in seeing if I could effectively make them more usable, less hierarchically. I tried to avoid those theories that also already have usable principles, user guides, etc., with cognitive load theory a potential exception to this rule.
The designers and design inspiration:
The tool clearly engages with New Materialism and media ecology in how it imagines configuring participants. I was very taken with Hill’s 2017 article describing some of the ways they incorporated New Materialism into their practice. I wanted to create my own opportunity to read across spaces and theories diffractively. In this sense, the tool could be pushed further by considering overlaps in overlays to find connections between theoretical lenses, and to explore key differences.
The assets.
All assets were produced by me, as a big part of my intended purpose in making something speculative.
The up-skilling.
Prior to the project, I had a passing familiarity with the Photoshop interface in the sense that it looks like an Adobe product but had not used it for my own practice in photography (I use Lightroom, exclusively). I also had not used a timeline tool in Adobe for creating an animated experience. I could have tried After Effects and Premiere Pro but tried to exploit Photoshop and stretch its affordances in my learning. I had also never attempted to create something 3D from 2D assets. I also learned to this is in a multitude of ways, though I executed only 2.
Aha!
It took a long time for this to come together and I was genuinely concerned I wouldn’t have much to present. I think the visual impact is it's most effect element, and its exploitation of nostalgic toys/immersion to engage participants. I would share it! Maybe I can make a physical version for actual use.
The meta-theory:
As stated in the purpose and audience sections, the tool cannot be extracted from the theories it aims to employ. It is squarely new materialist with a side of media ecology in how it consciously engages with configuring participants in specific ways to cast a wide net over different lenses through which to arrive at educational solutions. It also employs a fair bit of phenomenology in how it tries to draw connections and experiences directly from participants in order to lead learning in a professional development setting and solutions from a personal perspective.
References.
Hill, C. (2017). More-than-reflective practice: Becoming a diffractive practitioner. Teacher Learning and Professional Development, 2(1), 1-17.