Designers and Stakeholders
Synthesis
Relational
Short
This teaching activity enables students to explain how their values constitute a certain attitude, approach to and agenda for the design process and product. Through constructing value statements and relating them to each other, they form a shared team manifesto, the group is able to act on their values and interpret them as design positions and orientations. After the teaching activity, students have, as a group or team, transformed values into an actionable design position in the form of a shared Design team’s value statements manifesto that integrates the design team’s value-oriented attitude and ambition.
Even if students as a group have established their values, they often find it challenging to know how to turn them into actionable principles for the group or design team in a design process and project.
This activity helps students construct a shared value manifesto with design principles constituting the design team’s design position and orientation in the design process. Furthermore, it helps students combine and classify their manifesto-like design principles into a unified value statement manifesto for communicating their attitude and approach to design as a design team. This helps the group or design team negotiate with stakeholders and make decisions in the design process.
The group’s value statements are materialised on the Value statement workshop cards provided and in the Design team’s value statement manifesto, enabling discussion and reflection between students in the design team – as well as between teacher(s) and student teams – or student teams and stakeholders – about how their value-oriented attitude and approach is acted out in the design process with stakeholders, design contexts, etc.
If students are not able to formulate how they want to integrate or act on their values in the design process or project, they run the risk of creating design conflicts or paralysis within the team, the team’s design process and the final design product, system, or service. Here, the students need a shared design stance or argument in the form of a designers’ value statements manifesto to guide their work.
When students have formulated shared and actionable value statements, they are subsequently able to engage in reflective value-oriented design arguments that can guide their design work with stakeholders.
Generally, a Design team’s value statements manifesto is to be constructed before the group or design team begins communicating and negotiating with stakeholders, in order for the design team to give stakeholders a clear and solid impression of the design team’s design principles and approach.
After the teaching activity students will be able to:
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Tell students to go through their “Design team’s value identification and hierarchy” (or similar) and fill out individually 5-10 Value statement workshop cards that integrate one or more values from the “Design team’s value identification and hierarchy” into a value statement. Ask students to integrate values in their statements in such a way that they form sentences that they are able to act on as designers. Ask students to reflect on whether their value statements, when taken together, have captured most of the important aspects and values of the design team’s value hierarchy.
In this part of the workshop the students should not talk to each other, but work individually, formulating their own value statements.
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To assess whether the intended learning outcomes were attained by the teaching activity the following assessment activities can be carried out (in class or after class).
Assess students' learning by making them do peer feedback (authentic assessment) on each other’s value statements manifesto. Ask them to comment and pose questions in relation to how the value statements relate to each other and how they would interpret them as design positions and orientations.
Assess students' learning by asking them to write a series of short blog posts (ipsative assessment) during a design process 1) presenting their manifesto and how the statements relate to each other, 2) explaining how their manifesto constitutes a specific design position or orientation in their design work, 3) reflect on how their manifesto impacted their design process, and 4) how their manifesto is visible in their designed product, system or service.
In the assessment activity ask students to focus on: