 Today's topic is going to be design thinking as critique towards designing to improve our social world I'm sure Brian will help explain that better than I can As he's prepared a 40-minute presentation and that will leave roughly 15 minutes for questions toward the end Hello everyone, so I'm going to I'm going to ask you as well. Can you hear me now? I'm gonna wait. All right. Thank you very much. So first of all, thank you very much for attending this talk So a couple of caveats. I am I am on the mend right now from a full So if I pass out that will be probably to that you're all of your benefit But otherwise so this is designed to be a 40-minute talk, but I am open to questions during the presentation And Mike has graciously volunteered to sort of monitor Because I do have some questions that I will be asking throughout and for those of you who have taken my classes or who know me I can be relatively chatty so we can definitely go well over 40 minutes. I'm gonna try my best to keep it to 40 So without further ado Thank you very much and we're gonna get started So I'm gonna start this presentation today, but with the age-old caveat So whenever we think about technology and especially designing technology. I want to sort of emphasize This age-old adage that one size does at all So just like when we think about things like clothing or other things that are often designed Humans are different. We are we have different values. We come from different cultures and Etc etc So having said that I do have an initial question for you all which is when you think of technology What comes to mind? So like what do you think technology is to you? I'm gonna wait a moment and see Look for some responses that may that might pop up silence Tools All right, like what kind of tools? So computers and phones and and tools such as I'm going to assume Things like you know drivers or other types of you have power tools Some machines connections. So what do you what do you mean by connections? Is that my spin out pronouncing this correctly or not it so data transfer communication? Okay, so So something something that people often really focus on is this you know is the technical But so I think but I think it isn't so as some of your ability or highlighting is that it can also be other things like you Know technology can come in the form of data They can come in the form of communications like mediation and so to me often think of technology is things that mediate our day-to-day interactions or our day-to-day social and our interactions with our day-to-day social works and so if we think about things like You know so Facebook computers phones even things like the Bill of Rights So technologies often have embedded rules and norms and things that are often operating behind the scenes So that sort of that we sort of encounter and work with day-to-day So if you think about things like Facebook, there's been a common discourse especially more recently around algorithms and how Facebook's algorithms Be leading to misinformation or you know or forcing people to think you know about certain things in certain ways of biases And so what this leads to is really questions about who is designing our technology How is it? How is this being designed? And so these are the things that we're going to be really starting to explore and and and think about today And I'm really what I'm trying to focus on is giving you all critical ways to think about the tools that you're using every single day Or that you might be building one day for other people So I'm first going to start with traditional designs if we're talking about design I'm going to talk about how this is traditionally done and so I want to stress that I come from this discipline called human computer interaction and Human computer action or HCI focuses Between people and technology so whenever people and technology come together to me That is human computer interaction. And so how are people using technology? So again and going back to this mediation perspective such that mediates their day-to-day lives So how is technology being used in home environments work environments? How is it being used in political contexts and more? And so there are two major paradigms through which HCI researchers and practitioners think about technology The first is really focused on how technology is actually impacting our society So this is you know, this is the social impact of technology perspective It's a lot of us often see how technology is being used to really understand how technology is changing our social world Second or another another group of people and this is what many of us always think about is how do we actually design technology? So people are different. They have different needs And so we often think about design from a user-centered perspective. So we're designing for people in various contexts So the way that this often emerges is around there's this there's there are various paradigms for user-centered design I'm actually borrowing a photo from the Nielsen-Norman group and so if you all don't know Jacob Nielsen and Don Norman are two relatively like high-profile human-computer interaction scholars and practitioners You know On Norman is currently running the design lab at the University of California, San Diego and so they developed this sort of this design thinking process and So whether you whatever paradigm you are coming from so there are there are several other user-centered design models What you are really trying to do is understand your users and their needs Okay, so this often emerges across a series of phases And so like you know the first phase is really about understanding so you can see this first this first section The first quality it's this blue like the blue part of this circle Where it's like, you know, you're really trying to empathize with the people that you're going to be designing So this this form of empathy really comes from going in and actually learning from them learning how they do So for example, if somebody wanted to design an instructional technology for a classroom They might go and actually study how how classrooms are actually organized and how people learn and how instruction happens and more So it's really about understanding the users Then you move into this period. We're actually combining and thinking about all this research and starting to identify Well, what are the what are all the problems that exist? What are the things that we might design around for? Then you move into this exploration phase where you really start to ideate So you just come up with an imagine what are things that I might want to build and Some of these things that you might want to build might not even leverage existing technologies But you might think more on futuristically. You might even borrow ideas from science fiction So it's really about getting crazy and thinking very broadly about what you might be able to build From there you move into this prototyping phase and you actually build Material things so either paper prototypes or digital prototypes that really give people an opportunity to then actually use and engage And if you go into the hCI literature prototyping to me is one of the most fascinating and fun things to do Because oftentimes people don't know what it is they're doing and I just noticed that Michael Muller joined The session and Michael Muller is actually a one of the folks that I really looked up to was the prototyping the prototyping space And yes, the prototypes are often considered as Michael Muller describes as this third space of design And it's not until people actually begin to engage with this material artifact or this thing That they actually begin to elicit like oh like, you know, what are the possibilities of design? Or what are things that we can't actually do with Etc Then that moves into a testing phase where you begin you return to your users and get feedback from them And then you implement however within within this space and something that we often Like many people don't consider but people in my field often talk about a lot Is that design is also a highly political process So there are several so there are several paradigms of design one of which is um called participatory design And participatory design emerged out of Scandinavian tradition And if if meant if those of you are not if you are not familiar with Scandinavian politics Scandinavian political systems are very social Like they're more on the socialist side Of of the political spectrum And so what this means it's a it's really For like an inclusive society where people have an inclusive voice In terms of how things you know how society works And so designers have often leveraged this so so there's a Scandinavian tradition that has emerged called participatory design Which really focuses on How users of potential systems actually become integrated into the design of a system from the beginning So it's more about how do you empower people who are going to potentially use something To become the designers of the things that they're going to be using whether it's at work or at school And et cetera So what this is really getting at is it's getting at this politics of design issue Which is that oftentimes when we think about design Systems are often designed with maybe a singular voice So if we get into many of the literature like some of the literature, especially our case From on information systems design and in organizational spaces so organizations If a system is only designed with the voice of management Then the system is also going to represent the values and perspectives of managers And then people that are then using the system may come and there may be a conflict in terms of The folks that are then being forced to use something may not always agree with Or adhere to that sort of point of use And so it may change how they do things. They may not like how they do things And so this has been a common story in the sense that design may only reflect the voice of one body The people in an organization start or feel forced to use but then they find workarounds To still do things the way that they want And then then there's iterative process where then their needs and what they're doing goes back into the redesign of the system But however, if we all if we think about the political nature of design upfront We can start to sort of work around some of these issues And there's there's a trajectory within our tradition NHCI which really starts to question who designs And so when we think about who designs and I really want you to take from this talk Take away from this talk when you think about all the things that you are using in your day to day life Whether it's facebook or twitter or your mobile phone think about like who designed this How was this designed? And so there's this post-colonial so there's there's this post-colonial tradition and perspective on design And this is kind of worded by these authors here and I forgot to add becky printer who is another scholar who worked on this this particular article Which says that you know as technology starts moving from you know western context and into other environments That it carries with it various values So for instance facebook is designed around values of openness democracy and democracy And when these when these technologies then move into other countries or societies where people may not hold those same values It's it potentially serves as a colonizing force that can actually change how people do things So what this all what this also Is there's always this there's always this binary between a designer and a user and so Usually this privilege in the design space where the designer knows best And so we are designing for users Okay, so post-colonial design perspectives challenge these things like it challenges the relationship between A designer and a user and it also challenges how we think about the potential impact of technology And the values that are being embedded within them So this also leads to another question And this is a very important question, which is whose voices are included in design So when we think about this this model, so this this uh this design thinking 101 model that I sort of showed you all at the beginning Part of the talk Where would a user's voice enter the design process? So as an example, so like, you know, usually it would start or should start at the beginning So when you're empathizing You are really trying to get the user to enter into that equation However, there are other issues that can that can sort of emerge in this whole process, which is how do we actually identify users? So who are users? And so if you think broadly so like so depending on the type of technology in the scale So like it was something like facebook. Who are the users? That's a very tough question Because you have people across the globe that are using facebook And so how would you actually start to design or think about designing something? That would sort of that would cater to this large population of people um So a question I often ask myself, so how do we actually identify users and another problem is that many of these users are often invisible So if we take the case of blackboard and for those of you who are not at syracuse university Blackboard is our instructional environment that we often use for classes Where we where we provide grades and materials for courses as well as discussion boards and more um now blackboard is often used by faculty and students However, there are several other people that I would characterize as users With respect to blackboard and ensuring that it's actually working So if we think about blackboard, there's there's also, you know, the people that are in charge Maintaining blackboard. So these people are technically associated with it. What about the people that are involved with maintaining the infrastructure That actually supports a blackboard or that we can use it And more so the the conception of a user is actually much broader than only the people that are actually using the thing So this is where things really start to get complicated Now I've already talked about things like Participatory design Which are actually methods for design or a method or a methodologies for design But today I wanted to focus on a different aspect of design, which is critical design or critical making in other contexts, so folks in the hdi space and other spaces have really started to explore the emergence of these Do it yourself bottom up design activities So today there are various groups of people that have come come that have emerged And who have started to build things that have started to tinker who started to engage in diy design okay, so For instance, my one of my friends and colleagues Sylvia lintner studies Many different hacker spaces in china Okay, so if you think about this type of design It's really, you know people who are designing things outside of formal institutional spaces So this isn't formal design. There aren't traditional designers in a sense It's just everyday citizens everyday people who are making things for themselves or for some reason Okay, so people have really started to study these groups and this emergent behavior And they start to categorize this activity. So it's design And what critical design is especially by especially as described by jeff and shaowen barzel Is a it's a it takes a critical theory approach to understanding design practices So if we think about if we think about critical theory So oftentimes when we are thinking about design, especially folks who look at critical design And making we often integrate critical theory when we're thinking about what people are doing So for instance, I often draw on feminist theory As a way of really starting starting to think about what people are up to Um, it's also a form of design whereby people are challenging the status quo So it kind of be the challenge. They're either challenging like who can design Or maybe they're challenging, you know social norms or societal structures that they don't agree with So with that as a as a larger summary So critical design critical designs purpose is really to challenge our assumption and stimulate debate So critical design is employed such that the designer engages a purposeful action to subvert social structures and norms And so when so what i'm now going to do is i'm actually going to show an example Of critical design in action But before I do that I kind of want to see are there so I see there is a question here So isn't participation A uiux challenge and I and I would say yes This is a challenge and I actually was just talked about participation of participatory design in my class In my human interaction class yesterday And something that and something that I always talk about is if we're talking about participation So it it's very hard to scale depending on what you are trying to do So like if you're building a system that like, you know, if it's like a system for society Like how do you how do you get, you know, various stakeholders to participate? Who are the stakeholders? How do you identify them? How do you make sure they're representative samples? So scaling is an issue Um, but you often also think like if you're doing this kind of work and you know participatory design work in an organization How do you incentivize an organization to actually do this kind of thing? How do you so like and also going to be these barriers between like for instance if you have Employees who are now participating in a participatory design endeavor Is that now their new work during the design? Or are they still expected to produce their work stuff? So they're all they're always these complications when we think about participation And thomas does that answer your question or do you have like a follow-up? So what can we learn from critical design and making activities? so In my work so far, I've explored critical I've explored bottom-up design activities across several groups. So More recently I've been doing work with us military veterans Back back during my phd days. I was really studying iraqi civilians and how they were you know building new new systems of During the Gulf War. I'm looking at refugees integrating into new societies my My former Now now graduated doctoral student lauren britain was studying This group of people that were we've termed or called diy cyborgs who were really doing techno body modification And I would really push you to go and read some of that work. It's really interesting I'm more recent. I just started a new study with some of my collaborators at the university of colorado aboulder Looking at lesbian gay bisexual transgender queer identifying individuals and their transitions And how they're building online community spaces. I've started working on new mothers As well. So these are all things you were welcome to ask me about or look up on my website or my google star profile But today i'm going to very briefly just focus on veteran reintegrate so When you think about When you think about veterans what they're actually experiencing is a life or life disruption So life disruptions are a category of disruptions that are often invisible Um to the public. So these are often internalized at the individual level And so a life disruption is something like Like going through a divorce or maybe being diagnosed with a chronic illness In the aftermath of a life disruption people often experience a transition So when you go through a transition a transition is often a process where people move from one life base status or conditions to another And importantly as they're going through this transition The idea is that they're trying to make sense of their new world And find and reestablish order and normalcy In their lives However, when people go through a transition they often also experience an identity crisis Now identity if we draw on urban goffman is constructed in relation to rules and norms So our identity is something that we that is often defined through our interactions with other people and environments that we are embedded So for instance, I often draw on the rules and norms in a certain environment to enact my identity So when I'm you know, so when I'm at at my workplace, there's a certain way of being or acting And I often engage that so I'm managing my impression of myself with other people However, in the context of a transition people often Identity crisis emerged because there's a lack of continuity between those former rules and norms and the present rules and norms in your environment So as an example, if you think about veterans Veterans are coming from a military culture Military culture is highly collectivist and structured So so coming from you know, so collectivism is a top-down sort of social structure Such that Um, such that you know, there's a lot, you know, there's extreme hierarchy. People are part of you know, it's like leadership structures And people are often guided on how to be in what to do at all times of their lives while in the military So as an example of that People who military don't even make appointments to go to the dentist They often receive a a yellow slip That will say your dentist appointment is on Thursday at 4 p.m. So be at this, you know, be at the following location So everything is sort of structured in order for them And in addition, they also build a sense of camaraderie with other people, which is another norm Which is a sense of brotherhood or sisterhood with those that are around them and always always a feeling of Mutual, you know, sort of like, you know, how do you do that? You know, sort of like, you know, having one another's back So to speak And what I'm most interested in is so when people are going so when people and especially veterans are going through these identity crises And in their transitions How actually bouncing back from this? How are they learning to manage or navigate? And develop new identities That they can then live with in the civilian world So this leads to a question Which is so how does critical design thinking actually aid veterans as they're transitioning In terms of managing their new identities or building new identities? so Before before I talk about some of the examples of how veterans are actually designing things critically I want to have I want to briefly discuss the veterinary integration experience So when veterans come back from when veterans return to civilian society after serving in the military They often experience several transitions at once So many people come back and they and they with ptsd Some people will have will have experienced military sexual trauma While in the military and my students and I have written about these topics extensively Any service many former service members often get divorced they become home. They experience homelessness They have to find new jobs They have trouble fitting in at home Etc and will end more And so these are all connected to what I had talked about earlier, which is that civil military cultural gap Which is that they don't that there's this difference between how the military is structured And how the civilian world is structured So as an example one of my participants described this experience as follows so After returning she said Was also like I was on a jail sentence You know in the movie Shawshank Redemption the old man that was in jail for how long that when he goes out He doesn't fit in and kills himself That's how I felt Okay, so these are people that are really coming back and not fitting in And something that I've really pushed and stressed in my own research Is that we shouldn't consider we shouldn't consider military veterans Um in the same way like we shouldn't think of them as Americans in the same way that we consider like an average lay citizen as an american In the sense that The military is its own culture That is as strong a culture as other cultures and I would argue That it's a strong as strong the culture is like chinese culture Or indian culture or middle eastern culture as an example And these are people that are really going and becoming part of this culture And then they leave so they very much experience similar issues Immigrant or refugee populations might experience as well So while they're going through this There's an issue with the current design and implementation of formal assistance So we think about if we think about groups like the department of veteran affairs as a VA Or something like the transition assistance program. I'm going to talk about these things momentarily All of the people that I've interviewed and we're well into 70 interviews today Have described issues with how these formal Structures actually work So the so the VA for instance is people always talk about issues with record keeping Or that it's understaffed. So to give you a very quick example My participant and this is sort of a story that is representative, but it's also really unique Um described how she after serving in the military So while in the military she was she was assaulted by a superior officer Now after being assaulted, she was forced out of the military And so so she had so she sort of accepted this leave And she rejoins civilian society And so she returned back to the united states and having and being from Anchorage, Alaska Having been born in Anchorage, Alaska She actually she first moved to Arizona And while in Arizona, she was trying to gain access to the VA To sort of treat some to treat her her the trauma from her assault As well as ptc and all the other things that she was experiencing However, the the VA could not actually locate any records that she had served in the military So it took her two years, but she had to end up flying back to Anchorage And she was given she was given She was given the green light to go through The the file system of where the of the place where she had actually enlisted Until she found she found her records And then she was able to gain access, but this took two years And so there are very similar stories of these kinds of issues Similarly, there's another there's another system called the transition assistance program or TAP And this program is is you it usually emerges as a three-day program at the end of service So after you said i'm going to leave the military That towards the end of that when they're about to de-enlist and go back to to civilian society The top program it says it was usually designed as a three-day seminar Where folks would just receive lectures on how to be You know with like pragmatic supports. This is how you build a resume This is how to find a job However, everybody described how there was an issue here and that like you know, they weren't actually retaining this information It wasn't actually like you know This assistance wasn't actually being like present in In civilian society when they returned and it wasn't a long-term thing So as described by this informant, so I feel that the whole country abandoned So when I was discharged it was on my own. I wasn't set up for any kind of job transition any kind of help any kind of counseling They lost my medical records. They just threw me out the door. I'm not the first and I'm not the last And here I am 10 years later still in limbo so The way that I describe This sort of how these spaces are designed and it is a little political and intentional Is that a lot of the way that these are designed is that they're designed in a very post-colonial fashion So if you think about va and other health care systems, they're often designed to top down And with a very heavy orientation towards the clinical And so what this means is that it's usually the doctor's voices who are accounted for in the design of systems Other than is, you know, the actual how health care happens Or even in the many technologies that are being developed So for for instance, the a is currently developing a series of technologies That are supposed to be helping with things like ptsd But again, they're coming from a heavy clinical orientation And they don't often include the voices of the people that will be using these things or in this case veterans themselves So as described by several of our informants, I've chosen two examples here So one person said to the va and other agencies never taken into account how we actually experience our transitions Everything is so clinically oriented And as someone else said There's a social element and a physical element to reintegration that's missing Insisting services the va for instance is geared towards those who are injured They tend to focus purely on physical injury while they while they aim also to also deal with mental health issues Those services are highly inadequate and they are just now beginning to develop this capacity So they go on to say there's like huge gaps in mental health care In actual relation building reconnecting with family and actually reconnecting into the social structures of civilian society So in my research, I'm focusing on how veterans are actually doing things. I didn't get into the methods here But most of the methods that I'm using are they're ethnographic and online, you know using internet ethnographic methods and ethnography is a Is a method that really focuses on writing about people And so in terms of writing about people there are two major there are two major things that we do one of which is observation And the other is interviews And so because there isn't like one single space where it's easier to just go and observe veterans I've been doing a lot of online observation Or data collection of online veteran behavior And I've also been interviewing several veterans and as I said earlier up to about 70 now And through this work, I found that veterans are designing new technology Um From the bottom up So it's actually veterans have taken upon themselves to start building things like online community spaces new social media platforms Facebook groups you name it. They're doing it and it's really getting at this like gap filling So these formal these formal spaces aren't really doing what they want them to do Or they are there are gaps in the types of assistance that they're providing And so veterans have taken it upon themselves to address these issues So what what is actually making these bottom up spaces work and these bottom up online community or technology work? and I'm going to be exploring just two very brief examples and have a thousand more than I could use Um just to illustrate the point of like how critical design thinking that will like help us think about this Like what they're doing So one of the first things that I find like one of the one of the primary things that I have found is that In these online community spaces that veterans are developing. They're often leveraging familiar rules and norms from the military so For instance as described by the For particular informant. So how I approach the design of the online environment is definitely related to the military It was always about we did this or the team did this For me part of the problem solving is always going to be about collaboration So when I set out to to solving this problem create my online community It was about giving people that sense of camaraderie that is now missing in their lives so The motivation for their design is that they are now drawing on their rules and norms of the military and giving people In the in the veteran community a space through a scaffolded space that leverages those rules and norms Such that they could so that such that they could still enact that identity while dealing with other issues so for for example People developed our online communities for You know for suicide mediation for ptsd support For job retention and job creation People created online communities for for advocating against sexual trauma And all of these spaces actually did a lot of what they sort of adhered to this very same principle And so what this really leads me to think about is that these spaces are working Because a veteran so if i'm drawing on my you know feminist design perspectives as an example It's not that they are it's not that there's this binary of being a veteran or a civilian Is that they are both at the same time. They are a veteran and a civilian and It's not that they should always just forget about that former sense of self and just move on to something new And that's how most spaces are designed. It's about forgetting about the past and moving into something new It's always about but in this case you're trying to blend the two and find something familiar that works for them And I and I liken this to how when people move Two different countries and immigrate they often bring things with them that are familiar So for instance all might I have several friends who are Persian and they often will you know Their houses are designed where they bring in Persian rugs That provides a sense of familiarity. It's comfortable. You know reminds them of their home environment Also, when you think of things like you know when we have you know cultural and community centers You know things like food Um, you know habits and rituals. We don't like when people move to a different society They don't they don't get rid or erase those things completely They all it's often about finding that blend and this is kind of what veterans are doing here The second example is how actual design itself and the process of design serves as a critical reflection at the individual level So here i'm going to talk about design and the reflexivity that comes from design As a mechanism through which people are actually crafting like di y do it yourself in normalcy Or finding resilience through design So what I was finding was that a lot of our participants through design practice We're actually using that as an opportunity to reflect on what actually made them happy While in the military So through design that was probably being opened up to them Like they were realizing what it was that gave them purpose Or what gave them comfort and what they liked So as an example this in this particular case this participant says So there's a strong relationship between the ability of an individual to envision a new sense of self Self and crafting a forward-looking self narrative as they move out of the military Versus another sample of folks who grieve for what they lost When veterans return in my experience is I found that they were constantly trying to regain purpose in all the wrong places So they're out at bars hanging out in basements For me the way I think this plays out for folks is those who ultimately navigate their transition successfully Are able to find institutions organization structures and relationships that allow them to continue realizing the thing that created meaning and Value while in the military and so this person says I created their groups by drawing on that but then importantly they say you know I created the group as a means to give that to other people but importantly if I never did that I would still be miserable So they continue to say by building this online community I was also able to realize for myself what gave me meaning and purpose in my life I was able to continue doing that even in the civilian world So those are just a couple of examples of critical design in action And so I'm going to leave you all with a couple of final thoughts that or takeaways from this sort of way of thinking about things So the first the first set of things is so design thinking and if you start to really think about the technologies that we are using It Provides an opportunity to really think critically about our social world. So like who designs? So on the one hand this through through design thinking. It's also critical as I've talked about it's a critical reflection of the self Of the self So through this hands-on generative design practice people are also reflecting on themselves and what works for them Also in turn through design thinking people are critically reflecting on what what is not working in society So to take this to a higher level and my final sort of takeaway or thing that I want you to take from this is that Can we through looking at these bottom-up practice? I actually think about these things as larger issues that are manifest in society that we should or could redesign And so I will leave you with that as a final thought And thank you very much Great. Thank you professor saman. Again, we have a q&a portion now. So please use the chat window to Chat in your questions Um Again, we're here to answer any questions you may have I actually had one while listening. So maybe I'll kick it off Go for um I found it really the dyke what I found really interesting about presentation professor saman was kind of the dichotomy between Designers and users and users being designers and what I thought was very interesting was When you gave the veterans example in that the veterans themselves were designing tools Based on the design of the military So that question To me was was pretty interesting in that You know who who in that scenario was the actual designer of of the system Um, so I don't know if that's a question or just a thought but um Well, that's something to think about I guess. Well, that's that's a very provocative Thought because it's like, you know, they just you can almost think like a veteran is designed to be A military person, right? So in my work, I've also I've also written a lot about things like You know like military masculinity and coming at this from like a very feminist perspective. So like How does that culture? masculinity Then lead to issues as they're transitioning. So people For instance, like, you know in the military you always have those strengths So by being struck means that you don't suffer from psychological trauma You should always perform, right? So that also comes back. So that's like, you know, there are things that like, you know That that culture of strength Also manifests in this very negative way When they're back, right? And such as to say that like, you know, they're carrying that with them and then all of a sudden now here They also don't want to talk about their experiences Or deal with their emotions And so these are other problems Yeah Very interesting It looks like Michael Muller Chatted in some some helpful resources That we can all all take a look at regarding these topics Let's see here. I don't know if you want to respond to the thought here by Renata, I believe that's how you pronounce her name if you want to scroll up a little bit Renata says thanks. I really like the presentation and the approach Like that you bring the old approaches as post-colonial issues together with new tools Because often we forget the development that daily life practices are within Are new in a remeditated way shifting changing time and in my eyes Goffman is still timeless I agree that Goffman is still timeless I also use a lot of uh, you know, Judith Butler and like other identity scholars like, you know, Giddens, Goffman, Judith Butler Except they all have very interesting things to say Divya McMillan Chatted in a question. Thanks for the great presentation for critical frameworks and participatory design is also critiqued for their limitations To actually subvert power structures. What concrete changes have you seen and how services are delivered to veterans? Do you have examples of sustained improvement? so Part of part of my scholarship is to also so like so again one of the challenges of critical scholarship For instance is that it often doesn't always move into the actual like a reality of how things happen okay, so part of my part of one of the things that i'm doing is i'm actually so I don't want people to take like, you know, this Like what i'm saying about the va because they do, you know, they're they're working within other You know other designs, so if you think of like societal design There's a larger system of things that are at work That are also sort of guiding how the va does things So when i'm critical of the va, I don't I don't intend it to come off as like the va is the worst thing on the planet I'm actually a non-compensation employee at the va I'm also working with the tap program folks I work with several veteran agencies around Circus and other parts of the country Um to really move from you know this you know the current ways in which they're doing And i'm leveraging a lot of what i'm learning from veterans to sort of build into how the va and these other spaces are doing them So in terms of sustained engagement, I think part of it is like as as someone who is studying this Really shifting from like, you know, what i'm learning to actually moving it to like these formal institutional structures Is very important to me and part of that is through my sustained engagement with those groups Um, but I think something that's important to identify is that these things that veterans are doing they are sustained And these are sustained engagements And a lot of these things that people are using and doing Um, you know, this is like like I I can't really I I don't want to get into identifying which Online communities I was studying because that goes against the ethics of you know, research integrity However, some of these online communities have over a hundred thousand people Or a hundred thousand users So I think that's pretty and these are and they are sustained and used every day So I think that's pretty profound that does this did I answer your question? Well, I guess it's uh, there's a lot coming. Yeah, there's a lot coming in so we'll we'll move on here So Eleanor Burgess Chatted in in your research. How do veterans learn about the resources that are out there Sounds like there is a bundle of things that might be useful to the veteran population So Eleanor, that's a great question um, and part of the problem is that veterans themselves so like so if you think about someone who has come Can I've written about this challenge of resource identification? And I actually have an IMLS. I'm working on an IML like it's the library science grant With some other folks to really get it and tackle it to tackle this problem about resources Because there are several hundreds of resources Whether they're online or offline That veterans have access to but one of the major issues is they often don't know how to find them And so we're really trying to tackle that problem And I think well like one thing that I'm finding a lot Is that the veterans that are really super successful, especially in like the first couple of years of their transition Are the ones that have a transition mediary Or as I define or my students and I have defined is as someone who will come and actually help The veteran mediate their transition those The act is a person who will go and do this sort of the seeking of resources connecting their veteran Um either spouse Child sibling Whoever it may be into resources and really helping to push them And move them forward and so the ones that don't have that kind of support Someone who's willing to take tackle that and take that on They don't they're not they I have found that they're not as successful But I don't have enough to like really say that that is a 100 percent truth I mean we're still we're going to be exploring that more and more Great next question is from Renata. How would you define design for your research? How do I design so how do I define define design? so So design so design to me It's it's sort of it's like a complicated It's a complicated thing, but like you know if I'm looking at it from From like, you know the human like from a human computer interaction perspective It's more about like, you know, just this, you know the So it's like how people go about Producing artifacts both digital and non-digital That they then integrate into their day-to-day lives So whether it's at home at work And etc And so I don't know if that answers your question But like but for me, it's more about like, you know, that this process So it's people think about what they need And go about addressing it Through the construction of something And I think that's important to say it doesn't always have to be tech. It doesn't always have to be digital And the reason why I asked this question about about technology Is because technology to me can be a piece of paper It's really about what people are doing with that piece of paper That is that is important from like a design A design thinking at least in terms of like what they're doing angle Great one more question here from Lanow thing great presentation I'd like to ask what's your take on the notion Don't ask your customer what they want when it comes to The hands-on design activities of the veterans as designers have their profession based on their Expertise bridging technologies and tools and users. How does it justify Letting the veterans design by themselves over the more thorough and empathetic user research Sure that So let me let me read that again I think this whole thought of Designers as experts in the field so So I don't I don't want to take away from the importance of designers Because you know, so as someone I mean I went to UC Irvine. I was trained in a Human computer interaction school in many ways Um or tradition, but it was also a more critical tradition And so part of part of this is not it's not to say that we should only just let veterans design for themselves and as an But that we should also you know because sometimes designers can go help and sort of moderate or at least mediate Some of these activities and I'll give you an example for my own work I am actually so I see there's been a lot of chatter in this chat And I and I thank Michael Muller for providing reasons to people about participatory design Because I am using participatory design in my work And and and what I'm using participatory design for is I'm actually bringing veterans Into my lab space and then engage in sustain design sustain design activities with them Such that they're actually building tools and things for themselves in their community Um now they so now as someone who doesn't really know about design. I'm teaching them design methods So like something that we often do it's like when I first start working with them I'm like, you know, this is what prototyping is Like let's talk about prototypes. Let's talk about how to use prototypes Um, and what and what they can be used for Um, and so like it's really about sort of there's some of that training But but the but the alternative but but then thinking and building on that As someone who is not a veteran. I I will know in no way ever try and say hey This is what you should be doing Or I'm going to design for you because I know better because you know what I don't know what they experienced like I'm just scratching the surface right now And this is a very complicated space to design You know, it's like, you know people, you know, it's like mental health So if if you know anyone or a few yourself have ever suffered from depression You know what triggers depression You know, it's a very it's a very tricky thing to design And if you haven't experienced something yourself Like at least at least the way that I think about it. I can't go and make I I don't want to make judgments about how people should be resolving their own issues Other than saying like we'll possibly helping them sort of help guide them with the possibilities of what technology Can actually provide them. I hope that answers your question I think we have a time for one more question. Uh, this one comes from jessica pater I believe i'm pronouncing that right. Thanks for a great and thought-provoking talk Can you talk about some of the challenges or affordances of the qualitative methods when working in such complex or dynamic contexts? Like the military any best practices that you might be able to share Yeah, so so I think a uh The qualitative qualitative research can be highly complex, especially especially because you know So I'm gonna start with like I'm gonna talk about a couple of things. So first There's always like a distinction between like, you know, if you're someone who is part like if you have membership in a group And you're going in like reflectively studying that population. So for instance, my family Comes from my family is from iraq. I am of iraqi descent just born in san diego, california However, my dissertation work was heavily focused on iraqis living in the iraq war zone You know during the second Gulf War now It's very hard sometimes to to uh and untangle Your own experiences and views from the research Um, and so I think anytime you're doing like reflexive work and something that I I actually think reflexivity I can this this is like a whole other talk And I talk about this a lot in my hci class is how I I think reflexivity is actually a powerful part of research And it's very important. Um And so I think one thing that I always talk about is if I'm doing qualitative research One of my best practices is really to always play dumb And and I can't emphasize that enough like when I'm doing research And asking people questions like making it clear to them like I don't know Like I really don't understand and being able to ask those questions and seem very trivial Because to me that's where like the meaning making comes in. You know, like those those things that are very implicit Or task it in a community and you're really trying to understand Task stuff is So that you can understand how these things work and how these people work and how they do things Or how they've experienced things And so, you know playing dumb. I think another thing Another thing is like in terms of Which is always to me is always the biggest struggle. So Especially working with these marginalized or underserved populations. I always have trouble recruiting Um, and I can't stress enough how like so like sometimes sometimes it's very hard to do this work because You know, you're working with these people that have have sensitive experiences And they may not always want to talk to you So I've spent lots of time sort of gaining legitimacy In these different across these different populations that I'm seeking to explore study Or work with I should say so for instance when I was when I I like to tell this story When I was doing my dissertation work Um, one of my subjects So I was doing I was doing interviews with people that were both in iraq as well as people who were in san diego Or like southern california Because I was in southern california at the time and the first participant that I interviewed in southern california He had You know, we did this it was like a three hour long interview And then he called me the next day and he said brian, you know, I need to I have to admit something to you I you know, I wasn't I wasn't honest about everything And I want to try this again Um, and so what I learned from that experience was like one thing that I do is like you really have to sort of Get into the mindset of the people that you're studying. So like Who is you know, who it was american but also Still adheres very strongly to iraqi traditions I decided, you know, like, you know, and like, you know, there's like this american like sort of view of like I'm just going to get down to business And it's like when you start an interview you just start the interview But in this case my interviews started to turn into like day-long events Like I would invite them either to my house or my parents house depending on where the interview was And they would come over We would start I'd start off with like, you know, giving them tea or or lunch or whatever And then we would talk for a while then we would stop and do something else And really really making them feel comfortable and inviting them and showing them that like, you know, I did understand their culture So I think part of it is like, you know, gaining legitimacy is another big thing It's like, how do you gain legitimacy build on trust with these groups? And I can go and I think this is like I would love to write to you separately Be like come up with like very clear guidance for best practices because I think this is important But thank you. This is a this is a very nice question Great. Well, I think we're approaching the one o'clock hour now. So this concludes our Talk with professor saman Again, I'd like to let everyone know that this talk will be available on youtube. We will email out a link to this recorded session To everyone who registered Also, you could always visit us at the iSchool at iSchool.sear.edu. That's iSchool.syr.edu Follow us on social media follow professor saman and we're thrilled and Good to have such a great talk with so many great questions and participants. So thank you very much Thank you all