-Thanks for the feedback Jeremy. Anyway i found an interesting project that relates to social theory in practice.
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Social Practice theory is an approach to social life that seeks to integrate the individual with the surrounding environment, context and culture relative to the actions and practices of the individual. It seeks to interpret the meaning of social activity in a number of environments and to discern their causes. The basic question is what drives the nature of human activity in different environments, especially when that activity becomes routinized and even ritualized. Certain fields of endeavor demand specific practices done at different times. This field seeks to make clear the link between practice and context.
Social Practice theory also promotes diversity in that society is not seen as a single unit, but as a collection of discrete practices and the communities that specialize in those practices. Both unity and diversity are synthesized, as is equality and inequality. In both cases, membership and common standards reign in each practice. Instead of looking at society as a whole, social practices, as least in Waltzer's view, provide agreed-upon and rational bases for judgment and inequality according to the skills that adhere to needed social functions.
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What exactly is a social construction camp?
The idea behind the social construction camp is to renovate public housing blocks with volunteers and tenants alike. Usually, these apartments are run down badly, the municipality however does not perform any reconstruction (even though the external maintenance of these buildings is within the scope of their responsibilities) due to the lack of funds. Tenants are usually in a very difficult situation, mostly unemployed, and have accumulated a great deal of rent arrear – often in danger of eviction. The idea is to renovate these buildings and give the tenant the opportunity to reduce their debts while working on the reconstruction (in return for their work, their rental arrears were reduced by 5600 HUF daily) – to kill two birds with one stone. And there’s one more important aspect: the camp brings together people from very different social situations: the locals, the volunteers from Budapest, and even homeless people, due to the City is for All group. This way, people who would otherwise never interact could meet, and people who are possibly in crisis, were able to help each other.
Where did the idea come from?
In 2009, two of the people who later became the main organizers, Vera and Róbert, traveled with the then volunteer network Man in the Street to Nagykanizsa. They wanted to see for themselves the situation of the tenants living in the public housing blocks of the city before the eviction season due in spring. Once there, they started talking to people and began to see the problem with more depth: the basic problem in the city derives from the significant number of unskilled workers unable to find jobs. Mostly unemployed, the inhabitants of the social housing blocks have difficulty paying their rent. The local government on the other hand has no funds to renovate these houses – most of them are in really bad condition, often with very poor insulation, which leads to high maintenance costs for the inhabitants.
They did some thinking, and slowly the idea of the social building camp evolved. It wasn’t easy, as there was no ready-made model that could have been followed. The project had to be built up from scratch, and everything had to be applied to the specific site: it evolved in the negotiation process with the local government and the inhabitants of the houses, as well as the legal opportunities and constraints.
Reconstruction seems like hard work – what kind of tasks did you perform on these houses?
It was mostly light physical work that did not require any special skills, so they could be completed by anyone. At Nagykanizsa, we did heat insulation and reconstruction of the façade, which – apart from the aesthetic value – significantly reduced overhead costs. At the third camp, we did all kinds of things, from painting to tiling, but the most popular of all was probably the adobe plaster-work – we had a great time splashing in the mud!
What’s your role in the social building camp project?
Basically I’ve been involved from the very beginning, from the preparations of the first camp. We visited potential sites, talked to local government officials, wrote applications, drummed up volunteers – and of course, I took part in the construction works as well. The first two camps were led by Vera, but slowly a core team of organizers evolved, so we are now more and more able to share tasks and responsibilities. At the third, most recent camp I was basically something like a camp leader: I was responsible for organizing the day-to-day work onsite, coordinating volunteers, organizing the work, events and joint cooking.
Did you enjoy that?
Sure, it’s a very rewarding task – I got to do what I enjoy anyway, working with people.
Why is this project important to you?
When you are confronted with huge social problems that are of a structural nature, you get the feeling that you are way too small to do anything, so you just pass them by. But I really feel the need to do something, on the micro-level, something concrete that really helps people. For me personally, it’s a huge experience to do something tangible – studying, reading books, just talking about social problems is not enough.
References
http://www.funzine.hu/2011-10-social-theory-in-practice/
http://www.ehow.com/about_5462685_social-practice-theory.html
Practice is the act of rehearsing a behavior over and over, or engaging in an activity again and again, for the purpose of improving or mastering it, as in the phrase "practice makes perfect".
Sessions scheduled for the purpose of rehearsing and performance improvement are called practices. They are engaged in by sports teams, bands, individuals, etc. "He went to football practice everyday after school," for example.
How well one improves with practice depends on several factors, such as the frequency it is engaged in, and the type of feedback that is available for improvement. If feedback is not appropriate (either from an instructor or from self-reference to an information source), then the practice tends to be ineffective or even detrimental to learning. If a student does not practise often enough, reinforcement fades, and he or she is likely to forget what was learned. Therefore, practice is often scheduled, to ensure enough of it is performed to reach one's training objectives. How much practice is required depends upon the nature of the activity, and upon each individual. Some people improve on a particular activity faster than others. Practice in an instructional setting may be effective if repeated only 1 time (for some simple verbal information) or 3 times (for concepts), or it may be practised many times before evaluation (a dance movement).
References
K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf Th. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Romer. The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance. Psychological Review 1993, Vol. 100. No. 3, 363-406
Geoff Colvin, Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else
Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Practice
If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have said "a faster horse".
-Henry Ford
Did any of us realize we needed a Walkman until Sony pointed it out? Or an iPod, until Apple started selling them?
Doing research into customer needs is a necessary thing, just don’t confuse the customer’s stated needs with the problem they’re actually trying to solve.
When a client says they need a faster horse, don’t they really mean “I need to go faster”?
How much time do you spend studying what your clients *really* need?
1. Isn’t anticipating those needs what market leaders really do?
2. Isn’t it your job to see them before anyone else?
So think about it: Do your clients *really* need a faster horse? Or is that just a symptom that cloaks the real problem facing them?
Quote is great but what matter is the interpretation.The valid point of the quote is not that it's a bad idea to facilitate a conversation with your market to better understand it. The valid points are:
1. You must ask the right questions to get valuable answers.
2. You must interpret the answers thoughtfully - often outside their direct meaning - to glean reliable information.
3. Asking questions is not always the best way to "listen" to your market.
You probably know the drill. An engineer, sales person, or executive insists on a feature and justifies it by saying that many customers have requested it, as if no deeper analysis is necessary to determine whether we should add the feature to the product. But in our conversations with customers, we shouldn't be focusing on features. We should be striving to understand the problems they face. They are not experts on the features or solutions; they are experts on their experiences and challenges. If we ask them what they "want", they are likely to think of solutions and short-circuit the all-important understanding of the problems they face.
The Henry Ford quote is a stark and simple falsification of the notion that a direct poll of customers is sufficient to draw conclusions about features. We should not use the quote to dismiss the importance of listening to our market., however.
References
http://www.rescuemarketing.com/blog/2008/08/29/innovative-solutions/
http://blog.cauvin.org/2010/07/henry-fords-faster-horse-quote.html
Hey Jeremy. Here's my presentation document. Which as mentioned to you, I have chosen to completely revise for this submission. Thanks for letting me do that. I've also included the original as backup work to the assignment. Thanks again for teaching us all this semester. I know I certainly got something worthwhile out of it! Alex
Explanation
One of the eight aspects of intimacy as discussed in Kjedskov, Gibbs, Vetere, Howard, Pedell, Mecholes, & Bunyan (2004) is Self-Disclosure. Self-disclosure is the removal of boundary between an individual and an intimate other both physically and psychologically, involvement in another person's live, and allowing this crossing of boundary (Register and Hanley, 1992, as cited in Kjedskov et.al., 2004). There is also a chain reaction in self-disclosure, as the receiver is likely to be more open about sharing his or her personal information in return (relating to another aspect of intimacy, Mutuality). This could be an interesting opportunity for user experience, with a focus on human interaction with each other in a positive, intimate way.
Reference
Kjedskov, J., Gibbs, M. R., Vetere F., Howard, S., Pedell S., Mecholes K., & Bunyan, M., (2004) Using Cultural Probes to Explore Mediated Intimacy. Retrieved from: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.95.3228&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Explanation
Social objects are objects that offers multiple handles for discussion. According to Quinton (1975) a social object is a group or institution containing or involving a number of individual human beings. His examples are the nation, community, society itself, and also historical events such as the French Revolution. On a smaller scale, a social object can also be a puppy that draws a lot of attention and interaction from multiple individuals. In online social networks such as Flickr, its foundation is a social object, photography. Social networks with no solid social object is hard to achieve long-term success.
Reference
Quiton, A. (1975) Social Objects. Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org/pss/4544878
‘When you have two coffee shops right next to each other, each sells the exact same coffee at the exact same price; Service Design is what makes you walk into the one and not the other.’
A service comprises a series of ‘touchpoints’, spots at which customer intersect with service provider, ‘service design’ comes into play to make sure that all these touch points work well so as to generate a positive customer experience. Service design aims to create service that is useful, accessible, usable, valuable, desirable, findable and credible (the UX honeycomb) for customer. It employs tools and methods from a wide range of disciplines such as interaction design, product design, graphic design, social sciences, as well as traditional business modeling and analytics.
Parts of the design process include the design team meeting the key stakeholders, then create “personas” (identified through interviews, surveys, observation, studies, workshops). The team walks these personas through the service and maps their experience. “Journey maps” which is used to document the interaction point, allows the team to assess current service procedures. The team would develop new ones to replace the existing procedure that appears to be less efficient or effective. A “service blue print” is created to identify the channels through which the service will be delivered and the blueprint refinement can be made by prototyping the service. Eg. acting out scenes and gather feedback for further refinement.
Some good quotes:
‘Service Design is giving people what they want, the way they want it, when they want it” – Paul Thurston
‘Service Design is giving people what they didn’t even know they wanted, but when they experience it, it blends into their lives smoothly” – Anouk Randag
Here’s a book trailer about service design thinking which I found kind of interesting. The first 19 pages can be viewed on its main website (go to preview).
Aik Chin (S3315975)
Reference:
Cottong, S (2009). UX Design, Service Design and Design Thinking. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/sylvain/ux-design-service-design-design-thinking
Educause (2011). 7 Things You Should Know About Service Design. Retrieved fromhttp://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7077.pdf
Fonteijn, M (2008). One Line of Service Design – The List. Retrieved from http://www.31v.nl/2008/03/one-line-of-service-design-the-list/.
This blog charts the progress and activity of an Introduction to User Experience Design specifically targeted at Communication Designers. The course is run by Jeremy Yuille, and the class contribute their work here.
Please feel free to add constructive comments and critique.
