Consulting Report: Co-Designing with Children Liang Zhi (00366376), Rachel Gilmour (61887) & Tamara Tomanic (61898) Supervisor: Jørgen Ole Bærenholdt 3rd January, 2019. Number of pages - 63 Number of characters - 99574 1 Table of Contents Management of the project 3 Methods 8 Literature Review 12 Bibliography 1​9 2 Management of the project This section focuses on the context of the project: accounting for how it came about, how the management of the project was handled and how we worked as a team. We will reflect on the phases of initiating, planning, executing/ conducting fieldwork, analysing our data and closure/ finalising the project (Westland, 2016). Initiating the Project The initial phase of the project emerged from our collaboration with the cross-disciplinary architecture firm, arki_lab. This collaboration revolved around their upcoming book which explores the topic of outdoor learning spaces for children. Our role in this project evolved from initially being researchers for arki_lab to becoming contributors to the book. They wished for us to focus on the theme of experience-based learning. This guided our initial phase of desk research for which we found various case studies. After multiple discussions, we settled on three case studies: construction site playgrounds (Danish: Byggelegeplads), the Theme Gardens in Valby Park (Danish: Valby Temahaverne) and the Norwegian concept of Barnetraakk and their Filter project in Gran municipality, Norway. Once we finalised this with arki_lab, we conducted desk research and field work. Field work was only conducted in the first two case studies as it was not possible to do so for the latter because of impractical travel issues. Throughout the research process we presented our findings to arki_lab through writing. As our research evolved, we agreed upon writing a chapter for the book based on this theme of experienced-based learning. The book is to be printed in January 2019 and will be published later in the year. As the topic of the semester project concerns producing a consultancy report, we began to debate about how we can use our work for arki_lab as inspiration for our project. We were inspired by this process of working with arki_lab and their enthusiasm for co-design. We were especially inspired by the findings of our research and decided to further explore one 3 of our case studies, the construction site playgrounds, for the book in the context of a consultancy framework. Before we elaborate upon the management of conducting the project, we will reflect on the group’s expectations of the project, prefered way of working and agreement on frequently meeting. Group expectations When we formed our group, we discussed our expectations for the project and created a written contract which we followed throughout the semester project. The purpose of this was to maintain efficiency throughout the project and avoid potential conflicts. The contract states that we will aim to communicate well, meaning to be honest with each other letting each other know our schedules in advance to ensure that we complete our work on time. This became crucial as the project evolved because of our weekly deadlines for aki_lab, we had to maintain efficiency and professionalism. We also agreed upon maintaining a balance between working alone and working together. Because of the nature our project evolved into, we divided up tasks as we had to juggle our various case studies. Therefore, it was important to work alone yet also together, to ensure that the writing we produced for arki_lab and our project was coherent and clear. Finally, we wanted to aim for a good grade and enjoy the process as we all share a keen interest in arki_lab and the practice of co-design. Planning the project The next step was to come up with a plan how to incorporate the work we were doing for arki_lab project into our semester project. We used it as inspiration and decided to focus on co-designing. Further on, we identified a link between our inspiration coming from our work with arki_lab and the experience of working with them. We recognized arki_lab as valuable actors in the practice we wished to focus on. As we have already established a relation with arki_lab we had access to our informants which further led to gathering relevant data and generating knowledge. 4 Balancing Two Projects As we were dealing with two projects at the same time and with similar themes, we recognized that time management was an important role in the overall process. Therefore, it was important to plan and set deadlines for both projects (research for arki_lab and the semester project) as they were overlapping. We set some ground rules on how to work with both projects to get the most out of it. One of the challenges we encountered was the writing style that arki_lab wished us to follow when writing for their book. They encouraged us to use playful and easy-to-read language because the book was for a wide audience. As we are all masters students, we were used to writing in a formal and academic fashion and it was something that we struggled with. It also caused an issue for our semester project because we could not use what we had written for them to our project because the language was not suitable for an academic consultancy report. We had to coordinate a lot of rewriting and editing to maintain a balance between the two projects. One of the things we did in order to ensure that progression was being made with both projects, was to think ahead with our fieldwork. We knew that we wanted our semester project to focus on co-designing in the construction site playgrounds, yet we were investigating its qualities for arki_lab of being an experience-based way of learning. Therefore, we planned our fieldwork in advance, to make sure that we would gather data that was suitable for both projects. This was to ensure that we completed our fieldwork on time for both projects. The Semester Project According to the requirements of the curriculum, our task is to produce a consultancy report. This can be done in two ways and we have decided to shape our project as a ‘practice-oriented project focusing on concrete investigation of consumption, experiences and objects or locations’ (SDS, RUC curriculum 2018). Taking this in consideration we have decided to divide our project into two sections. First one is the Reading Guide for which we believe it is relevant for the internal assessment of ​ 5 the project. This section is a more academically oriented which fulfills the project requirements. It provides background relevant for the academic understanding of the project. The second section is the actual Consultancy Report which is written for potential ​ clients. The format of this document ‘combines analytical depth with commercial relevance’ in order for us to engage in practicing consultancy (SDS, RUC curriculum 2018). The consultancy report is structured to examine a problem and answer to a client’s needs by providing recommendations and suggestions. Execution of the project The overall process of the project was not linear, but rather iterative. Half way through the project we agreed upon using arki_lab as a case study. Therefore, we wanted to collect more focused data on how they practice co-designing in a professional context, as we had only observed them in the context in writing for their book. We asked them to participate in interviews with us on co-design. We believe that this helped us gain better data for analysis and producing strong arguments in relation to the problem formulation. The next phase of the project entailed analysing our research and formulating it into a consultancy report. We focused on our findings for shaping our recommendations in the report. Towards the end of the project, we had a peer feedback session with a fellow group in our programme. This provided us with external guidance which helped us make our project have a clear focus. This external perspective made us observe our project from the outside and see where we had to improve. Closure on the Project We are planning to send our final project to arki_lab as they have expressed interest in it. As our project emerged out of our collaboration with arki_lab, it could be relevant for them as it provides more in-depth research about co-design and the case study in their book. 6 What would we do differently? In hindsight, we would have asked arki_lab to define our role more clearly as contributors to the book from the beginning. This includes identifying what our tasks would have been. It was unclear at the beginning just how involved we would be as it had consequences on the timeframe of our semester project. For example, the book deadline was pushed back from early December 2018 to January 2019. This had an effect on us as it we could not focus on our own project as early as we would have liked to, which presented a challenge for us to make our own deadline. If we had more time, we would go back to the construction site playgrounds and focus on interviews with the children that go there. This would provide even richer findings and would add an additional perspective on the practice of co-design as we only had the chance to observe them. 7 Methods The research for this consultancy report uses a combination of investigative methods including a literature review, semi-structured interviews, and observations. The literature review will provide theoretical support to our data analysis and give the reader a clear definition of what co-designing with children entails.