Democratising Technology: Making Transformation using Designing, Performance and Props Ann Light Sheffield Hallam University Sheffield, S1 1WB, UK
[email protected] ABSTRACT
This study of personal transformation is offered as HCI increasingly seeks to change behavior with persuasive products. Performance-derived improvisation methods were used to inspire a sense of agency with ICT in people marginalized from digital design. A case study of an older person’s experience shows the techniques supporting her to reconceive her response to technology. In particular, we analyze how using a ‘prop’ as a design artifact allows her to imagine new possibilities and take a more assertive role. Author Keywords
Older people, performance, confidence, behavior change. ACM Classification Keywords
H5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI): Miscellaneous. ACM General Terms: Design, Human Factors. INTRODUCTION
This is an account of how a project to encourage confidence with technology made its impact [7]. Based on work with older people, the project’s goal was to help people articulate their values and ideas about the future in the context of ubiquitous computing development. This study shows how a transition was inspired. It does so at a time when interest in behavior change has been growing, but when HCI’s tools of change are largely seen in terms of products (eg [5,7]), not ways of working. By contrast, our research team used performance methods to inspire design thinking, and with it, a desire to behave in new ways. This paper briefly introduces the motivation and methods of the project before giving a detailed analysis of one person’s participation and her transformation as her sense of agency increases.
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Fig 1: Vi puts on the glove that will become her interface Background to the Study
The Democratising Technology (DemTech) project worked with older people to devise a means of inspiring a confident attitude to digital tools. Five community groups cooperated with a team of performance artist, media artist, interaction design researcher and social scientist. Together, we devised techniques, packaged as a participatory workshop, to encourage a sense of agency and the confidence to speak about nascent technologies in people such as the elderly [3] who are habitually left out of design discussions. Through iterating the content of workshops, we built up an effective sequence of techniques for use with people who are nervous of, or indifferent to developments in computing so that their opinion on the social impact of these tools could be shared. To develop workshop material, we recorded and analyzed video of the methods in use, revising our processes and repeatedly trying versions of the exercises with new groups, gathering feedback and conducting evaluation. (The full development process is reported in [10] and the final workshop process is available for use [9]). Evaluating methods for making change is not easy and we devoted considerable planning time to this aspect [10]. Tests such as revisiting participant accounts of future tools and collecting a qualitatively different depth of engagement show the impact of the techniques on attitude [8]. Our volunteers included those with severe memory loss and this affected the success rate, but the methods resulted in some success for most of our participants. Further, [8] also relates how several participants are still pursuing their workshop ideas for sustainable technology more than 18 months after working with us. So, we also substantially changed some participants’ behavior. What has not been reported to date is how the workshop techniques achieved this impact.
The description that follows comes from further analysis of video data collected to assess our workshops, conducted specifically to look at group interactions. It explores the meaning of movements [6] and the choice of language [13], tracing the trajectory of objects over time and the use of grammatical constructions in verbal exchanges as we focus on how one person thinks about the tools she uses. We choose to focus on one person in the group to reflect the uniqueness of each path and the person-centeredness of the approach. This focus also reflects the rareness of watching a discernible change in consciousness. We share the analysis here for the insight it gives into how the methods worked, and to show that tools of self-discovery can lead to change quite as well as products designed to persuade or influence.
Vi
Vi Davis signed up to help develop DemTech techniques as part of the group she regularly attends and helps run, based in a day care centre in east London, UK. Her group was asked if we could involve them in research activities using drama. Subsequently, those members who were interested joined the research sessions that ran over three consecutive weeks. Vi, a fit 71-year-old, stayed active in the project throughout its life and participated in the final public symposium. We use an account of Vi’s participation as a case study to reveal how she positions herself with respect to technology and design, how this changes, and how different exercises and props functioned as support. A First Assessment Exercise
Background to the Research
The project sought a method for inspiring people who do not see themselves as part of the digital future to consider the values they would like to see in new systems. It became a collaboration with several groups of older people, since a major digital divide corresponds with age. In Britain, just one in three retired people use the internet [12]. The divide extends more broadly: products are designed without thought to ageing people [3] and what participatory design research exists, where older people are not only tested as potential users but involved in the design process (eg [4]), is still mostly to address design pertaining to ageing, rather than drawing on their long life experience more generally. So, older people made an appropriate and diverse sample to work with. We solicited volunteers from London’s East End where many older people left school young, worked manually and never encountered computers professionally. Our methods derive from performance, which is used with older people (eg [11]) and has a flourishing tradition in design futures work (eg [2]). We distinguish, here, between performance for show and performing a fictional act. DemTech did not involve audience; it used improvisational methods to experiment with change, after Weaver [14], and relied on experiential learning through participation, unlike most uses of drama in design [11]. Shifting between 'real' and 'practice' situations is a powerful way to suggest potential and support empowerment (cf Theatre of the Oppressed changing legislation in Brazil, [1]). Our goal was to find a person-centred methodology to learn what people would create when responding to an unfamiliar set of possibilities on their own terms. So we used minimal cues, working without scenarios, prototypes or other directive tools [8], and starting with individuals’ interests, explored through the use of fantasy and props. THE WORKSHOP PROJECT
Exercises were led by performance artist (L), accompanied by researcher (A). Sections below feature transcriptions of the interactions recorded during the workshop process. Our interest is primarily in Vi’s choice of language and gesture, so we kept transcription simple, recording word and action.
We began work with Vi and her group (averaging 8 people) with an exercise called Timelines, which we used to assess participants’ life experience and encourage people to reveal how they saw the relation between people, things and time before our intervention. Timelines required each person to record memorable events and associated objects on paper that they had marked out with their chosen life-points. Once the past was populated, they were asked to put markers in for the future. Then people were encouraged to talk about an event and object from their life. We used this to collect data about background, experience, and beliefs before doing creative work together. Other exercises followed. These are introduced in sequence. Vi’s Attitude at Outset
Here is an early exchange between L and Vi, during the Timelines exercise, when participants were asked to focus on the future. Note the sardonic quality of her comment: L: Can you think of something in the future, that you, or anybody might like to do, that we can’t do right now? Vi: I don’t know what I wanna do. I have enough trouble finding out what I am doing for the week. Later, as part of the same exercise, Vi is asked to talk about an object associated with a memorable event in her past. She chooses to talk about bombs: Vi: I was put into a big school for the duration of the war, but when I was seven we was bombed out. Three bombs fell in the playgrounds; we had three playgrounds and each was bombed. That night every window crashed in. We was put down in the cellar for the night and the next morning we had people coming along in cars, and they was taking two or three children at a time, knocking on people’s doors: ‘would you take this child in? would you take this child in?’ This section is characteristic of how Vi constructs her sentences at the start of the workshop. Most sentences avoid attribution of agency: ‘bombs fell’, ‘each was bombed’, ‘every window crashed’, ‘we was put’. War was a vivid and frightening experience for Londoners in the Blitz and Vi is remembering these events with child’s eyes. Children often experience being required to do things and Vi’s description of being hawked around by strangers is an extreme version
of this lack of self-determination. In common with other participants, Vi tells a story in which things happen and happen to her, but in which choice and self-determination are not present, either in content or grammatical structure. Developing a Fantasy Persona
L developed the next exercise, fantasy personas, to find people’s creative voices and it is used widely (eg in prisons [10]). Participants devise a persona through incremental steps, such as choosing an object the persona might use, making a gesture in the style of their persona, and so on. At this point, Vi has picked up a long glove from a table full of waiting objects. L instructs the group to: L: Tell the story of your object from the point of view of your character. Vi: Well, my…this glove has found a most beautiful owner. She’s a.. dancer; she does exotic dancing. She travels the world (and therefore so do I). I’m looked after very much, so, I’ve stroked many a fine face. Vi’s account switches between the voice of the glove and that of the new character as she embellishes the story. She creates a rich image without preparation, which is L’s intention. L uses this technique to encourage participants to improvise: we learn about the persona as Vi does. Creating future technologies
The fantasy persona acts an opening to thinking about the future differently. In this section, we rejoin Vi when L asks the group to imagine what their character will be doing in 100 years’ time. Vi has christened her persona Talullah, and she has evolved into a showgirl-courtesan. Talullah, Vi says, ‘being the type of girl she is, would be trying to buck the system’. Interestingly, Vi has created a persona who is more sure of herself than Vi. Talullah is assertive and has clear agency: she teases men and bosses chauffeurs. L asks Talullah to describe an invention she would own and again she uses the glove as prop and hook for inspiration: L: If I could ask you, Talullah… a 100 years from now, you are bucking the system … if this [the glove] could be some kind of invention that would help you be or do the things you need to do, a 100 years from now, what would it be? Vi: [taking glove and stroking it] It would be a mirror [pause] into somebody’s soul [pause] so that if ever anybody came in, I would know whether they was going to be good to me or.., so that anybody I did come in contact with, because we are so much advanced, I’d be able to tell as soon as that person, like you can read, to a certain extent, people as you see them, but you’d be able to do it more so. Vi has invented a ‘mirror into somebody’s soul’, largely through being put on the spot and having to draw on ideas that come to her fast. Her increasingly jumbled sentences show her thinking on her feet about its nature. But the idea is clear and simple and comes quickly, though it has no special association with the glove. Rather it seems born of a desire to protect the vulnerability of her persona.
To deepen the creative work, A interviews each person in role, stressing elements such as how a human-network interface might work. She does so to encourage a more detailed, perhaps more technical, answer: Vi: It was one of my private friends and, […] he brought sort of a, a, a glove with him and he went: when you put that glove on, then it will show you a picture. […] within your own mind - though that person didn’t change - but with your own mind something happened. You know and it was like this halucination and you could see that that person was a caring person. […] [puts on glove] so you can see that, through this person’s eye, through this glove. [reaching out, wearing glove]..As soon as you shook hands, once you had contact… [touches A’s hand] as soon as you have contact… [lifts and replaces hand on A’s hand] A: Ooh! Vi: Can you feel it? A: Does that mean you can see into my soul? Vi: I can. Fig 2: “I can see into your soul…”
If we read this account carefully we can see creative work happening. The glove/present becomes the tool, but at first it merely enables Talullah to make images in her mind. Then, as Vi continues, she puts on the glove and the nature of the glove inspires both a gesture and a new interpretation of the tool. Donning the glove, she stretches out her hand toward the interviewer. As soon as she reaches out, the interface becomes obvious to her; the tool relies on touch to gather information. Suddenly, the action is no longer reported, but in the moment, in the room. Last attitudes – symposium, interview
Vi elects to talk at the public symposium that ends the project; an action which is, of itself, indicative of increased confidence in dealing with the idea of technology. She describes being involved in the project: Vi: When [L] mentioned ‘technology’, I thought: ‘Oh, I don’t want to know. I can’t do with technology at my age.’ But [L] said it’s not necessarily that, it’s more to do with art work, it’s more expression, it’s more how you feel […] all of a sudden I became a daring lady [mimes a glove up her arm]. I put my feathers round me [mimes a boa] and I can just imagine myself in this role [slight shimmy]. […] With regards to technology, we’ve asked the grant to give us a laptop. Not that I’m any good at all at it. But I thought if we got a laptop, it would make it easier for people to learn. Vi’s account of the research captures key areas: her initial misgivings, the ‘daring lady’ it unleashed and a more decisive approach to digital tools. It is hard to appreciate the significance of the laptop but it marks Vi branching out.
We hear her familiar self-deprecating style, but again Vi’s vocabulary turns positive/active on Talullah’s appearance: ‘I put my feathers’… ‘I can just imagine myself’. We are not suggesting we can determine Vi’s sense of agency from her use of linguistic constructions. But we can spot patterns and notice how her speech changes according to what she is doing or talking about: Talullah is a liberating creation. Our last glimpse comes courtesy of a national newspaper journalist: ‘Asked what she derived from the experience of engaging with design, Vi […] spoke of regaining her identity. The mother of three and grandmother of six said: "We went in as old people and came out as people with our own thoughts and agendas."’ (Sarah Womack, Social Affairs, Daily Telegraph). Even allowing for the halo effect of press attention, we see a transition between her sardonic first comment and the final, self-actualized, comment here.
Here, in the detail of the text and action, we see a transition taking place that we can point at: it is embodied. This mix of fantasy and embodiment is key and we offer the method as inspiration for making change from within, supported by exercises that allow people’s interests and values to surface and the artful use of everyday objects. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The team of Lois Weaver, Pat Healey and Gini Simpson; Vi Davis; the AHRC/EPSRC for funding and our collaborators. REFERENCES
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ANALYSIS: THE DARING LADY AND THE GLOVE
Vi’s positioning of herself as old and technophobic is by no means unique [3]. Vi, like other participants, is alert to how people of her age are viewed by younger generations. She is self-conscious about the idea of ‘technology’ and her lack of engagement with it. Through the mechanism of creating a bold alter ego, she is able to leave this positioning behind and play with (im)possibilities. Without any reference to galvanic skin resistance or touch-based sensors, she comes up with a device that is plausible while fantastical, and can reveal to her the designed nature of ‘things’. Like Vi, the glove takes on a role. Vi chooses the glove from a range of objects on the table in front of the group, including other mundane small items such as hats, scarves, a cane, balls and pens. Tracing the glove shows it functioning in many ways. It behaves as a: • prop(erty), used to develop character • probe, to elicit Vi’s values and desires for the future • design(ed) artefact, helping to reveal the “designed” therefore “designable” nature of tools and systems • sketch, functioning as physicalized concept of Vi’s tool • and form, with interfaces stressing kinds of connection. Without interaction with the glove, Vi might have created something different, or nothing at all. It plays a part: giving her the glamor to create Tallulah, then the means to enact her system as she works out what it might be. It gives her something to fiddle with. And its form finds an echo in the talk she gives at the symposium, where she mimes a glove as she describes her ‘daring lady’, showing its importance. In working through these shifts, we are able to go beyond the analysis of [8], which discusses the outcomes of using the techniques, to begin to identify precise components and their role in why it worked. It is difficult to justify claims about how change is created, especially when the people studied are not articulate designers but ‘non-adopters’, with values and views that often resist a discursive engagement.
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