A Place for Practice
What are good containers for talking about our craft?
As a user researcher, I've sharpened my skills the most by talking to my peers. Finding a container for that is hard, but I knew it was possible to create since my peers in the Bay Area have been looking for something similar.
So, last month, I invited a few other design and user researchers to talk about our case studies – including the case studies we still haven’t quite gotten to just yet. I had a spark of inspiration from Una Lee and Pia Zaragoza about starting a node of the Design Justice Network in the Bay Area, but this gathering emerged more from a need for a place for practice. Now, in reflecting on our workshop, I believe we can grow a meaningful community in DJN if we do two things:
Center activities that help us practice our craft
Weave in conversation about principles along the way
A good container for our craft is rare. We can make one by create a place for practice. This post shares the story of how we did that in our case study workshop, and offers a way to help grow DJN nodes everywhere.
The four participants in front of the show & tell slide, left to right :) Danny, Anastasia, Alana, and Kitty
Who we are:
Danny, researcher currently contracting with Start.coop, excited about in-house work
Anastasia, researcher currently consulting in agtech, eager to put together a portfolio for in-house position at a midsize/large company
Alana, researcher at CircleCI, interested in what we can learn from one another
Kitty, researcher at CreditKarma for 3 years, about to start exploring the next opportunity
… And sadly, five more people who wanted to attend were all out sick :(
What we did:
Meet & greet
Land acknowledgement
Case study workshop
Case study show & tell, with feedback
About the Design Justice Network, and a new node in the bay?
Planning the next session
See our slides here and read the full summary, below:
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Welcome!
Where were we?
We were at Credit Karma - thanks to Kitty for hosting!
And, being in San Francisco, we were on the traditional land of the Ramaytush Ohlone people. Stating that is what’s commonly called a land acknowledgment.
A map of the Ramaytush territory with a dot indicating where we met. Source: http://native-land.ca/maps/territories/ramaytush
As researchers struggling to make an impact in our teams with facts and insights, we might tend to think that a mere acknowledgement doesn’t make a difference.
But acknowledgments make a huge difference - they are transformative acts.
In Beyond Territorial Acknowledgements, Chelsea Vowel of the Métis people writes, “If we think of territorial acknowledgments as sites of potential disruption, they can be transformative acts that to some extent undo Indigenous erasure.”
A quote from Chelsea Vowel. Source: Beyond Territorial Acknowledgements
In our work with digital products, we have the opportunity to turn facts and insights into artefacts we show our coworkers, users, and other stakeholders.
We can take this much further, of course.
One example is the recent work of Cassie Thornton, an artist and a long-time friend of mine who I admire to no end. In September, 2019, Cassie took clay she had dug up during the Salesforce tower construction and offered free, luxury facials in a plaza near Oakland City Hall – “the last real estate you can touch!” This performance piece was a real way to interact with dozens of random Bay Area people who walked by – one of whom was the Salesforce director of diversity, who cried at the end.
A brochure ‘free luxury facials’ with mud from the site of the Salesforce tower
Cassie Thornton sitting in front of her luxury facial spa tent at Oakland City Hall
A person’s face with free luxury facial mud, eyes closed, laying on a table
As user researchers, people who deal in insights, how might we do more to have a real impact?
First, we need to prioritize our practice, but make room for critical thought about it, too. This small gathering was a way to start figuring out how we do that, together – in this first gathering and in future gatherings to come.
Case study workshop
In preparing for a recent job interview, I did a dry-run case study presentation with Ted McCarthy, a friend and fellow researcher.
I find that talking to other people about past work is always clarifying – at least for me. And Ted said, “This project sounds like really interesting research, but can you summarize it in one sentence?” And then he suggested a simple format: “I did X because of Y and Z was the result.”
For example,
“I facilitated research and prototyping with a cleaning services platform to create a new value proposition and improved user experience that helped grow sales by 250%.”
What is X, Y, and Z in “I did X because of Y and Z was the result”?
X = intervention (the research process)
Y = motivation (the main goal & objectives)
Z = results (any insights, concepts, user behavior)
After I presented this format, others gave their feedback. Anastasia noted that this simplified format takes “a snapshot of time. Usually, we start with one idea of what to explore and we take a hard left in another direction.” Alana added that in research, “the outcomes are concrete but totally disconnected from the original idea.” Clearly, research is a very non-linear process from objectives to outcomes, which may explain part of why we struggle to capture the timeline – let alone to make a story out of it.
I realized in our conversation that it’s even more of a struggle to write a headline without knowing the full story, without first dredging the entire process, photos, data, and so on.
Kitty suggested one format she’s used to summarize research projects in-progress:
Where we are
Where we want to be
Why we’re not there yet
And how we’re climbing to the intervention, like a rollercoaster (presenting it in a way that helps the team realize why we might be going on a different path)
Alana added that presenting a case study takes on many forms. In the course of applying for jobs, for example, there is the phone screening in which it’s best to share a few leed lines (concise summary headlines). However, in an in-person portfolio review, it is best to go in-depth with one case study and share the full story arc, plot twists and all.
At the end, we agreed it was important to think about research in both ways: pitching, and storytelling. A concise headline is important for pitching research, but for presenting to new audiences like in job interviews or portfolio reviews, it’s the story that matters most.
Show & tell, with feedback
After making sense of the utility and limitations of the case study format, we tried it out. We each thought of a recent, completed project and took two minutes to write our own X, Y, and Z on sticky notes.
Alana’s example:
“[X] I tested design concepts to include a sample project [Y, Z] to understand how infrastructure engineers write their first configuration files.”
Kitty’s example:
“[X] I helped our engineering team understand why user engagement was declining [Y] because there was a very clear slowing down AND they were at a crossroads of what to do [Z] and we got the insight that we needed to understand motives, fears, and life cycles before you deciding what to do with cheap, available data.”
And by this point in the night, it was almost time to go!
About the Design Justice Network
Before we wrapped up, we briefly talked about the Design Justice Network, which started at the 2016 Allied Media Conference. Its mission is to develop and apply justice principles in the broad field of design. I helped contribute a tiny bit to the first zine!
Three overlapping circles that ask, “Why was involved in the process?” “Who was harmed?” “Who benefited?”
The word “Benefits” with 4 arrows pointing to a circle labeled “More powerful” and 1 arrow to circle labeled “Less powerful”
3 photos of 3 zines made over the years by the Design Justice Network
In the Bay Area, I believe we have an opportunity to form a node, especially if we center activities developing our practices, and weave in commentary along the way to guide us. A few nodes in the broader network have started in other cities like Toronto and New York, and regions like the Mediterranean. It will be exciting for us to grow a node organically, rooted in our own interests.
Next session
To grow our ability to organize, someone new will facilitate our next gathering on a new topic. We’ll also have at least one portfolio piece to share, thanks in part to getting the rough idea on paper at this workshop!
Want to join the next Bay Area gathering on Jan. 29, or another one in the future?
Email me for more info at djn.sfbay@gmail.com!
You can also become a member of DJN and find people in the Slack.