Ferg's Blog - Latest Comments

Re: Design for Self-Service – A motivational psychology perspective

seo agency — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 09:05:33 -0000

This is a great article.I like this one.This is a well informative post.The written skill is so good.It is an amazing.Thanks to share this blog with us.Keep it up.

Re: Design for Self-Service – A motivational psychology perspective

Zena — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 00:55:04 -0000

This is a well information.Self service kiosks are hardware devices that work in combination with self service software.I like this one.Thanks to share this blog with us.

Re: Reflections from Servdes

Mary Pettit — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 02:38:38 -0000

I think that the web site develop is fantastic and highly trouble-free for customers at all like me.

Re: Making Design a Concrete Experience

Concrete Polishing — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 07:20:38 -0000

Awesome post! Thanks for the insights and clarifications. All the best to you.

Re: Managing Motivation

deepyahuja — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 14:13:57 -0000

Absolutely true! Negative feed backs always makes a wise person think and reflect on what he did and do something about it to make it right. It is one of the effective ways to motivate you to do better since you are not able to please everyone and that you still have room for improvement and that those who criticize you would love you at the end. Most of the time honest critics are not your friends because they do not hesitate to tell you what is lacking while your friends won’t tell you directly what is lacking because they are afraid you get offended.

http://yasinpatel.com

Re: Theories of Planned Behaviour

psychologist perth — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 11:19:50 -0000

Great post! Thanks for sharing and hope to read more a lot of good stuff from you.

Re: 3G Knowledge Transfer – Dr Annette Boaz, London School of Economics – Lessons for Service Design?

Stefan Holmlid — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 13:46:45 -0000

A lot of research is performed as action research or collaborative projects. Few (read three) of the applications for funding that I've been writing the last 15 years have been based on researchers only. It's failry easy for researchers to invite other actors to participate in different formats in research projects.
One interesting variation on this theme would be to have companies invite researchers into their own development/research projects, and partly fund them in participating. Or that consultancies, when bidding, includes 1 Euro per 10 Euro as R&D and inviting researchers in the projects.
/Stefan

Re: Design for Self-Service – A motivational psychology perspective

psychologist perth — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 22:21:33 -0000

Thanks a lot for this post, very motivating indeed. Keep it coming.

Re: The Philosophy of Service Design

Sylvain — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 17:51:06 -0000

Peter Sloterdijk is the most famous living German philosopher, who wrote the best-selling book on philosophy in the German language since the Second World War, namely "Kritik der zynischen Vernunft (1983)" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... . He also wrote a book on aesthetics called "Der ästhetische Imperativ (2007)". He is known to be rather controversial and provocative in his theories, and very interestingly - and maybe not by coincidence... - he is also the Dean of the "Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe" a design & art high school, where they teach communication design, product design & a course called "philosophy and aesthetics", amongst others. http://www.hfg-karlsruhe.de/fa...

Re: Simultaneous Translation – The Olympics and Communication For A Better World

Rachel_ratna — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 12:50:31 -0000

Hi its a real delight in reading your post and I truly enjoyed every bit of it.however,I was just wondering do you know is the French speaking announcer during the opening and closing ceremony?

Re: Services Supporting Singapore Sporting Success

Tey Min Li — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:52:18 -0000

Welcome to Singapore! We are all really glad to have all of you here :)

Re: Designing Design Research and Generating Momentum

Rupy Yuan — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 11:42:24 -0000

Since I dig John Seddon's and Frog Design's thinking, will check out the rest of the links here.

[$M.]

Re: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Why society still needs its sporting heroes

sarahdrummondrufflemuffin — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 19:13:45 -0000

well we need good role models don't we. I agree, it's great to have aspirations and people to spur us on, lets just make sure it doesn't get too confused with a brand ( I'm going to refrain from ranting on your blog fergus) and that the role model is positive, not just young kids after fame...

Anyway, leaving a comment because I wondered if you saw this? take sometime to watch it...

http://www.channel4.com/progra...

Re: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Why society still needs its sporting heroes

georgejulian — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 16:29:21 -0000

I agree with you about needing heroes/heroines/role models from beyond our immediate context but I'm not so sure people tend to learn from other people's mistakes! That doesn't take away from the fact that all people, sports stars and 'celebrities' included, are complex creatures; none of us are perfect and we all make mistakes. It is naive for society, the media, any of us to overlook that.

To be honest I'm not too interested in golf, nor Tiger Woods, but I do think that he should be judged on his skills as a golfer, and if we must pass judgement on the rest of his life (altho my view is that it's none of our business - it's the business of him, his wife, and any other people directly involved) then we should look at how he chooses to deal with his mistakes.

While on the subject of role models, I'm always confused why people insist on thinking that young people are so impressionable and unable to discern right from wrong (both Alan Webber and Billy Payne play the children/grandkids card) themselves?

Nick brings up the point of balance and I think from what you've said in your earlier posts that the CEP is intended to address this area specifically, so hopefully the Youth Olympics is onto something.

Sorry for the mammoth comment. I'll give the last words on the subject to James Joyce: "A man's errors are his portals of discovery".

Re: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Why society still needs its sporting heroes

Nick Gkikas — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 16:53:37 -0000

Very interesting post indeed. Although I agree with the overarching theme that a society needs its heroes for the individuals to push themselves forward, I find it hard to see the connection between modern celebrities, footballers, F1 drivers, you name it, and the original olympic athletes or greek heroes. The reason is that our modern heroes are unique in what they do thanks to relentless training in their field, to the expense of general and social education. See the "Hamilton Experiment" for instance, (http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/....
Original olympic athletes and greek heroes on the other hand were subject to education and training that aimed towards the balance between the body and the mind. They were the quickest,strongest or most agile depending on the type of competition they entered, without being socially retarded, or politically morons. Of course, they were not flawless, but their imperfection had a logic behind it, and thus, it caused sympathy rather than hatred among the people (see all the heroes in tragedy).
On the contrary, our heroes are too often subject to envy or hatred (depending whether they on their up or down), and their errors too obviously immature deliberate decisions, rather than tricks of fate.

Re: Do you value the Olympic Games? How can the Olympic Games be designed better?

georgejulian — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 16:35:46 -0000

For me the Olympics come and go every few years, they don't really take up much head space, not really at the front of my mind anyhow...not until the media coverage kicks in.

Having said that, the values that you talk about - friendship, respect and excellence, are exactly those that I choose to live my own life by and are certainly the ones that I respect in others. I suspect that the challenge is in bringing the values to life and communicating them more blatantly as part of the Olympic story - then maybe it would take up more headspace and have more relevance.

Re: Introduction to the Fundamentals of Motivation

mikeriddell — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 07:06:24 -0000

Ferg thanks for the comments. This year we are introducing a loyalty smartcard for a town - it works on using rewards to influence behaviour - and we have government funding to pilot something special. In truth i don't know the answer to your question - i just know we are all just mammals that respond to stimulai that make us feel better. If you get the time, read a little bit more about what we are doing at www.myhometownuk.co.uk

Or email me at mikeriddell62atgmaildotcom

We have very big ambitions Ferg.
Kind regards, Mike.

Re: Introduction to the Fundamentals of Motivation

George Julian — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 19:49:16 -0000

You kids are good....just as I was about to wander off to bed I find this window that I opened hours ago and get sucked into your conversation and cant resist replying. Of course I'm not a designer and so I'm commenting (intentionally) as someone who knows not much about what you guys do/stand for - so not your target audience at all, at all.

re Ethics - if all else fails stick with the medics, primum non nocere - first, do no harm. So you really need to question whether intervening will help....and as designers I guess you need to know whether a short-term intervention while you're involved is enough to really instigate genuine change/improvement or whether you're selling a false hope, raising expectations etc etc

The discussion about intrinsic/extrinsic motivators is fascinating for me (mixed up background in psychology, education and social work) as I think people are rarely clear of their own motivations for action, or they assume that their motivations remain constant yet they subtly change over time, sometime with disastrous results....it's not necessarily the change that leads to the disaster but the lack of awareness!

My own knowledge of co-production comes from groups of people wanting to shape the support that they receive from the social work profession, it is a concept that most 'professionals' sign up to but few have cracked and current changes in provision (introduction of personalised budgets and transfer of control to individual's using services and away from professionals) has led to frustrations for those receiving services and fear for those who have traditionally allocated the service/professionals. Most people would tell you that they became social workers to support people but when faced with a change that gives greater control to those individuals they wish to support (and possible loss of their own professional identity) they are fearful of change and many are resistant to it. (This really is a conversation for somewhere else but the lack of awareness of their motivators at any one time can lead to real difficulties).

I agree with Fergus in that designers have the skills to evidence people's lives and that is a very powerful skill....I'd also suggest other people have those skills (teachers, social workers, hairdressers, bus drivers) and designers might have more impact when they work alongside some 'others' (and I'm not naive enough to know that you dont already do this...am partly playing dumb here)...but then that would throw the gauntlet back at you guys in terms of what your unique contribution is and whether you genuinely wish to coproduce, share your skills and leave communities empowered to continue where you left things (and ultimately do yourselves out of a job....which hopefully would be a great thing, the ultimate achievement)?

I'd love to continue this conversation another time but I really do need to get some kip now. Sweet dreams both, George x

Re: Introduction to the Fundamentals of Motivation

danielchristadoss — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 17:31:40 -0000

Fergus,
Thanks for the feed back on the comments.
I guess I was looking more closer to my area of operations.
But you have opened my eyes to look at a broader context.
I believe the discussions at Wenovski are helping expose me to a more global perspective. Keep up the good work.
Happy New Year and a wonderful experience in all your projects.

Re: Introduction to the Fundamentals of Motivation

Ferg — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 17:20:13 -0000

Hi Mike! Thanks for the thoughts, I really appreciate it!

My reading on motivation has highlighted two types of reward, intrinsic and extrinsic, with the consensus being that extrinsic rewards don't last long and in the longer term actually demotivate people as their effects wear off...do you agree with this and what sort of rewards did you have in mind?

Thanks,
Ferg

Re: Introduction to the Fundamentals of Motivation

Ferg — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 17:16:04 -0000

Wow Sarah, thank you, where do I start ;-) ...

Yes, I do see this as an umbrella concept, or since I'm more interested in working from the bottom up I guess I see motivation as (one of) the lowest common denominators, that perhaps will enable us to sidestep or better conceptualise and understand the root cause of the more complex social, cultural and environmental issues.

Love the quotations, thank you! For me its all about capabilities, allowing people to explore theirs and understand themselves and others - that's what education should be, developing a deep intrinsic understanding of yourself and how that relates to and is influenced by others and the environment around you. My guess is that the most creative people in the world are the ones that have this sort of deep connection and trust it...

As designers the extrinsic criteria should (as they are perhaps unavoidable) seek to reward evidence of that deeper insight, but I guess that leaves the system vulnerable to gaming...I saw a blog post about that the other day... http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2009/1... this touches on that in some way.

So, yes educate as we go, it helps develop reflective capabilities, it encourages critical thought and helps prevent dogma.

On a similar note and as great as that project is generally, the thing that interested me the most about Jo Harrington's talk and the Engine project was the impact it had on the individuals in question: Designers were able to use our methods and tools to map people's lives - WOW look at all the transformative potential in that! For me it's basically the same as an athlete's training diary, a map of all that they have done to help get them where they are and where they want to go in the future

As they say, the first step to change is acknowledging the problem. Whilst of course that shouldn't be done casually or carelessly, we as designers possess the skills to evidence people's lives in this (em)powerful, individual way. That project basically mapped a big list of the extrinsic events that had caused or resulted from those people's life circumstances, they were then able to see that they were extrinsic, not instrinsic and were liberated from their effects, we should be having this impact with all our work! :-)

Yeah, I'm still trying to get my head fully round this ethics question, I think at the moment our ethical boundary or benchmark is defined by our sample of users i.e. the ten or so representative souls who we shadowed or asked questions. They provide us with our benchmark against which our assumptions are validated, I can't make up my mind if from a democratic and participatory perspective this is preferable to a 'British Standard' approach to benchmarking which whilst not without its value is very top down and tends to trample all over creativity and intrinsic motivations.

I guess these thoughts go back to the heart of the defining service design discussions of last year, there is value in ad-hoc contextually defined ethics and the freedom they give designers both to define the scope of the problem 'anything is a service', but I guess we both seem to be saying is that these need to scale and remain attentive to the impact and social implications of problem with which you are dealing...? This pretty much echoes Yoko Akama's NordicSDC comments http://www.aho.no/en/AHO/News-and-events/Servic...

I really want to address the power imbalance issue, but before this gets too long I better stop so another time... :-) ...thanks again for your thoughts and hope the essay is going well!

Re: Introduction to the Fundamentals of Motivation

Ferg — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 16:55:00 -0000

Hi Daniel,
Thanks for your thoughts, I really appreciate them...

I think you raise an excellent point here, ownership is both a complex and sensitive issue particularly when you consider the wider political and social implications of the term - technically I guess we all 'own' our govenment's actions because we elected them (in the UK at least)...

I think though in many engineering disciplines and in aspects of systems theory this same issue would be considered one of 'control' is what you are saying that by 'owning' something people will be motivated by feeling in control of either themselves or a wider part of the service or system?

Re: Introduction to the Fundamentals of Motivation

mikeriddell — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 14:36:35 -0000

It's all about what's in it for me. Everyone needs a reward of some sort - that's where the motive originates. in my opinion!

Re: Introduction to the Fundamentals of Motivation

rufflemuffin — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 09:51:58 -0000

Fergus, as always, you blow my mind how well you can condense your thoughts into such concise and well formed sentences, posing enough questions to leave me going, eh?

Are you getting at here a design philosophy that needs to umbrella the participatory design work involving interaction, service, transformation design?

Or rather an education in ethical design, away from the over used 'sustainable' design (green) to encompass a set of ethical social design criterias? Or rather how we can be taught to value networks and new technologies to build on opportunities and enable the capabilities of people rather than constantly defining problems.

Like I tweeted yesterday,

Expand the ‘capabilities’ of people to lead the kind of lives they value - and have reason to value
- Amartya Sen

Are we then looking at borrowing from Olstroms theories of Coproduction? To merge the design process with this? Teach as we go along and almost remove ourselves from a job by the end, (this could be an ethical method of determining success?) ...very similar to ideologies behind transformative design, but is this really taught in undergraduate design courses or should there be more emphasis here?

It does worry me that ethically, and focusing on our motivations to undertake a project (and especially within the student and competition realm of work) that our motivations may be tainted to 'want to help' society and people. Sometimes as designers, we may realise we are doing more harm than good.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions (Illich)
http://www.swaraj.org/illich_h... (thanks Hush)

We can sometimes tend to use people (and this could come down to our taught language as designers, to call people 'customers' or 'users' rendering them almost unhuman) as 'pawns' in our process, to get to the end result of our design work.

"The risk is that without careful consideration of design ethics, students will treat potential participants instrumentally, and fail to recognise that participation will have an impact on those people’s lives one way or another” (Campbell, Parker, 2009)

This would probably most happen, (I'd say) in the world of students, as our motivation and reward is explicit, we are being governed by a grading system and no matter how hard you try to deny it, I'd go as far as saying 99.9% of people are affected by this notion.

So my thoughts are (and you can tell I am very mid essay, in fact I thank you for teasing this out of me) that we need to look at some kind of code of ethics/design philosophy to begin filtering down into the education systems which has been built by the professionals.

The professionals get this, they already work alongside other expert fields. The video you sent me the other day of Jo Harrington of Engine talking showed him and Nick discussing the effect the creation of tangible artifact had on participants feelings about their networks, and that even though the generative/visualisation tools had been effective in their outcome to communicate people's lives and get across real user stories to the management side, they had been quite shocking for the participants themselves to see, as they realised in fact they didn't have a large network and many had not left the same area for most of their lives.

As we see more and more 'social' design competitions and briefs filtering into universities (RSA Design Directions in particular), and participatory design and direct user research being undertaken than ever before, we really need to start questioning ourselves as a design profession what should be put in place?

After all, sociologists, criminologists, biochemists, all have a code of conduct, why don't we?

So in conclusion, I think there are two/three major points to be picked up on here.

1. We need a code of ethics that reminds us, as designers, what our effects are on user engagement. (and a list is probably not the ideal option here) and this leads onto...

2. Educate as we design. Should we be passing over skills and teaching as we go? Should we ethically be aiming to 'design' 'half baked solutions' in a co creative manner that teach participants the necessary skills to create/innovate/manage and allow them to take the reigns of and grow themselves, therefore designing for sustainability. (more relevant to a community/social project, but the way that Sen, Manzini etc discuss, this is the future of sustainable and ethical design, working on the hyperlocal)

3. And I guess one last point, how do we decide on what problems to tackle? We need a shift in power, but, in an ideal world (and don't shoot the messenger, I'm playing devils advocate) there is an asymmetrical division of power that creates a problem for co-production/design (thank you hush) because there is a technical expertise required to solve the 'complex' problems you mention. I'm going to be honest, these skills are probably more likely attributed to educated classes than they are to the less financially and socially empowered 'community' members. Again is this another question for ethics and motivation in design? It does build on Illich's sarcastic sentiments.

Right Fergo, I'm so done here, I think I've written a good chunk of my short essay. And these are just some thoughts, I would really like to know more about motivation and ethics, you've given me ALOT to think about.

Re: Introduction to the Fundamentals of Motivation

danielchristadoss — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 09:07:32 -0000

Fergus,
Enjoyed your chapter on Motivation. I have always pondered this factor in my projects. My main take on this is that the greatest motivator is ownership.
We have to delegate and empower for to enable ownership. For technical people this is not easy. This is easier for generalists. Is the Design Thinker a generalist? or a hybrid? I would think more of a hybrid which explains the growth and success of Design Thinking. Of course Design Thinking will only prosper when we continue to keep the philosophy dynamic and flexible.