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Earlier this year, back when we could travel and be in rooms with other people I went to (and spoke at!) Service Design in Government Conference. I had an incredible time, and left feeling more determined and inspired than I’d felt in a long while.  There was something in the idea of taking a step back and consequence scanning what we do, to ensure the impacts of our work butterfly out positively. There was also something in hearing about the personal work, and provocations, people had felt compelled to undertake whether that was baking cake or creating environmental service standards.

I knew I wanted to commit to doing more meaningful personal work and reconnect with the manifesto I wrote for my work when I turned 26, because as much as I’d always believed in those values I hadn’t been actively living them.

Imagining Future Spaces is my first attempt at a first attempt at that.

Imagining Future Spaces was an idea I had in response to two moments. The first was a talk by the incredible Cassie Robinson where she asked “what has happened to our imaginations?” and advocated for social dreaming. The second was a series of conversations I had with friends and loved ones while we were on the brink of COVID-19 where despite seeing the effects take hold elsewhere, we couldn’t describe what impact a lockdown would have on our days let alone what a life post-pandemic might be like.

There are likely hundreds of complex and interwoven reasons why our imaginations appear to be weakening, or at least appear to be able to imagine themselves out of the status quo in anything other than a dystopian horror. 

But one thing I have always believed to be true is that you can get better at anything if you commit to practising. So I thought I’d put my skills as a researcher and illustrator (AKA I like questions and weird juxtapositions) to use and create a space to practise. 

That’s where the 52 questions that make up Imagining Future Space came from. There’s one for every day of the year or card in a deck. There are just enough to create sustained practise and or a space for play. 

Learning from the questions posed by Aron, Melinat, Aron, Vallone and Bator in The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness, better known as the 36 Questions that lead to love, these questions get more personal and more abstract as they go. They’re designed to be a challenge. They cover small tactile things like what’s in your pockets, to more social questions about our relationships as well as bigger questions about how we’ll stay fed and healthy. I tried to make sure I asked about a wide range of subject and kept the questions as open to a wide range of responses as I could. But they do only offer imaginary snapshots of what alternative worlds could look and feel like. In order to truly imagine and design sustainable new worlds, we need to think in systems, but that’s a challenge bigger than today.

Each question comes with a random set of three conditions (some realistic, some silly)  to challenge your imagination but also take away the fear of a blank page. The “in world where” offers some environmental, social and value based context that hopefully offers just enough of a push out of the everyday to lead people to think about alternative possibilities. 

There were moments where it felt self-indulgent to start a project like this. Who am I to create and curate a space like this? But after a while I reconciled myself with that feeling, imagining the future is work for everyone. Even if it is self-indulgent, I learned a lot making it and I think I’m going to continue to learn a lot through using it.

Whether it was writing the questions, creating 54 illustrations that were aimed to inspire fun and lateral thinking in responses, or building the site in wordpress, reviving my tiny bit of coding knowledge, putting the thing together reaffirmed to me that this is the kind of personal work I want to be making. The complexity of the project challenged me in a way I haven’t challenged myself in a while.

The first launch of the site is only a starting point though. I’ll be adding more creative thinking tools to try to make the process as supported as possible. I also want to draw on my anthropology studies at Goldsmiths and add some context to each question to show how different societies are currently creating their own alternative worlds whether that’s through how they organise themselves, their environments or their values.

Over the next year I will be trying to create my own responses to each of the questions. I’ll be challenging myself to think of what’s possible, not just what’s probable or plausible. 

I’m hoping other people join me and share their ideas for what alternative worlds might be. They might discuss, draw or describe whatever it is they’re imagining, because the more you make your ideas tangible, the easier it is to start to speculate about and imagine more complex alternatives like what new ways of life might be like. 

Imagining and creating the future needs us all to get involved.

I’d like to imagine a world where we can develop stronger imaginations together and through doing so gain confidence in our own potential and the potential for alternative worlds to exist.  

I’d like to imagine a world where perhaps we might even get to take that belief back into the present and push for positive changes to the world we’re in and shaping all of the time. 

I’d like to imagine a world where fingers crossed there will be ice cream too.

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As a bit of a personal challenge, I agreed to run a sketching workshop where I work. Partnering up with our brilliant women’s network, Beyond Her, who I’d done some artwork for in the past, I designed a session for anyone feeling blank, stuck in a rut, or lacking creative confidence, to show them how drawing can help liberate the imagination, enhance your memory, and help you communicate with impact whether or not you have a “creative” role.

In the past I’d felt awkward about ‘marketing myself’ as a visual person in the office, because I don’t have a creative job title and I’d held onto a couple of offhanded comments from colleagues that I’d molded into something discouraging. But after seeing the potential of bringing my illustrating skills into my research work, I was feeling more confident in sharing sketching as a tiny superpower with the people I work with. The only thing I had to do was get over the discomfort of being in the spotlight.

I based the 90 minute session on four pillars, a brief bit of theory, simple tasks to get people drawing and build confidence, sharing the reasoning behind those tasks and how to practically put them into use, and offering some inspiration to show how far sketching has the power to go. I took the things I’d learned about group facilitation from co-design sessions like having clear task timings, offering a mix of listening, doing and discussing time to support all kinds of learners and doing a bit of my own arts and crafts before the session.

I produced custom worksheets for all of the tasks, which made the session feel more seamless. I prepped a couple of fun twists on bits that would have other wise just been me talking both to try and make them more engaging and to make me feel less awkward. But I think the thing I was proudest of was making a little sketchnoting booklet that people could add to as the session went on and take away as a reminder. 

Through all of that I learned that I like super hands on tasks that are short and pacey, because I don’t like to awkwardly wander around a room of other people doing things. That need for pace in the tasks I designed, led me to a solution (the second time I did the workshop) for the problem I have in all workshops – how do you call a task to an end. The answer I found was music. I made all of the doing like musical chairs, when the music stops you have to put the pen down. 

Those sessions also taught me to loosen up the reins a little. The best moments were where we discussed as a group, not where I was spouting off facts. That’s something I’m going to look to bring into future sessions. I’m going to have trust that if I have the bones in place the information that people want and need will come out in the end.

I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed running those sessions. Gone was the awkwardness I normally feel when I’m standing at the front of a workshop. I think the difference was this was content that I already implicitly knew and believed to be true. Plus there’s something kind of magical about being in a room of people drawing. 

It was brilliant to be confident presenting a workshop. But seeing the impact it had on the people who came along was a whole other level. 

I hadn’t expected such lovely feedback (I’m not sure I expected anyone to turn up in order to be able to give it, if I’m honest). I hadn’t expected to have lots of participants to ask to take extra handouts to practice with later, or to have people come up to me to proudly share how they’d started using sketchnoting just days or even hours later. I hadn’t expected to be asked to run the session again, and certainly not twice.

I’m so excited to hopefully run more sessions like this in the future and to see how this shift in my relationship to being more visual at the office changes my work for the better in the future.

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I’m built out of pieces of everyone I’ve ever admired and it feels like my research practice is developing in very much the same way. From how I conduct interviews to how I structure write ups to I work with participants, I’m constantly learning from the people around me. Largely, I’d say my research work is still finding its form. I’m trying on hats and seeing how they fit. But there is one thing that seems to have become a solid and distinctive part of how I work already. 

 

I’m a firm believer in the right of participants to reply to research.

 

We discussed the ethics of an ethnographic approach and people based research in my Goldsmiths anthropology course. In those debates about potential tensions between ethics and morals, about taking the time to be aware the potential consequences of your research, about avoiding harm, and about informed consent, I started to draw my own boundaries, in pencil at least.

 

When I consider the ethics of my research, I’m not just looking to do no harm and offer true informed consent, but I want to pursue beneficence, research that does good. For me, that often links into a collaborative approach to research and design that empowers participants to shape the future of the services I’m working on. 

 

In order to do that, I try to take my baseline for how I make decisions in session design on the principles of trauma informed care. These are principles that have always rung true for me, but that also acknowledge that there’s always the potential for harm in research just as there is always the potential that someone is carrying harm around with them.

 

In short, as cribbed from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, a trauma informed practice values:

 

 

The right to reply fosters a sense of safety because participants are empowered to know they will ultimately have a say in what the research looks like. It gives them a choice in how they are represented. Taking a transparent approach to report writing builds trust and ultimately acknowledges that you’re working together in partnership.

As much as possible, I take a collaborative approach to research and design. I’ve been so fortunate to work with some brilliant advocates for co-design and true human centred practice approaches. Working collaboratively is cultural as well as process driven, and it should, in my opinion, be foundational. The right to reply is just a tiny piece of that foundation.

 

Giving participants the opportunity to respond to research outputs directly, as well as involving them in a wider co-design programme, has helped build a solid research network. I’ve found the small effort of allowing participants to be part of shaping the narrative of our sessions together has given them confidence in the work we’re doing. 

 

Whether interviewing people who have sought asylum about their legal journeys or colleagues about their views on career progression, I never want my voice as report author to overwhelm theirs. I want to be able to elevate their voices then work together to produce some harmony that can be used as an anthem for change. 

 

On a more practical note though, the right to reply just helps you maintain accuracy. It gives experts an extra chance to share their expertise and participants sharing personal stories a moment to feel comfortable with what’s said.

 

One of the things I love about user research is being able to acknowledge, very openly, that you don’t know the answers and actively welcoming help. Whenever you set up time to learn from someone during research, it feels like you’re saying let’s work together to make something a little better, I can’t do it without you. 

 

But there’s careful work involved in making the right to reply work. 

 

First, you have to make clear that responses are optional. Replying shouldn’t feel like homework for a participant, it should be part of a collaborative approach, if a participant wants to collaborate, and not everyone does. I like to explain that I’ll send over my notes as I take someone through any consent forms and part of the next steps at the end. 

 

Second, there’s a little bit of extra thinking that needs to go into how you structure the notes you share. Knowing that your participants are going to read your notes changes how you think about them. For me, it’s made me even more conscious of being accurate and neutral in my reports and observations, then making sure I clearly frame an analysis or thoughts. My write ups are about being a representative voice of the appellant, which is making me slow down on my analysis taking each step as it comes.

 

Third, you have to have a way to incorporate the feedback. It can’t be a hollow action. Personally, I make small updates straight into our shared notes space, e.g. if I’ve misheard someone’s title, and just track the changes. Our research is ongoing, so I have to worry a little less about ensuring a final publishable version. But any new points, especially if I haven’t covered them in a face-to-face run through of the research, I call out as direct addendums.

 

I don’t think it’s a method that works in every situation. I’ve yet to find a way to build a space for response into user testing, for example. I’m not sure that many people would be all that interested in my notes on their missing a button we’d just turned from green to grey. I also don’t know how much value a response from a user would add to those notes. Instead, we try to test multiple iterations or be part of private beta launches, that way they can give more feedback and see the impacts of their insights on services.

 

I’m confident the right to reply will continue to be a feature of my research practice, but I’m also confident that how I use it will change and evolve, because I’m changing and evolving.

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Every day I get up and I go to work as a design researcher. I enjoy my work and I’m getting better at every day. But I have been told a number of times by other researchers, by designers, by well meaning by standers, that user research is a job for extroverts. I most certainly am not an extrovert.

 

Well, let me rephrase that. I’ve been told more times than I can count that it’s not a job for introverts. No one ever says a thing is for extroverts, but they are happy to exclude introverts with the assumption the norm is extroversion.

 

They see introverts as shy and awkward and antisocial. I can certainly all of those things. You can be shy and an introvert without a doubt. But that’s not what it means to be an introvert.

 

As Susan Cain, author of Quiet says, there are lots of definitions of what it actually means to be more on the introverted side of the spectrum, and it is a spectrum. But one that she seems to go back to, along with the idea of where we get our energy is “‘people who prefer quieter, more minimally stimulating environments.’ The key is about stimulation: extroverts feel at their best and crave a high degree of stimulation. For introverts, the optimal zone is much lower.”

But even that definition might seem to suggest that user research isn’t for the introvert at heart. User, or design, research in its current format involves a lot of ethnography, of speaking to strangers, of new environments, of absorbing stimulation. It’s a people and adventure job.

It’s also a job that’s about listening and paying attention to the people you’re researching with. The natural quietness of introverts is usually read as shyness, which I can understand and is probably sometimes the case. But that potentially slightly awkward style is often because “introverts want to take in what you’re saying, think about it and then respond, while extroverts want to engage in a back-and-forth.” While building a back-and-forth rapport with participants to make them comfortable is hugely important, research relies on being quiet and taking in what you’re being told or shown

 

Research also relies on you picking up on a whole range of details. Introverts are often highly sensitive people, which means you pick up on everything around you from sounds to sights to smells. That’s why they’re often overwhelmed or have to quietly process in stimulating scenarios. That’s also why if you leave an introvert in a research session and give them time to process what they’ve just been part of they can pick up on details other people might have missed. This might come at the cost of them not saying as much, but having someone who can watch body language in the room is never a negative.

 

When you’re doing research you need to be able to relate to and work with all kinds of people. Somewhere between 16 and 50 percent (I know that’s a big range) of people are introverts. So you’re bound to meet a few when you’re out and about doing research. When you’re an introvert, I think it’s sometimes easier to notice the signs that someone else is on your quiet wavelength and adjust your style to suit. Plus, I always like to start any co-design sessions with some time for people to do some silent and solo work where there’s time to write answers down, in part because that’s what I like to do.

 

While a lot of what’s visible about research from the outside is the fieldwork, fieldwork is very rarely valuable without careful consideration and analysis. That’s something introverts are notoriously good at. We don’t make quick decisions and we’re not bold, but we are contemplative and able to weigh up a whole range of information, which is key to getting insights out of the data you get from fieldwork. 

 

Those are just some of the ways that introverts, contrary to popular opinion, can make great user researchers. But there are some things you need to do to be able to thrive as an introvert in a supposedly extroverted role.

 

Build in time for reflection. This is the big one. I’ve realised that I can’t process a session as quickly as my colleagues might like. I’ll be hounded with ‘how did it goes’ as soon as I get back to the office. I am forever grateful that they’re excited to hear about what we’ve found. But for me to share valuable insights I need some time alone. So now, I schedule in feedback sessions (close to but not immediately after) research. That way everyone knows they’ll hear about what happened but I can take time to process.

 

Understand that not everyone will work in the same way as you. When out researching with more extroverted colleagues, I’ve often found myself steamrollered. I leave a few seconds after someone has spoken to make sure they’re done and to let me formulate a meaningful question based on what they’ve shared. Other people aren’t so comfortable with that silence. If that happens to you, you can either just accept it and spend your energy observing or try to explain your style before setting out. Either way know you’re doing valuable work.

 

Just because everyone else likes to brianstorm doesn’t mean you have to be in a whirlwind. I’m not great at big group exercises where everyone is talking. My sensitive brain is taking in a lot of information and I can’t process it quickly enough. Plus, I genuinely enjoy listening. But often in design teams decisions get made in groupthink sessions. As a researcher, your job is often to be the voice of the user in the room to feedback insights. If you’re just listening, your team don’t get the value of that advocacy. So, what I’ve found works for me is to spend a little time beforehand thinking about the key points and quotes from the people I’ve spent time with.

 

Even with those caveats, I know that user research isn’t a job for all introverts, just like it’s not a job for all extroverts. If you find meeting new people particularly taxing, there are so many other brilliant roles for you my quiet friends.

 

Design research hits a sweet spot for me. I’m fascinated by people but I do often find big social interactions tiring and I’m not a big personality. But with research I get to meet so many fascinating people. I get often get to talk to them about things they’re passionate about, we get straight to the good stuff, it’s not small talk. I get to people watch. I get to listen. I get to have this already defined neutral role in a conversation. I get to spend time with people one on one. I get to do all of that, then consider my findings and affect real change. 

 

That’s what I’m thinking everyday when I wake up to go to work, not that I’m not the extroverted people person I’m sometimes expected to be.