Practical Matters Prevail

When I choose a space to work in, I am very aware of what I am going to do and what I want to achieve. If I need to concentrate, I tend to look for spaces that feel intimate, warm and comfortable. For creative or collaborative work, I usually opt for spaces that feel open and vibrant. I want to be able to move freely and use the space to share my ideas with others. If the space is uninspiring and doesn’t feel right to me — and you find plenty of those at our university — I usually pack my things and look for a better one.
The fact that I often see my interaction design students wandering around looking for a space made me wonder what considerations they have when choosing their creative space. How they see, experience and use these spaces? Or in more general terms: What do students think of when they think about their creative space?

In a week where they, as a team, needed to ideate on ideas and come up with a strong creative concept for an online platform a creative space to collaborate was essential. To collect ‘what’s on their mind’ and gain insight in what they think of when they think about their creative space, I designed a small questionnaire as the second assignment in a design-probe study. Five students from different teams participated in this study and their answers were collected online in a virtual collaborative space or living atlas. A complete description and substantiation of this design-probe study and atlas can be found in the post ‘Design Probes & Living Atlas’.

Students where asked to collect all their results on a virtual collaborative space or living atlas.

What I found was quite interesting. While I try out different spaces and try to combine them with my design activities, these students all chose ‘the same’ spaces to work every time. Although we have different lab spaces, traditional classrooms, open spaces such as lounges and even a coffee-shop-like space available, they consistently chose our closed-off small project or team spaces to work in. The fact that they didn’t even try any other space made me eager to dive into the results of the questionnaire.

Mapping their Thinking

To be able to compare their answers I collected them per question. The first thing that stood out: they mention objects and related practical matters remarkably often. For example, when asked about the benefits of a space in relation to collaboration, they respond that table tops are adjustable and the window can be opened. I can imagine that these are practical benefits in a space, but the relationship to collaboration is missing. The amount in which the answers dealt with objects and practical matters led to a deepening of the material in a few iterations.

To get a feel for what the students are thinking of, I started highlighting these objects [yellow] in all their answers. Then I looked for references of emotions or feelings [green] and senses such as seeing, hearing, feeling [magenta], because they might say more about the feeling of a space. Finally, I was curious about whether there were decisive factors [blue] to choose a space, practical or emotional, and whether there were references to creative collaboration [purple].
By literally exposing this content and expressing it one after the other, a ‘string of thoughts’ is created and subsequently converted to the thought ticker shown below.

A news ticker, that shows topics passing through a screen, is used as a metaphor for showing the string of thoughts passing through the students brains.

Although there were references to emotions or feelings in the answers, there were not many. To make it clear how often thoughts are attributed to different categories, data visualization was used in a final iteration. In the image below, the size of the circles refers to the number of attributes.
The enormous mass of the objects category is obvious and feels almost like a sun in its own solar system. It clearly shows that, in relation to the other categories, objects and practical matters prevail in the students’ thinking.

This visualization, which looks almost like a solar system, shows how often thoughts were listed in the various categories.

Reflecting on these Results

Although motivations and opinions were asked, the results mainly provide insight into explicit knowledge. That may be a logical outcome for an information driven questionnaire, but I nevertheless expected the students to provide more specific insight into their emotions and feelings, or tacit knowledge. One of the students cites connection with fellow group members as important. But what this connection means to them and me isn’t clear. And what do they mean when they talk about ‘no distractions’ and ‘it feels nice’? As a follow-up to this activity, it would be interesting to have a conversation and expose the substantiation more.

The results tell me that they are absolutely not concerned with the emotion and creativity in the space, but purely and solely with material and efficiency. In addition, the goal of creative collaboration and the associated activities does not play a visible role in the decision to choose a specific space. Instead of adapting a space to the goal, they only work with what they have (or get). And the fact that all small project spaces are arranged in the same way probably reinforces their idea that ‘this is how it should be’.

What we prefer to develop among our students is a ‘this is how it could be’ way of thinking. Instead of considering space as a given, it can become a tool in their creative process.
I am curious what will happen if all practical obstacles are taken and we facilitate what they experience as ‘needed’. Will they be able to approach the space more from a perspective of emotion and feeling?
Or what will happen when I give them materials and creative freedom to design a space that is better suited to their creative collaboration. Will ownership and bringing this as a design challenge help to approach the space in a different, less practical way?

This last question also initiated the third assignment in the design-probe study. The results can be found in the post ‘Prototyping Spaces in Boxes’.