design documentaries

UXHK 2012 workshop slides

Bas Raijmakers — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 08:56:23 +0000

During the workshop Bas presented a short history of documentary film, and an introduction to Golden Rules for design documentaries. Both are linked here as a PDF file, without the films that were in the original presentation.

Workshop at UX Hong Kong

Bas Raijmakers — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 03:37:20 +0000

After a brief introduction to design research methods on day 1 of UX Hong Kong, today we have a workshop on design documentaries. The goal is to make some films about experiences people have at the UXHK conference. While doing so we are creating some Golden Rules for using film as a tool to do design research. Examples we brought into the workshop are “Connect insights to emotions”, “Choose a perspective”, “Empower the participant” and “Create simple scripts”. We will put some more up later, once people have come back with their films and the Golden Rules they have learned from the filmmaking.

Blogs of the student groups at ENSCI Les Ateliers

Bas Raijmakers — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 10:28:17 +0000

Each of the groups in the design documentaries workshop is keeping a blog to document the design research they are doing, in particular materials they have found and discussions about approach and findings. The films they shoot are not on there if there is a confidentiality issue with the participants. This depends on what has been agreed with participants.

Marie, Kristian, Elisa and Yaeka: http://parisfrompeople.blogspot.com/

Darren, Hugo, Sanam and Barbara: http://jalouz.blogspot.com/

Blandine, Udi, Ahjungand Youen: http://breakfastpeople.wordpress.com/

Alain-Franck, Lim and others http://surpriseofreality.wordpress.com/

Day 1. Inspiration from a 100 years of documentary film

Bas Raijmakers — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 12:16:44 +0000

We introduced three ideas in documentary thinking that are particular useful to design researchers. The idea that “Film is like reality” is important because it allows Design Documentaries to portray the people  and situations you are designing for. “Film is like a language” makes us realise that we can use our design skills to tell stories and that we can use visual language to express the stories, and our views as design researchers on them. Finally, “Film is like a conversation” is an idea that reminds us that documentaries create a dialectic relationship between design researchers and participants.

Below some stills from films that illustrate these points. In the Reviews section of this blog you can read a bit more about most of these and other films that illustrate these ideas.

We also discussed 4 types of techniques documentary filmmakers use, to get a broad overview of what tools a design researcher can borrow from filmmakers. Besides the obvious Observation, we also looked at Intervention, Compilation and Performance. Below some examples from films we looked at. There is more in the Reviews section.

Day 1. Creative exploration in diverse disciplines.

Laura Pandelle — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 11:01:03 +0000

Those few references do not specialy relate to design or to social research. They show different ways of exploring a subject or a field by … 1. create sense / a deeper understanding of the problematic. 2. bring creativity, intuition, insights. 3. engage participation / co-creation process with people, users, habitants, stakeholders involved in the project.

1. Co-discovery can reveal a collective imagination.

“Le bruit du frigo” is a collective of architects, artists and urbanists based in Bordeaux. Most of their works tackle social issues and involve citizens participation. Amongst their tools, the GIANT PICTURE process: ask the habitants to mimic a situation (“We want to do something with this road”). Then use it to create an inspiring photo-montage.

“Echelle Inconnue” (urbanisme/architecture collective) works on perception and appropriation of urban/peri-urban spaces. The project De(s) rives plays on the idea of exploration the banks of la Seine (les “rives”) by a few persons called “les arpenteurs”, and the drifting experiment (la “dérive”).

http://www.echelleinconnue.net/desrives/marche_1.php

See also Les Artpenteurs, Cabanon Vertical, Exyst, Didattica and Wagon Landscaping (french collective).

“Grrr” is design agency based in Nantes. Recently, a project about “subjective maps”. One with kids, using map drawing as a discovery process to identify how they perceive the city around them (places, actions, ways to go to some place, unknown spaces…). One with artists from Nantes / Berlin, asking participants to imagine the plan of a city where they don’t live.

2. Set up a “protocole of research”… something done in a systematic way to create sense or intuition.

Coloco (architects): a project about “skelettons” (partly unfinished or destroyed buildings) how to explore this phenomenon that caracterizes big cities all around the world. The “observatory of skelettons” was set in three cities, leading to a comparative exploration both on very local phenomenons (squatting…) and on the general potential of those huge structures.

The Interview Project, David Lynch: meet people on a road trip, randomly, make a very quick interview, about general / existential topics… through systematic camera angles. Edit. Put on a map.

JR. This French artist works with black and white photography, printed in huge paper formats and put in urban spaces. His project “28millimeters” deals with portraiting people, and putting them in places where they don’t belong. This confrontation creates situations, sometimes violent, sometimes humoroustic, tellin a lot about how people react to difference and exclusion.

watch?v=M5MEC5MPjvg&feature=player_embedded

3. Playing with the medium (photo/video) creates another perspective on the thematic.

Video Art Collective Pied La Biche (Paris) worked through several experiment on football. How its rules, its world, the way its mediatised… tell us something about society.

http://player.vimeo.com/video/9426271

InBflat is an experiment of the artist Darren Solomon about… playing music in B flat in front of a webcam.

Design Documentaries workshop at ENSCI Paris

Bas Raijmakers — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 09:59:34 +0000

Learning, experimenting, creating: Les Ateliers – Paris Design Institute has opted for ambitious, multidisciplinary, theoretical and practical courses in correlation with project studios run by professional designers. The teaching is based on the principle of individualised programmes for each student. In addition to regular teachers, the school calls on outside personalities for lectures or workshops. In this context, Bas Raijmakers will teach a one week workshop on design documentaries.

During the Design Documentaries Workshop (21 Feb – 1 Mar 2011), students will practise how to make design documentaries, and also explore the thinking behind them, which originates from Bas Raijmakers’ PhD at the Royal College of Art in London and has since evolved in many projects for industry and governments around the world.

For a designer, it is crucial to understand the people and situations that you are designing for very well. Designers need to do some research with people to create this understanding. Design documentaries are one way of doing this. They provide information about people and places, but also inspiration which is crucial in design. They tell stories in a visual way, using film language.

http://www.ensci.com

Belonging & Belongings

Bas Raijmakers — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 09:56:47 +0000

How do people present themselves online and offline, and is there a connection between the two?

Belonging & Belongings is an international and interdisciplinary research programme, exploring the interrelationship between technology, society and sartorial appearances by investigating how people express their identities through their physical and virtual possessions.

What makes people feel they belong to a certain group of people, and how do their belongings (physical and virtual, garments and media) express this belonging?

Because there are many ways in which people do this, we want to look at differences. We focus on the UK and Japan, and look at London and Kyoto in particular.

The research programme initiated by dr Daijiro Mizuno (Critical Design Lab at Kyoto University of Art and Design) and dr Geke van Dijk and dr Bas Raijmakers (STBY design research London/Amsterdam).

We hope you enjoy reading about the ongoing evolution of this research project.

Belonging & Belongings

How sticky research drives service design

Bas Raijmakers — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 13:04:00 +0000

In a project for Deutsche Telekom, we found very clearly that the design documentaries we made were ‘sticky’ because they stuck in the minds of the team for months. At many stages and iterations of the early concepting the marketeers, designers and business people involved referred to the films when they came up with ideas or had to validate ideas. The films were made in a special way: We asked our participants to film themselves, prompted by text messages we sent out during three days. This resulted in some evocative films because the responses to our text messages were sometimes very spontaneous, such as the woman who took out her false teeth when asked what she would not want her friends to see. That is an image that sticks with people..

At the international Service Design Network conference 2009 in Madeira, I presented these slides together with Andreas Sommerwerk of Telekom. The work we did together in Berlin, with the Creation Center of Telekom and Indri Tulusan of our Reach partner Spur. What is posted here is a short version of the presentation without the films (to protect our participants, and the confidentiality of parts of the material). The presentation was later also published as an article for Touchpoint, the magazine of the international Service Design Network. Both the short version of the slides (PDF 1,4Mb) and the article (PDF 606Kb) are available here.

Video “personas” for Heartlands

Bas Raijmakers — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 09:15:32 +0000

For Heartlands, a large regeneration project around the first tin mine in the UK, in Pool, Cornwall, STBY did a range of research projects that fed into workshops. All aimed to involve local stakeholders, from individual citizens to Cornish organisations, in the design process set up by architects and landscape designers. Outcomes were several types of personas, archetypes of future users of Heartlands,scenarios for future use, and responses to designs of the architects.

One of the 11 activities we organised so far focused on artists and performers, for whom studios in several forms will be built at Heartlands. I visited artists in their studios near Pool, and talked with them about mundane things as the floors they have and prefer (two quite different things often!), but also how they feel about visitors peeking or even walking in their spaces. This last issue is pertinent to Heartlands as it is a public space where many people will be drawn too, also for just a day out.

Three types of space had already been determined in the architectural plan, but there were still many ways these could be filled in. To inform and inspire the detailed design, I made three personas based on interviews with five artists. These personas are not representing people however, but the three types of space that will be built.

Each of the buildings ‘talks’ from its own perspective about how it can accommodate what the artists want to do best. These are personal stories told by buildings, using the video footage I took at artist spaces, with very few lines of text in between (as a written voice over almost).

You can see the results at http://bas.blogs.com/artatheartlands/.

Designing Across Boundaries

Bas Raijmakers — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 12:54:26 +0000

Mid September STBY participated in a multicultural design challenge at Villiers Highschool in Southall, London. We worked with Sao Paulo-based designers, London-based designers and teenagers from Southall. The goal was to design something for the school, using card board, in 60 hours with about 40 people in three teams. We counted more than 30 countries when we explored where all the participants and their parents came from! This became the starting point for all three projects that were completed. Each team designed events or ways to enhance relationships between pupils at the school rather than objects such as a new school bag or table.

Each group used video to do the research in the school, develop their ideas and communicate them. Bas Raijmakers and Geke van Dijk (for STBY) coached the teams when shooting and editing video, as part of their research and design process. This resulted in 3 short films about the projects. Bas and Geke also made a film about the challenge as a whole and how it connects to everyday school life. This 12 minute film is available here. Villiers students speak the voice overs. It includes short versions of each of the films made by the project teams, explaining their ideas for the school.

The approach was taken from the design challenges organised by the Helen Hamlyn Centre at the Royal College of Art, who use it to allow designers to experience participatory, inclusive design first hand by working with the people they design for. Yanki Lee of the RCA organised this challenge. We also used the approach of Brazilian designer Paula Dib, International Young Design Entrepreneur of the Year 2006 and her company trans.forma. She works with local communities in Brazil and materials that are locally found, often recycling waste materials. From Brazil she brought her friends Renata Mendes and Fernando Maculan, both designers she collaborates with, and 8 students from the FAAP design academy in Sao Paulo. Karine Waldron of Villiers Highschool completed the team. We had a great group of about 40 people together for three days of intense working. The project was presented at a 100% Design forum during the London Design Festival 2007.