Project and
Methods:
Findings:
Reflections:
A need to bring others in
Women Who Play was an individual research project--there was no team to circulate ideas through or to critique designed outcomes with. As the project progressed the barriers to others coming in became greater. It became hard to tell if findings and clusters had significance to anyone else. It also became easy to believe that more was being found than actually was. Beyond having a team working on the project, sessions could have been organized to bring others in. While they would have required work to organize and prepare for, it would have been possible to have others look at the work if it was organized in a structured way. These could have taken the form of a group brainstorming session or critique, or some other form. The lessoned learned is that more eyes are not just nice, but necessary.
A major problem encountered on Women Who Play was the same findings and insights kept being re-circulated. This may have been due to this being a solo research project. However, on reflection it seems clear that steps could have been taken to avoid this. Early findings, like those immediately after conducting the interviews, should be recorded, explored and then set aside. Early findings can be rich and powerful. While they are often good, they can also overpower later investigations, i.e. you start to look for results that justify your first observations. By setting them aside you make room for the design process to find its on findings. Similarly, it may be useful to have several periods of reflection and then putting things aside. Mattelmäki summarizes Sleeswijk, Visser et. al.'s three step process, that while not design based, gives structure to the findings process. The three stages are initial observations, delving deep into the material, and a sense-making period of organization. WWP tried to do all these things at once. In future projects it would be best to consciously separate them.