Energía disipada

Each day started with a short welcome to the community and an overview of what they would be undertaking that day. Following this, the designers and participants started the creative capacity building workshops. The full teaching plan can be found in Appendix B.

This involved four structured sessions, each introducing and practicing a different aspect of the design process. Session 1 aimed to discuss the term design and make connections between existing problem solving practices in the community and activities planned during the collaboration. Session 2 involved the introduction of the design process (Figure 36 and Figure 37) as well as a hands-on exercise creating low-tech mango pickers (Figure 38 and Figure 39). Session 3 aimed to reinforce the hands-on creative problem solving through a cardboard-based activity called the banana boost. Finally, session 4 aimed to pivot thinking from controlled, theoretical activities towards contextually relevant projects. Session 1

This session involved D1 and D3 trying to facilitate the whole group of participants in a discussion about design, problem solving and whether they had done this in their own lives. This discussion was slow and challenging as participants were new to the project and the designers. Furthermore, some had not met the rest of the participant group before. Some of the more confident individuals did speak during this discussion and highlighted existing activities such as the design of wooden traps to catch lizards, fishing rods made from bamboo, woven baskets and wooden ox-drawn carts. Most of these comments came from elderly individuals in the group.

Session 2

This session flowed immediately on from Workshop 1 and presented the specific design process that we were to use in the PD project. D1 described each step, why they are important and how the steps build upon each other to solve problems (Figure 36).

Figure 36 - Presentation of the design process

Figure 37 - English translation of the design process

Next, D3 presented a basic example of using organic fertilizer in the community. This example was not planned but did work well by linking to a well-known problem in the community. Next, D1 presented the mango picker example. While this was initially meant to be a group discussion, D1 and D3 decided to run the example as a small team-based design activity. Participants were grouped into three small teams. Selection was mainly random, while we ensured that highly impaired individuals had their carer with them. D3 presented the problem of ‘getting mangos out of the tree’ and asked the teams to try to come up with lots of ideas. Two of the teams worked well together and developed multiple concepts for pulling mangoes out of trees. D11 had also prepared a range of sketches that could be used to assist each team. Two teams created prototypes and tested them with a range of group members (Figure 38 and Figure 39).

Figure 38 - Participant testing mango picker prototype

Figure 39 - Participant testing mango picker prototype

From testing, one team identified that the clear plastic bottle could not be seen by vision-impaired users. This resulted in a redesign of the product so that a bright red can was used instead of a clear bottle (Figure 40). The third team struggled to work together and did not generate ideas by themselves. D1 found it difficult to facilitate discussion around the problem and idea generation. The team was mainly made up of elderly participants. D1 stated that “they think, ‘oh they’re already old, they’re not going to think, they cannot come up with all this type of thing”. They were shown the example ideas and eventually chose a design and began to prototype and test. The participants became more energetic and engaged during prototyping and testing.

Figure 40 - Modified mango picker prototype

Finally, D3 facilitated a group discussion about what they learnt and what could be improved to make the prototypes better. Participants were engaged and provided feedback about necessary improvements. Improvements focused on getting lighter, longer bamboo, changing the colour of the product and using better techniques for connecting the parts together.

Session 3

Session 3 aimed to provide the participants with another small design project called the banana boost. This allowed them to think about a problem, and use a more abstract prototyping process, paper models instead of bamboo and bottles, to create ideas. The banana boost activity required each small team to think of ways of using one piece of paper to raise a bunch of bananas 10cm (the high of a ballpoint pen) off the floor. The teams needed to think of ideas, experiment and choose the best idea (Figure 41). Afterwards, the best idea from each team was used in a competition to see who could hold the most bananas.

D1 introduced the activity and the instructions. There was a lot of clarification required as the participants did not understand what was required. After clarification from D3, the participants seemed to understand the instructions and were very engaged in the activity. One challenge that arose was the lack of ability, or willingness, to sketch ideas. D1 commented that during “the banana session, because our proposal was difficult, we want them to draw for us. But most of them, they could not draw so they just start to do the prototype”. This made it difficult to focus the teams on the ‘think of ideas’ stage, as they would tend to explore new ideas through physical experimentation. The design team viewed this as a limitation but also allowed this to happen as participants were engaged. The purpose of the activity was to create different structures out of paper and test whether they were effective at holding bananas (Figure 41).

Figure 41 - Participants experimenting during the banana boost activity

Most participants created a cylindrical or square structure, with few exploring any other formations. D4 stated “even within one group, where everyone was trying to think of different ideas and everyone ended up making the same thing”. To finish the activity each team were required to select their best idea and trial it in front of the group. This became a competition to see who could hold the most bananas. This aspect of the activity was fun and enjoyable with lots of laughter. In the end, all groups presented similar ideas and the difference between each team during testing was due to the skill of the person stacking bananas. Once testing was complete, D1 and D3 led a discussion about what was learnt and how these ideas could be scaled up and built out of locally available resources.

Session 4

Session 4 aimed to transition the participants’ focus from small, well-defined projects to their own community challenges. This workshop became the first activity in the pre-design stage of the PD project as participants discussed community challenges as a large group. The discussion was lively; however, it did not engage all participants and the challenges that were identified seemed like general community challenges, and not specific to PwD. This seemed to be the fault of the designers as the introduction to the discussion did not focus on PwD. There was also evidence that some participants were too shy to speak in a large group. D1 stated:

“I think they’re not really there to talk with the group, with the big group, because when we ask them into the big group, some of them they feel very shy and they said they’re not there to talk in front of the whole group”.

To address this challenge, smaller teams were formed and the majority of the pre-design stage was conducted in these teams.