Dr Nicola Wood

Manga plates

2011-05-17T14:49:00.000+01:00

These are great, but I think they work best like this with Japanese food which is carefully prepared and arranged. I can't quite imagine it working with egg, chips and mushy peas ...

via DesignBoom

Pendulum Waves

2011-05-13T14:45:00.000+01:00

Beautiful and mesmerising. "Fifteen uncoupled simple pendulums of monotonically increasing lengths dance together to produce visual traveling waves, standing waves, beating, and (seemingly) random motion."

Paper fashion

2011-05-11T14:34:00.001+01:00

Brazilian fashion designer Jum Nakao makes beautiful, delicate paper dresses which have been carefully folded and laser cut. At the end of each show they are then destroyed by the models as a way of challenging the audience's concepts of value and beauty.

via BoingBoing

The cult of done manifesto

2011-05-10T14:30:00.000+01:00

How to get things done, especially if you're an expert procrastinator - read this by Bre Pettis and Kio Stark - NOW!

Vivienne Westwood: creation of A/W11 collection

2011-05-09T14:21:00.001+01:00

I love to gain insight into how professional designers set about designing things and Dazed Digital has a fascinating article in which Vivienne Westwood talks about how she created her 'World Wide Woman' A/A11 collection. It comes across very strongly as her own voice, not just something that is put out by a PR team. Read it here!

'Before I die' street art

2011-04-22T07:31:00.001+01:00

Such a simple concept (ok, the best ones always are) and with a lovely outcome. Artists Candy Chang made a wall on a disused building in New Orleans into a giant blackboard, stencilled onto it "Before I die I want to ..." and left plenty of chalk.

The response was overwhelming; often thought-provoking, sometimes touching, sometimes silly, but a real outlet for emotion.

Full story here via WebUrbanist

Slow mo from high speed digital video

2011-04-22T07:24:00.000+01:00

Digital video cameras are getting better and better which leads to imaginative people having more and more fun. This is a fine example - high speed video means you can do amazing slow motion, and this guy had amazing fun doing just that one night in his hotel bedroom:

Locked in a Vegas Hotel Room with a Phantom Flex from Tom Guilmette on Vimeo.

Knit your own Royal Wedding

2011-04-21T07:14:00.003+01:00

As a keen knitter I loved the idea (and the irony) of knitting your own Royal Wedding although I could anticipate how fiddly it would be and how much patience it would require. I did buy the book and my daughter knitted a bright pink corgi which it took me ages to sew together, then we ran out of energy!
via The Guardian
Book on Amazon

Jaume Plensa at YSP

2011-04-10T20:43:00.001+01:00

I am very lucky to live not too far from Yorkshire Sculpture Park, which always provides a very pleasurable day out. It combines three things I love good art, good food and a good walk! I am quite excited to see a new exhibition featuring the work of Jaume Plensa has just opened and I can't wait to visit. A taster of a few images from the YSP web site:

Full details here.

Sustainability: walk the walk

2011-04-10T20:35:00.000+01:00

A beautiful little video... not only that but it is a great message. Truly inspirational and only just over a minute long too!

Dress made from children's books

2011-03-30T16:54:00.000+01:00

This beautiful ball gown is made by designer / artist Ryan Novelline from lots of children's 'Golden Books'. The skirt is made from illustrations from the books sewn together with metallic thread and the bodice is made from the books spines.

What is especially interesting is that he recorded his process with a fascinating series of photographs. Here's just a few...

There are lots more on his web site here.

Virtual shoe museum

2011-03-30T16:18:00.000+01:00

The virtual shoe museum is an amazing resource of images of shoe designs ... and designs that really push the boundaries of what a shoe could be. They are all neatly categorised so you can bring up lots of images under different headings. Here are a couple of my favourites...

Julian Hakes: Mojito shoe

Polly Verity: Wire shoes

Paul Schietekat: High tide heels

A brief history of film title design

2011-03-20T07:42:00.000Z

This is a beautifully-made short video showing the history of film title design. Not only that but there are some classic films there that I really must watch again!

Full list of the films mentioned on Vimeo here. Via BoingBoing.

Wild tables

2011-03-17T15:50:00.000Z

I love the concept and animation of these, though I don't think I like the final look of them somehow ...

"It should come as little surprise that the designer of this sequence, Toot Chen, is not just a furniture maker, but also a stop-motion animator and graphic artist. His other works share a similarly sly and humorous approach to everyday household subject matter."
via DorNob

Warning signs

2011-03-17T15:39:00.001Z

I think smart materials are going to be a fascinating growth area over the next few years and look forwards to seeing what innovative designers will do with them. Here is an interesting project:

"Warning Signs is a visualization of the pollution that exists invisibly all around us. When the wearable senses carbon monoxide, the piece subtly changes color and pattern to indicate higher levels of carbon monoxide in the atmosphere to the wearer and those around him or her. This piece was designed and created by Nien Lam and Sue Ngo."

Web site with full details of the project here via Blogless

We are all makers

2011-02-02T13:50:00.001Z

This is a lovely TED talk by Dale Dougherty discussing the innate desire to make things he thinks is within us all. He shows lots of people doing stuff just because they can, they're enthusiasts and they like doing it.

What is interesting to me is what he sees as the importance of the social aspect of it all. That by going to events and meeting with other makers they show what they have made, share knowledge and go on to produce more and better things.

The enthusiasm they have and their ability to produce amazing things using low-tech solutions is something that would be great to see within more of my students!

10 second visit

2011-01-28T10:11:00.000Z

On the face of it a 10 second tour of someone's home, portrayed as a series of still images doesn't sound that exciting, but it has surprising impact. Those fleeting glimpses of striking images are somehow compelling and stick in the mind, like being on a train at night and glancing into the rooms of passing houses.

I am a visiting tutor for the research training sessions at Sint Lucas School of Architecture (Brussels) and we ask our students to take a different look at the environment around them by photographing from a fixed point in a street outside the school, looking for artefacts that reveal knowledge about the people around them. I am wondering about incorporating something like this video into the project.

Gangsta rap about cardboard boxes

2011-01-24T14:28:00.000Z

This is great - a gangsta rap in praise of kids doing creative things with cardboard boxes and toilet roll tubes ... yes, really!

via BoingBoing

How 'social' is social networking?

2011-01-23T11:48:00.000Z

Facebook always provokes strong emotions; some people love it, spending their entire lives on there, and others hate it and will not go anywhere near it.

There is an interesting article in today's Guardian which suggests there is a growing body of evidence that social networking can have an isolating effect on people. People are getting more and more drawn into the 'social' media itself and so spending less and less time actually interacting with real people.

I love Facebook and spend quite a bit of time on there, not playing games, just reading the trivia about my friends lives and sharing my own, along with sharing interesting things I have seen or read. To me this feels like real, meaningful exchange, which increases my sense of connection with my friends. So, how come other people end up feeling that they are isolated observers of other people's lives?

I think the answer is to do with tacit knowledge. When I spend 'live' time with my friends I see their facial expressions, hear the nuances in their voices and can gauge their subtle reactions when we talk. After a while we build a tacit understanding of each other that then carries through to our online interactions. I can read between the lines of their posts or understand a whole lot more than was written into a brief text.

Looking back at my model of learning developed in my PhD, I would say that when I get to know somebody I have moved to the 'expert learner' stage where I can observe their online dialogue and understand without needing the 'bridges' provided by face-to-face interaction. So, for me this virtual contact is really meaningful, is often the starting point of conversation when I meet friends, and is a vital point of contact with friends who live far away and I see rarely.

For those who find it isolating, I guess they need more balance in their lives. They need to try to spend as much real time with people as they do virtual time, and to narrow that virtual contact to include many more real friends and to cut out many who are just virtual friends. My personal Facebook rule is that I am only 'friends' with people I know. Some of these are people I don't know well and am never likely to, but it would have been rude to refuse. So, I file them into a category where they do not see the personal things I post and I do not see theirs, they have had the satisfaction of adding me to their list but nothing more.

The same goes for so many things in life - a little in moderation is good for you - but too much of anything usually has negative side affects!

Video concealing complexity

2011-01-22T15:08:00.000Z

I have often observed that film of a skilled practitioner can easily conceal rather than reveal the complexity of what they do. I was just sent a lovely example of this in the form of this short video showing how to fold a shirt:

When I actually tried to copy what she was doing, with some help from a couple of friends, we could not figure it out at all until we found another video where we could follow the narrative in English (rather than Japanese). However, we still had to stop, restart and rewind the video several times until we got it.

In my experience of interpreting craft practice, video is great for giving a quick overview, inspiring someone to want to do it. However, the actual 'how to' is most efficiently put across with a few of simple line drawings to explain the crucial bits.

Piano stairs and the theory of fun

2011-01-21T15:16:00.000Z

A lovely example of how a playful approach can change people's behaviour. In Stockholm, a set of stairs with an escalator next to them, so nearly everybody uses the escalator...

Kesurokai documentary film

2011-01-11T17:36:00.000Z

My film of the Chisana Kesurokai 2010 event is almost complete. I am going to Germany this weekend to show it to the group of carpenters who took part in the event in Japan last summer before finalising it. It is a little scary showing it to the people I filmed, but I am pleased with the result so feel fairly confident they will be too.

The majority of my previous film work has been 3-5 minute youTube material. Making sense of a huge amount of footage shot over a seven day period and reducing it to a half hour documentary has been an interesting challenge for me. However, video-logging techniques developed during my research helped immensely and this documentation of all the video clips enabled me to search and select appropriate material fairly efficiently.

Once it is finished I shall post it on my vimeo site.

The two buildings and some of the carpenters involved.

Cambodian donut shops

2011-01-05T20:59:00.000Z

This is a lovely bit of film making and a fantastic story. Their work ethic is phenomenal and I love that the Cambodian community have generated this new knowledge and then shared it with their family and friends so there are a whole load of Cambodian donut shops in the area.

500 coloured pencils

2010-12-30T21:05:00.000Z

Delayed gratification meets OCD color theory with Felissimo’s 500 colored pencil set for Social Designer.

Designed by Felissimo for Social Designer this complete set of 500 colored pencils consists of 20 units, each pencil telling its own story with a unique name. You cannot buy the complete set of pencils all at once, but you can receive them over the course of 20 months. Four different display methods let you keep your pencils at hand, while being displayed either as an artwork, or kept aside as a special collection.
via Blogless

Photographer Bill Durgin's unusual figure studies

2010-12-23T21:15:00.000Z

From his artists statement, "The gesture within each photograph is created through exploring my own physical limitations and collaborative improvisation with dancers and performers. Often I will come up with a pose and demonstrate it and then ask the model to repeat or respond to it. Each pose transmogrifies the figure towards abstraction; exaggerating or diminishing the skeletal structure until it approaches an amorphic form. I want the bodies to be recognized as bodies, but also to be detached from common perceptions of the figure. Bound within each singular view, the uncanny figures convey the body as both abject and marvelous."

via BoingBoing

Save as WWF, Save a Tree

2010-12-16T21:34:00.000Z

A new green file format: WWF

The WWF format is a PDF that cannot be printed out. It’s a simple way to avoid unnecessary printing. So here’s your chance to save trees and help the environment. Decide for yourself which documents don't need printing out – then simply save them as WWF.

Save as WWF, Save a Tree

A modern nativity story

2010-12-09T21:20:00.000Z

Nicely told...

Mobile phone concept

2010-12-03T21:41:00.000Z

Seriously lovely concept, though probably totally impractical!

from likecool

Glide 2 - fascinating video

2010-12-02T21:44:00.000Z

Mesmerising - people frozen in time by clever filming from a train:

Return from Kesurokai

2010-08-24T20:38:00.000+01:00

For the last two weeks I have been in Japan filming a group of Japanese and European carpenters making traditional timber frame buildings using only hand tools and trees felled on site. It has been a fantastic experience but it is also lovely to be home. The heat and humidity was very tiring ... in contrast it is around 12C and raining heavily here in the Peak District today! It feels a long time ago that I was sat on the tatami mats next to the worksite kitchen logging my video and photos:

Full details are on my Kesurokai blog and early 2011 I should complete a short documentary film about the event, but here are a couple of tasters of the material:

Better Outpatients Services for Older People

2010-07-09T15:52:00.000+01:00

Better Outpatients Services for Older People (BOSOP) was a joint Sheffield Hallam University and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals project seeking to improve the experience of older people with complex needs who use outpatient services.

It is part of the User-centred Healthcare Design (UCHD) research group investigating how design methodologies and ‘design thinking’ can be used to create health care services closer aligned with people’s needs, and which support self-management of their own health.

Co-design events
At the heart of the project were a series of events which brought together researchers with both healthcare providers (eg nurses, clerical staff, patient transport) and healthcare users (eg patients, carers, and voluntary services).

At separate events the groups had an opportunity to talk about their issues through a storytelling process, then they were brought together to share their experiences. Emerging from this were areas for potential improvement and the participants split into mixed groups to further explore and recommend improvements through a series of co-design events.

Multimedia documentation
Throughout this process I documented many of the events using video and stills. This material was of immediate use to the project team for use in presentations disseminating the research. In addition I have produced a DVD for training purposes for NHS staff and management to provide insight into the experiences of older people when accessing hospital services.

RSA Animate illustrated lectures

2010-06-22T22:18:00.000+01:00

The combination of skilful drawing illustrating the short, thought-provoking lecture in this video is great:

I have watched several of them now (it's part of a series) and find them very compelling. Many people find it quite difficult just to listen to a lecture and need something to watch ... other than a 'talking head'. The sketching hits just the right humorous note for me; it emphasises what is being said, without distracting from the content. It also looks effortless which means it probably took ages and ages to create!

Multimedia design

2010-06-09T16:37:00.000+01:00

I have been running a blog to document my work for Kesurokai, an organisation that brings together traditional craftsmen from Japan and Europe. As a favour, I also agreed to update their web site however, as their organiser, Hannes Schnelle, and many of their craftsmen are from Germany, it is written in German! It has been a long time since I learned German at school so this presented an interesting challenge, but I managed it with some excellent help from green woodworkers Michail and Katy Schütte who translated the bulk of the text and my kind friend Michael Hohl who helped me finish it off.

KeyPiece

2010-05-09T16:11:00.000+01:00

KeyPiece was a combined research seminar and public exhibition that brought together ten leading researchers in metalwork and jewellery; Cóilín Ó Dubhghaill who initiated the project, Christoph Zellweger who led the workshops, and participants Lionel Dean, Maria Hanson, Grace Horne, Antje Illner, Drummond Masterton, Sarah O’Hana, Tine de Ruysser and Lucian Taylor.

Gallery event
Starting from the ‘object’, the question of how a ‘keypiece’ can be identified and defined provided the basis for debate between the makers. The works displayed functioned as both a physical reference and a catalyst in the development of the dialogue about the nature of research in the field.

To enable engagement with the public whilst maintaining the seminar situation, the exhibits provided a divide of the gallery space; one half public space, the other workshop setting, with paper covering walls and floor for participants to write and draw. After the workshop finished the whole gallery became accessible to the public, providing greater insight into the exhibited objects.

Multimedia documentation
The event was observed and documented by myself using video and stills and writer/curator Monica Gaspar. I used this record to create an online interactive multimedia resource for distribution within and beyond the professional community. The aim was to provide an engaging, accessible and durable documentation of the event, which will be of interest to practitioners, educators, researchers within the creative practices and beyond.

Who needs a web site?

2010-05-03T18:50:00.000+01:00

Blogging software is so easy and so customisable, I feel that personal web sites are going to become a thing of the past. Why pay someone when you can do it yourself? Why wrestle with Dreamweaver when you can set things out simply and clearly on a blog?

I have found that creating a website with a blog is a different experience, because you tend to build gradually, rather than assembling everything, then putting it up in one go. However, if you are fairly organised and categorise as you go then a blog creates a rich resource that the reader can brows in many different ways.

I started blogging for Kesurokai, a European-Japanese cultural exchange project I am involved with. I needed to create a project web site and also document the project between its start-up at the beginning of the year and the main event in August. The documentation has become a web site and has generated widespread interest very quickly and easily.

I have also just set up a new blog for my partner, Robin Wood to use as a sales page. He has been blogging for a while and gets on well with it, but cannot easily update the products for sale on his web site because it is too technical, and of course I am not good at getting around to it! So, I created a new blog for this and tweaked his existing blog, so they feel as if they are on the same site and tie in with his web site. Blogger isn't as sophisticated as TypePad, which this blog is on, so it was not straight forward but I am quite proud of the result.

Craft interpretation

2010-05-03T16:00:00.000+01:00

When I was researching for my PhD and experimenting with interpretation, I found that a well-annotated drawing was what the learners responded to best. Photographs helped, but somehow gave too much information or the view was never from quite the right angle.

At that stage I had a hang-up about drawing which I have found many people suffer from. They feel that if they can't easily produce and exact replication of something, they can't draw, and give up. However, it is a learned technique and, given a little help from a few fellow students, I found I could sketch what I needed.Nowadays I can quite quickly produce drawings like the one above using Adobe Illustrator, but always start by sketching by hand to get a feel for the perspective that will be needed and how it will work in with the text.

These pictures show my partner Robin Wood's latest development; a device for holding a bowl whilst hand-carving which he has called the BowlMate. He developed it for learners to use whilst he is teaching and there has been so much interest from the wider woodworking community he wanted to publish plans, which I spent an enjoyable day yesterday doing.

You can see the results of my work on his web site here and also download a PDF here.

A vision of students today

2010-05-01T14:33:00.000+01:00

I am not sure this video tells me anything I didn't already know and it certainly offers no solutions, but I LOVE the way it has been made. I also shows interesting use of Google documents to gather student opinion and experiences. (My thanks for fellow Open University tutor Derek Jones for posting that on our course forum.)

Design thinking

2010-04-30T15:12:00.000+01:00

Design thinking: creativity for the 21st century is an Open University level 1 course that went live in February 2010. I worked with the course team as a consultant; authoring content, providing feedback on the use of new software that was developed for the course, and overseeing consistency of content and use of images across the whole course.

Course content
Through a mix of academic, practical work and reflective activity students develop an understanding of design, acquire new designing skills and build a portfolio of design projects as a foundation for future study. The course looks at common principles of design and ways of thinking that lead to ideas and creative solutions.

Software
OpenDesignStudio is an image sharing site so the students, who work remotely, can upload images of their practical work and discuss it with their tutor and other students. Compendium is a mind mapping software that students use to record their activities as they are designing and as a reflective tool as part of their assessment.

Ongoing involvement
I now work as a tutor on the course and am also forum moderator, an essential part of college life for distance learners!

Students at a Day School

More understanding of "the crit"

2010-04-24T13:43:00.000+01:00

A small 'aha' moment about what is happening during "the crit" I described earlier - two things:

The teacher(s) assess the student's work, tell them what is good about it and where it can be improved. (That bit is obvious!)
The student experiences this process for their own work and sees it happening to other students. In this way they learn about how to critique generally; the sorts of criteria their work is judged on, things which tend to be praised, things which tend to be frowned upon, different ways of solving different problems. (That was my 'aha' moment!)

In this way they both learn how to improve their current work and how to critically evaluate their future work. Individual feedback wouldn't be as effective, being part of a group is vital, but students don't seem to understand group work. There is a constant complaint from Lecturers that students do not turn up to organised teaching sessions, but are constantly clamoring for individual attention.

Again, during the H&S training session I observed, the small group of students who attended got to see a range of common problems and solutions to them which would have been much more limited if they had been alone. They clearly did not understand this and had a tendency to wander off or be looking elsewhere whilst the others had their go.

I wonder if simply making this explicit to the students would make a difference, or if something more sophisticated with group work and peer support needs to be done?

Dissecting a chicken

2010-04-22T21:08:00.000+01:00

I have vivid memories of a first aid training video which I watched around 15 years ago. Why? Well, interspersed between the clips about how to check someone's pulse, put them in the recovery position, and so on were clips of a chef using a large meat cleaver to joint a chicken. Each time we returned to the kitchen he was using the tool calmly and skillfully, but this was a video about first aid and the suspense was dreadful ... and yes, eventually the inevitable happened!

This was brought back to me because I spent the day watching and thinking about basic Heath & Safety training. In my current research at Sheffield Hallam University I am looking at how basic skills are taught in the Design Studios and how web 2.0 technologies could be used to support independent learning. H&S training is so important, done properly it will help prevent students hurting themselves, damaging costly machinery, and ruining their creative work, but mention it and people glaze over.

The three students who did turn up this morning I think had a really engaging and useful session. The technicians showed them so many little handy hints over and above the statutory safety stuff and they gained really valuable experience using the equipment. However, it was not efficient use of staff time and the other students won't be allowed to use the workshops until they too have had their training.

This feels like a good area to tackle in my research (there's funding for it!) and I am now thinking about how I could make it appear more relevant and interesting. I'm very squeamish so I don't think I'll be shooting it as a horror movie, but it is food for thought!

Craft learning and "the crit"

2010-04-22T18:59:00.000+01:00

"The crit" is central to traditional design education and I sat in on one this week as part of my current research at Sheffield Hallam University. It brought back memories of doing it myself, it is a fairly scary experience, and it made me think about the Japanese craftsmen's apprenticeship experiences described in Edo craftsmen : master artisans of old Tokyo.

Firstly let me describe "the crit" for the uninitiated; it's a little like X Factor or Britain's Got Talent, but the audience are also putting on the show, they are students each showing their latest work. One by one they go to the front of the room and show images of their work on PowerPoint and hand around things they have made. The 'judges' are a group of lecturers who sit around a table making notes, discussing, asking the students questions and offering advice.

It is only three weeks until the students hand in their final projects and they need help knowing what to do to get it finished satisfactorily. Quite a few haven't made good use of the Easter holidays and are going to have a busy few weeks. The atmosphere is a bit tense, the lecturers at times have to be quite blunt to the students about their work, but whilst they are tough, they are also very fair and very supportive. There feels to be a close bond between the lecturers and students. At the end of the session another student drops into the room to give a little box to one of the lecturers; it contains a cup-cake and pinned to the top is a handwritten thank-you note!

Whilst the students go through this many times during their three years at University, the old craftsmen in Toyko had often started at a very young age and continued under the critical eye of their master for many years. For some it was clearly a positive experience, but others spoke with perplexing pride of the fact that their masters never praised their work and they were reluctant to praise their own work themselves. I can't decide if it is false modesty or a genuine feeling that they ll never be as good as their masters. Either way, it doesn't strike me as healthy.

This somehow joins up with my other major project with Open University where I have been part of the team writing a new course in Design Thinking which is entirely delivered online and all the students study it remotely. I am tutoring one of the first batches of students through the course and also moderator on the student forum so party to a wide range of online interactions. In this situation it seems to be quite difficult to "crit" the students and even getting them to do critical analysis of their own work is not easy. This too is not healthy!

I feel that for online / distance learning to be successful there needs to be a way of getting the right sort of "crit" into the arena. It needs to fall into the 'tough but fair' category, which partly comes from the attitude of the teachers (those I observed clearly worked well together as a group), and partly from their relationship with the students. Fostering all this online is very different to dealing with face-to-face relationships and so much of it falls outside the scope of the sorts of learning resources I have been designing, however it is clearly vital to their success. Hmmmm ...

via my kesurokai blog

Traditional craft apprenticeship

2010-04-22T18:50:00.000+01:00

As a great admirer of traditional craftsmanship, I am saddened when craftsmen come to the end of their working practice without having passed their unique skills on. However, the more I read about traditional apprenticeship, the more I can see why this has happened and cannot wish for a return to the old ways of teaching.

I just finished reading "Edo Craftsmen, master artisans of old Tokyo" and of the twelve featured craftsmen only two appear both to have long-term viable businesses and trained apprentices to pass on their skills. Part of the problem is the increasing accessibility of cheaper, mass-produced alternatives to whatever they make. However, many craftsmen manage to market their produce in such conditions by selling a small volume at higher prices to more discerning customers. The failure is in part caused by a lack of younger people coming into the crafts with the vision to exploit such markets.

The descriptions in the book of the craftsmen's experience of traditional apprenticeship reveals both the rigour and the modern-day drawbacks of the system. They would start very young and spend several years doing menial tasks whilst observing the breadth of the practice, then gradually take on small tasks followed by increasingly complex ones as they grew older and more able. The emphasis was not on teaching, but learning; observing and imitating, rather than being shown how.

With a good master and a willing student this clearly works well. In her study of the Japanese ceramicist Shoji Hamada, Susan Peterson describes the relationship between deshi (apprentice) and master: “To learn as a deshi means to submit one’s self to the master, to leave one’s own self, to become ‘in’ the master. This ‘surrender’ to the master does not mean just blind imitation, but gives a spiritual discipline and the opportunity to absorb a skill into one’s bones.”

However, it is a system that relies on a huge amount of trust and non-verbal communication between master and apprentice, and that is not always going to work well. Whilst a very strict master might ensure that very high standards of craft skills are passed from one generation to the next, it might well be at the cost of creativity and the ability of the younger person to see new opportunities and develop new markets. Given also that young people stay in school much longer nowadays, I cannot see a traditional craft apprenticeship being a very appealing option.

The future, however is not all bleak, I think there are craftsmen who have adapted to new ways of teaching and also multimedia offers huge potential to record and transmit quite complex skills. In my last research project I worked with traditional Sheffield knife makers and made an online resource which was successfully used by a variety of learners. The wonders of the internet mean information travels fast and those who wish to learn in this way can readily access such resources and conduct their own apprenticeships in their own way.

via my Kesurokai blog

Kesurokai

2010-04-20T16:30:00.000+01:00

Kesurokai was started in Japan in 1995 by the highly respected temple carpenter Sugimura San. His aim was to bring together different craftsmen who normally work remotely to exchange traditional craft techniques and knowledge.

The events were brought to Europe through Hannes Schnelle, a German carpenter who spent a significant period of time working in Japan, becoming Sugimura San’s last apprentice before semi-retirement. In 2005 and 2007 he organised Kesurokai in Germany bringing together craftsmen from a wide range of European countries along with a delegation of Japanese craftsmen led by Sugimura San.

In 2010 Chisana (little) Kesurokai will see a return trip, with a group of thirty European craftsmen travelling to Japan to work with their Japanese compatriots building a traditional tea house. I shall accompany them, both to observe as part of my research into the transfer of craft knowledge, and to document the event on film.

Embrace ... the $25 "incubator"

2009-08-22T16:46:00.000+01:00

A student project from Standford Institute of Design. Their 'extreme affordability' class, which focuses on challenges in the developing world, were working with a partner in Nepal looking at developing a lower cost incubator for premature babies. Through spending time with families in Nepal they were able to reframe the problem and come up with this simple low-cost solution...

Empathy is they key to their solution!

From ForaTV via BoingBoing

One thing about being a designer

2009-08-11T11:55:00.000+01:00

Just found this fascinating series of videos featuring a whole host of digital designers who had been asked to give just one piece of advice to anyone entering the field of design. Their responses vary from the very practical "having a camera, taking it everywhere, taking pictures" to the subtle "find the middle ground between clever and stupid." They are here on a blog from the School of Visual Arts, New York.

Bobby McFerrin and the pentatonic scale

2009-08-02T17:54:00.000+01:00

A joyful video ... but also a fine example of communication skills:

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

See how little he had to do and the audience just 'got it'. Inspirational!

Dunne & Raby

2009-08-02T15:27:00.000+01:00

Dunne & Raby - Huggable atomic mushroom
I just rediscovered Dunne & Raby whilst looking for some material for a new 'Design Thinking' course I am doing some work on for Open University. They use design as a medium to promote debate between designers, industry and the public in a way that is provocative and often humorous. I am also fascinated by their web site because it does not behave in a way you think it should ... take a look and see http://www.dunneandraby.co.uk/

Good advice

2009-07-24T12:35:00.000+01:00

Photo by my friend Giles taken at the Royal Welsh Show ...

Want one!

2009-07-22T11:48:00.000+01:00

That is my son's standard response when he sees a desirable gadget and my instinctive reaction to seeing this plug concept:

What I liked even more was the video the student had made to explain the concept. It was such a simple production just using some stills and CAD animations, but so effective. I particularly like the image of the vanilla envelope with the plug prongs sticking through (I'm a MacBook Air user myself):

The peapod

2009-07-14T18:44:00.000+01:00

I recently had a meeting with a small group of lecturers from some of our different design degree courses to discuss possible applications for my research to help with their teaching. Jane from our fashion design course highlighted the problem of many students lacking very basic sewing skills when they start. They struggle to undertake what should be simple making projects and there is limited time within the current curriculum for this level of teaching. John from our furniture design course said they had just the same problem.

As the discussion progressed, Jeff from metalwork & jewellery came up with "the peapod" as an analogy:

So, we have this idea that students need a repertoire of basic skills, that's the pod. We need to identify a set of key skills to teach them as a basis (the peas) and these will provide the students with a foundation from which they themselves can expand and fill out their repertoire.

It sounds like potentially a good application for a multimedia learning resource and I think it will fit in well with my next research proposal. I also very much liked Jeff's concept of "peer leakage" and will have to work that one in somewhere too!

Vacuum casting

2009-07-13T14:57:00.000+01:00

The folding knives research project demonstrated that well motivated independent learners working in physical isolation but supported by an online community could acquire complex new skills and use them in creative ways. This project applied our existing methods of eliciting and representing skills to a process used by undergraduate design students in University workshops and resulted in the production of an online resource and a set of proposals for how such resources could be developed in a more widespread manner.

In the creative disciplines, where learning is often based on practical projects, the craft skills of each discipline are both a crucial prerequisite for successful learning, and a learning problem in themselves. This tends to create a complex situation in which teachers and technicians are supporting both skills learning and intellectual development at the same time. While this can be very productive, pressures on resources can lead to concentration on skills at the expense of advanced thinking.

The vacuum casting process was chosen as a pilot project to test the feasibility of producing multimedia learning resources to enable students to work more independently in the workshops. A series of workshop sessions were arranged to enable a technician with expertise in the process to teach an expert learner, one of the design lecturers.

These were observed and video recorded by myself working in collaboration with the expert learner to generate prototype learning materials. These were developed and tested by two further learners who had no prior knowledge of the process and ultimately made into an online resource which would allow students to preview materials supported by selected video then print out worksheets for use in the workshop.

The online resource developed during this research is available here

This research was carried out with Prof Chris Rust and funded by Shefield Hallam University.

Whittling away

2009-07-11T15:13:00.000+01:00

So, before I talk more about craft knowledge I think it is important to say that this is not just based on theory and observation. My own craft is Scandinavian-style greenwood carving, with axes and knives and I primarily carve spoons, a craft I learned with friends about fifteen years ago.

The major appeal is that it is a very accessible craft. The raw material is small diameter branchwood, often prunings from my own garden or waste from a local tree surgeon. The tools are inexpensive and a special workshop is not necessary, just a large log to act as a chopping block. I do most of my carving in my front room in front of the fire. At the end of the evening most of the shavings get scooped into the log burner and the hoover quickly removes the rest from the carpet!

A ladle in cherry wood showing my distinctive tooled finish - I use no sandpaper or other abrasives.

Folding knives

2009-07-08T14:00:00.001+01:00

This research was carried out in association with Prof Chris Rust at Sheffield Hallam University and was funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council.

This project focused on the skills of traditional folding knife makers in Sheffield, once a significant part of the cities famous metalworking industries but now declined to just a few master craftsmen. In our research we undertook case studies with two of these craftsmen, a blade grinder and a folding knife maker, to demonstrate the tacit nature of such craft skill and reveal the methods we used for elicitation and interpretation.

Traditional Sheffield folding knives

Contemporary knifemaker and co-resercher Dr Grace Horne acted as an expert learner, working alongside the craftsmen, observed by myself as designer, and then through experimental making and collaboration together prototype learning materials were generated. The materials were tested and developed into an online resource using a small group of learners who come from a new generation of creative metalworkers whose interests lie in adapting traditional skills to new craft practices.

Knives made by Grace Horne

As a result we were able to demonstrate that the principles for craft transmission developed in previous research could be applied to a specific example of craft knowledge with useful results for the learners. We also developed a more robust methodology for the elicitation and design development methods needed for this form of design practice.

Knives made by a learner using the online resource

Multimedia outputs
FoldingKnives: a public version of the learning materials developed during the project.
TransmittingCraft: online documentation of the project; its background, the work undertaken and outcomes, including video and images from the research.
YouTube channel hosting video clips used during the research.

In this video Russell White makes a folding knife at Taylor’s Eye Witness, one of the last Sheffield manufacturers to still make folding knives.

Expert learners

2009-07-07T22:57:00.000+01:00

When I started working with craft practitioners, I started with ones I knew. They were all woodworkers because I’m a woodworker myself and by the end of my PhD studies I realised that, whilst what I was doing was successful, I was relying on my own skills to interpret the skills of others. To make my methods more generalisable I needed to work through someone else in an area unfamiliar to myself.

Inspired by some of the learners I had worked with, I realised the probable solution was working with an expert learner; that is one who is self confident, self motivated and already is possession of a useful set of skills relevant to those to be learned. I then gained AHRC funding to work with just such a person; contemporary knife maker and fellow researcher Dr Grace Horne.

We spent two years working with some of the last traditional knife makers in Sheffield, a city once famed for its knife making industries. During this time Grace worked alongside the master craftsmen whilst I video recorded, then we worked together to develop learning materials. Grace undertook experimental making, I designed experimental interpretation, and we worked with a group of enthusiastic amateur makers to develop on online learning resource.

The expert learner can learn with minimal instruction. They have the advantage that they have enough skill to learn through observation without needing 'bridges' as they are operating in the zone circled below:

Our research showed that, as the knowledge was recently acquired and the expert learner was consciously engaged with the elicitation process, she was able to rapidly adapt her understanding of it to improve transmission to the learners. Hence, she was able to develop the bridges needed by the novice learners to start developing their skills:

A key part of this process was the expert learner’s interaction with myself, the
designer and the developing learning resource. Through a process of video recording and summarising events using drawings and flow charts, I was able to assist with articulation of the knowledge and develop interpretation suitable for transmitting the knowledge.

Thesis writing and den building

2009-07-06T20:54:00.000+01:00

I have some friends who are in that painful writing-up stage of their PhDs. I was sending them sympathy on Facebook when I was reminded of the philosophy I developed as I was writing my thesis a few years back ...

Writing a thesis is like building a den from sticks - did you ever do that when you were a kid? You just need to start building, believing it’s going to work. From time to time you need to give it a bit of a shake to see if it’ll stand up, but don’t shake it too hard or too often or it’s sure to fall down. Sometimes it’ll give a bit, but you just need to keep adding in more sticks, weaving them in a bit more and it’ll grow more sound.

Well, it worked for me anyway!!

Mind the gap

2009-07-06T14:55:00.000+01:00

The skills involved in craft practice involve a large degree of tacit knowledge; the principles governing a skilled practitioner’s actions are often only known through undertaking those actions. This internalised nature of craft knowledge makes it difficult for experts to communicate their knowledge to others, presenting a barrier to transmission.

In addition many practitioners have little or no experience of training others and tend to be defensive about their skills. Possibly this is because they are uncomfortable with not knowing how to explain what they do, and maybe also they worry their explanations will over simplify the complexity of their skill.

My experience of working with numerous expert craft practitioners over the last eight years is that this defensiveness needs approaching sensitively, but can be overcome so such craft skills can be recorded and transmitted. The key concept behind my elicitation and transmission strategy is that of bridges across the knowledge gap, which draws on the theories of Michael Polanyi [1] and Donald Schön [2].

The first stage of craft learning is through observation and imitation. Polanyi described this as a process of indwelling: the novice seeks to dwell in the actions of the expert through observing them and taking action to imitate them. However, at an early stage of learning
it is very difficult for a novice just to observe and imitate successfully [3,4]. According to Polanyi, the difference between the skill of the novice and that of the expert is “a gap to be bridged by an intelligent effort” and Schön similarly referred to “an apparently unbridgeable communication gap” between novice and expert.

This is a drawing I have made to represent the concept; it might look like a graph, but it is not intended to be in any way measurable! The x-axis represents some measure of time and the y-axis some measure of skill. The expert has already achieved a high level of skill and the novice is setting out to become at least as skilled, but initially there is a gap between the two where the novice struggles imitate what they observe the expert undertaking:

Polanyi only views this knowledge gap from the perspective of the expert, explaining “Our message had left something behind that we could not tell, and its reception must rely on it that the person addressed will discover that which we have not been able to communicate”. The onus in his terms is on the novice to understand through intelligent effort. However Schön suggested the solution was in “reciprocal reflection-in-action”, implying that the expert needed to make as much effort as the novice in the process of bridging the gap, observing the novice's attempts at imitation and modifying their instruction until accord is reached.

However, as I mentioned earlier, many expert practitioners are not familiar with training novices and are reluctant to engage in a discursive process; simply correcting 'mistakes' at face value rather than seeing them as the novice's way of trying to understand the problem. This is where I come in. My role is as an intermediary between expert and novice, facilitating reciprocal reflection and recording the bridges that are needed to cross the gap.

It is important to note that these bridges are not tacit knowledge made explicit as is sometimes suggested. They are pieces of explicit knowledge enable the novice to dwell in the tacit knowledge of the expert and build their own tacit knowledge. Some might end up as fundamental to their practice, but many will just be stepping stones on the way to mastery.

[1] Polanyi M (1966). The tacit dimension. Peter Smith, Gloucester, MA [1983 edition].

[2] Schön D A (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner: toward a new design for teaching and learning in the professions. Jossey-Bass, London.

[3] Wood N (2006). Transmitting craft knowledge: designing interactive media to support tacit skills learning. PhD thesis, Sheffield Hallam University, available here.

[4] Wood N & Horne G (2008). The new journeyman; the role of an expert learner in eliciting and transmitting skilled knowledge. Proceedings of the Design Research Society Conference, Sheffield, available here.

Learning resources

2009-07-04T14:30:00.000+01:00

The framework I have develped for learning resources offers a layered structure to support learners through different phases of learning.

Introductory: a passive, observational phase where the learner gains an overview of what is to be done and is introduced to any key skills or strategies.

Guidance: an active, participatory phase where the learner is guided step by step through the basic process and gains an understanding of any common errors.

Development: repetition is necessary to gain mastery of the skill and this is supported by encouraging the learner to evaluate their outcome, identify and solve problems, and offering them a greater depth of material to explore.

Video remains an important medium but is mostly used in the first and last phases; for contextualising each stage of the process and for more advanced learning where the learner has the ability to form their own interpretation.

In the central phase still images, in particular line drawings, are key to providing the interpretation necessary for learners to engage with the activity. The step by step guidance provides the bridges for the novice to start to tap into the skills of the expert and learn to read moving images, whether live demonstration or video, for themselves.

What's in a name?

2009-07-03T11:23:00.000+01:00

I started as a web designer in the 1990s when the internet was taking off, then my research led me into so much more than just web sites so I called myself a multimedia designer, and now it’s interactive media designer as my focus is on learning resources. However, even that doesn’t quite fit …

My research focuses on the design of interactive media to support craft skills learning, but what I do is far more about people than interactive media design. I soon discovered that by far the greatest challenge in my research was the basic eliciting of knowledge needed to perform such complex skills.

It is easy to point a video camera at someone to record their activities, but for the novice this is of limited use. A demonstration by a highly skilled practitioner actually conceals the complexity of their practice because so much of their knowledge is tacit. It is deeply internalised and they respond instinctively to subtle cues that even they are unaware of. It is little wonder that the new learner struggles to imitate what they observe in video.

So, video is fundamental to my practice, but equally so are a set of elicitation techniques aimed at finding what the novice needs to know to get started and make progress. Key to this is the concept of bridges and the use of expert learners, but more about those later …

Revealing practice

2009-07-02T16:26:00.000+01:00

"Intentional instruction is not necessarily the source or cause of learning" according to Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger [1] in their seminal book Situated Learning. So what is? Well their theory is that learners need exposure to authentic practice and it is with that in mind that I start this blog.

My current research focuses on using Web 2.0 technologies to support craft skills learning and I am particularly interested in the role of the expert in such new learning environments. I feel that blogging could be an effective way of teaching staff revealing their more widespread design practices to their students and plan to test this in my next research project.

However, before I do that I need some experience of the medium myself!

[1] Lave J & Wenger E (1991). Situated learning. Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK. 1998 edition.