Design Lessons from Life –

An evolution of participatory action research and design methodologies for practice

based research.

Designing for Creativity and Innovation in Informal Science Learning

The problem (need)…

The hypothesis…

Methodology: Participatory Action Research

PAR

PAR for a multidisciplinary, practitioner/researcher project

Developing all aspects of the project through PAR

Supporting PAR

PAR for wider collaboration

Design Thinking Approach

The design workshop Applying design practices - user journeys

A defined problem to develop

Practitioner considerations - Needs to be safe for unsupervised public use with no protruding components or sharp edges - Needs to be comfortably usable by the target audience (in our case children and family groups) and by those in wheelchairs - The exhibit needs to work as an exhibit outside the research context and therefore it should not exclude (and should be equally as engaging to) those who do not want to take part in the study or fall outside of the desired participant demographic - The aesthetics and materials should match the overall exhibition design

Ideation and iteration…

Researcher considerations

-  Needs to allow all experimental conditions (solo, social, and collaborative) to occur in the same location, to ensure consistency of data across conditions (for physical, digital, and hybrid versions).

-  The exhibit and surrounding space should be as controlled as possible to limit variables.

-  It should be easy to find digital video footage data where ethical consent has been granted.

- Needs to meet ethical standards for submitting to Research Ethics Committees

An Interactive Exhibit Pod

In-built digital research tools for automatic data collection

In-built digital research tools for automatic collection of ethical consent

Hardware and software

Online open source survey software

Outcomes and outputs

Impact: see it in other science centres, and do it for yourself!

Creativescienceatlife.com

Conclusions

Thanks & Q’s?

Dr Hannah Rudman @hannahrudman hannah@hannahrudman.com Dr Claire Bailey-Ross @clairey_ross claire.bailey-ross@durham.ac.uk creativescienceatlife.com