Key Dates
- Stakeholder focus groups: to be scheduled between 13th February and 23rd February 2024
- Design Sprint individual report (Assignment R1): due Tuesday 13th February 2024, midnight on Learn
- Festival of Creative Learning (no classes): week commencing 19th February 2024
Description
This phase is the transition between the initial information-gathering and problem exploration in the Design Sprint, and developing a single, more thought-through solution during the Developing phase (Phase 4). Your team will continue to discuss, process and build on the information gained in the Discovery Sprint, through a combination of individual, group, and class activities.
We will now “dig deeper” into the topics in introduced so far. These topics include data formats, data management, and extracting information from raw data; and also ethics, privacy, and methods for working with stakeholders (and analysing the results). This will involve a combination of class exercises, lectures, and readings.
All teams need to further explore the possible problems/solutions they identified in the Design Sprint (Phase 2), and collect more information about their sub-theme. This period of “deepening” will provide a firmer foundation for launching into the Developing phase (Phase 4).
Stakeholder focus groups
As part of the exploration and information-gathering process, each team will hold a small focus group with community stakeholders during Phase 4 - Design Development. This is essentially a discussion around specific questions, moderated by a researcher (in this case, a member of your team). Through stakeholders’ discussion with each other and the team members, there will be an opportunity to gain more information about the problem area, generate new ideas, and get preliminary feedback about ideas from the Design Sprint (Phase 2). Even if your team really likes an idea, stakeholders may not understand it, or may feel that it fails to address their needs.
You are advised to make video recordings of your focus group session. Video cameras, tripods and audio recording equipment can be borrowed free of charge from Learning Spaces Technology. [IS THIS NOW AN ONLINE FORM? Multimedia Equipment Loans | The University of Edinburgh]To make a booking, you will need to send email to learningspacestechnology@ed.ac.uk. In your email, please specify that you are borrowing the equipment as part of the Data, Design and Society course.
The course staff will help you to organise the stakeholder focus group, and recruit participants. There will be a supported, in-class data analysis session to help you make sense of the information you collect. Your team will need to organise your own, additional design session with stakeholders during the Developing phase. You will be expected to be much more independent during the Developing phase, so it is essential to fully participate in the Digging Deeper (Phase 3) focus group and analysis sessions in order to learn these skills.
The following guidance documents will help you to run your focus groups:
By the End of this Phase
You should have completed all class and homework activities to equip yourself with the skills needed for the Developing phase, including the basic skills needed to work with stakeholders.
Your team should have completed a stakeholder focus group and analysed the resulting data.
Your team should have narrowed down their ideas and identified a specific question or problem area within your sub-topic. The team can give a clear explanation of what the problem is, and explain how this choice was justified by information you have collected, including information from the stakeholder focus team.
Your team should have stored any newly collected data in accordance with approved DDC and University data management and privacy requirements.
