Elmtwig Collective

2009-08-24T21:13:00.000-07:00

Friends without friendship

Americans are friendly because they just can't help it; they like to be neighbourly and want to be liked. However, a wise traveller realises that a few happy moments with an American do not translate into a permanent commitment of any kind. Indeed, permanent commitments are what Americans fear the most. This is a nation whose fundamental social relationship is the casual acquaintance.

From the Xenophobes Guide to the Americans and the reason I think Facebook has become such a success

2009-07-29T20:38:00.000-07:00

"At the heart of Western philosophy lie a series of interrelated assumptions, embedded in a metaphor, which greatly constrain our ability to comprehend major transformations in the modern world. The culprit is the pervasive ideology of what may be called 'depth ontology' whereby we tend to assume that everything that is important for our sense of being lies in some deep interior and must be long-lasting or solid, as against the dangers of things we regard as ephemeral, shallow or lacking in content. These become highly problematic metaphors when we encounter a cosmology which may not share these assumptions, and rests upon a very different sense of ontology. The importance of these metaphors lies not only in the narrow and sometimes parochial pursuit of philosophy, but in the tendency of these ideas to be infused in more general, often moral, judgments on the world at large."

From Style and Ontology by David Miller in Consumption and Identity edited by Jonathan Friedman. This quote is a little more philosophical than I like to get on the blog, but I find it comforting. I like to think deeply about things, like design, that others may consider shallow and this idea validates my goals.

2009-07-28T10:46:00.000-07:00

100 years of Design Manifestos.

2009-03-31T17:36:00.000-07:00

You cannot imagine how badly I want to interview this woman.

Doris!

2009-03-15T23:00:00.000-07:00

Over Christmas break I had the privileged of interviewing a wonderful woman named Doris for our project on money. She is 84 years old and lives in Minnesota. Have you ever seen such beautiful silver hair! Doris was 5 years old during the Great Depression and lived on a large farm in Northern Minnesota. The following are clips from the first part of our interview where she discusses some of her experiences living and working on the farm and the transition in her early 20s to working as a flight attendant for Northwest airlines. It has taken me forever to edit the videos, but I finally got some of them done. (Note: There is more reaction than usual in interviews because there are actually three people off camera including me, Doris's daughter-in-law and my mother)

Doris 1 from Julka Almquist on Vimeo.

Doris 2 from Julka Almquist on Vimeo.

Doris 3 from Julka Almquist on Vimeo.

Doris 4.1 from Julka Almquist on Vimeo.
(I am working on repairing this video -should be back in sync soon...)

On the day of the interview there was a pretty bad snowstorm in Minneapolis, and Doris shoveled her own driveway. Can you believe it? She is one of my heroes.

Participant Observation

2009-03-01T17:39:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I did participant observation for a collaborative project on Venice Beach vendors. Here is our Saturday cookie stand. It was a very intense and humbling day and I am still processing everything. One good thing is that we sold all the cookies!

On a personal note one of the most important findings relates to our project on money. This is the first time I have ever had such a direct relationship with earning money. I have had plenty of jobs where I work and get a paycheck for my labor or thoughts. As a vendor, I paid for all the ingredients and made the cookies from scratch (and I worked really really hard). The money that I earned is mine, and I will use it to reinvest back into more ingredients (or other things to sell) in order to keep working as a vendor. Somehow this money feels different to me. It feels precious. I have it in a special envelope and don't want to spend it on anything else. Having such a direct relationship with money really changes the way I think about it.

Diggers

2009-02-27T08:40:00.000-08:00

Part of what I find so intriguing about finance and economics is that is seems so foreign to me. Almost like no amount of research I could ever do would allow it to make sense. And of course that isn't true. At its core, the basic principles are common sense. Even I could understand them. But the years of experts and incomprehensible language and a scaffolding of complexity dulled our common sense. Or at least they dulled mine. I spouted suggestions that I heard repeated on radio shows. "Student loan debt is good debt." "A home is a great investment." Are these things true? Maybe? Sure? Probably? I don't know. I could make an argument for or against either although each argument would be pretty short.

So as the economy crumbles, I find myself digging through the rubble looking for my common sense and trying to apply it more reasonably to my own economic decisions. Listening to a story on NPR this morning, jointly produced by NPR and This American Life, felt like finding kindred spirits, other diggers.

Taxpayer Beware: Bank Bailout Will Hurt

And it struck a chord as to the types of thing designers can contribute to a discussion about complex issues like economics and finance.

But what does this have to do with design? Part 2

2009-02-22T12:56:00.000-08:00

(My apologizes for this delayed response to Julka's fantastic post dated 2/2/2009. I was on holiday and then I caught a cold. )

Interpretivists and positivists

I think Julka and I fundamentally agree that our work falls into the interpretivist camp although I suspect we came to this realization through different paths. (Certainly her path involved more of an academic underpinning.) I came to design first through practice. It was only later, in graduate school, that I undertook a discussion about the possible theoretical frameworks that might inform my approach to design and research. Even then I undertook them with a knowledgeable guide who had climbed the mountain many times before and laid the map of options out in front of me, so my ability to speak the language is still pretty stunted. Still, for me, discovering about and understanding the world is fundamentally about narrative and stories; breaking them apart and putting them back together. Like Julka said, people are really really complex which is what makes them so interesting.

As a person who spends her days at an institution with a positivist bent, I think there is an interesting conversation to continue here about how different research types co-exist and work together, but I will drop it for now in favor of Julka's other question.

What can a design collective contribute?

I am going to suggest two things that design (and by extension a collective) may have to offer.

1) Making. Designers bring to the table the skills and an inclination towards moving beyond understanding to the act of creation. This can be applied at the information gathering or information sharing stages.

2) Sense-making. Julka makes a great point that there is a vast amount of research addressing in this case money and the human condition from multiple disciplines. What seems to be missing, what a design collective may be able to offer, is a method for pulling that information together and making sense of the amassed information. In this view, design research serves less as a formal research discipline and more as a supplemental strategy for understanding the topic and helping to form frameworks into which other research is synthesized.

New ways to think about money

2009-02-13T12:18:00.000-08:00

I am loving this project, 2009, by David Horvitz (I also posted about it here). I think this activity offers an intriguing way to think about money. Completely different than anything I had considered and maybe totally unrealistic, but I like the idea of interacting with money as a material thing that represents an experience of travel. Interestingly, in all my travels, I save money (especially bank notes) because they somehow represent that place, a memory of being there, like a souvenir. How can money go from being a way to buy things to being a souvenir? Clearly its has a range, particularly in value. As a souvenir its value is symbolic and not really about its monetary value, except for the fact that I am generally only willing to save banknotes worth a small amount like one or two dollars. In this activity I also like the idea of having people photograph their receipts. That would be something interesting to incorporate into our project. If we were to put an entire weeks worth of receipts together it would a great way to visualize how people spend money, both in terms of content and frequency.

But what does this have to do with design?

2009-02-02T13:45:00.000-08:00

As I have been working on a blog post about the philosophical orientation in my research, or why I am not really interested in facts, I realized it was full of academic jargon, completely pretentious, not very accessible to the public and, frankly, boring as hell. I will sum it up in this very short paragraph:

In my research facts are not just out in the world to be explained or discovered. Instead there are multiple realities and people construct these realities. There are really no such thing as facts or universal truths as we try to describe these complex realities. Through my work, I try to explain people's realities which means I also engage in a layer of interpretation and construction. This type of research is known as interpretivist (and is also referred to as constructivist). It is quite different from the work in which scientists, like Darwin, engage. His method of research is known as positivist. Positivists believe in facts and truth and they set out to explain what, according to them, already exists in the world. See the difference? While positivism makes the most sense in the hard sciences (i.e. biology, chemistry, physics), it doesn't always make the most sense when you want to understand people. People are really really complex.

I have included this lovely image of a brain from the Museum of Fabric Brain Art because I think of positivists as sharing one (metaphorical) mega brain which can hold all these "facts" and "truths" that exist in the world that are out there waiting to be discovered. It represents something universal, singular and true. Interpretivists on the other hand are interested in things that are contextual, multiple and dynamic, and don't believe ideas are out there to be discovered.

Along the lines of my boring, academic jargon, I have started to ask myself, what does any of this have to do with design? Especially after Maggie's last post describing why we chose money as a topic of exploration.

Truthfully, there is a ton of research out there addressing money and the human condition. It is in sociology, anthropology, economics, psychology, etc. No need to reinvent the wheel. I think the more interesting question relates to how a design collective can understand and engage in research practice about money that is different from existing research. How could we collect information or make things that would be unique? What skills, ideas or philosophical orientations do we have that make us especially well suited for this type of research? This is an epistemological question, but it needs to be asked so that we don't just do sloppy social science research. And we are dangerously close to that. So I ask, what can design bring to the table that other fields cannot?

Let's start to address this before I turn the blog into one big academic bore.

Is this anything?

2009-01-21T10:17:00.000-08:00

When Julka and I had our "let's start elmtwig collective" conversation one of the first things we did was feel around for a topic that we both found interesting. We were looking for something that provoked our curiosity and that we felt like diving into to see if there was a there there. We decided on money.

Money was certainly in the news. An economic crisis and tales of doom greeted us on every newspaper. (Apparently a lot of America's money was imaginary and we all stopped believing in it at the same time.) We'd both been doing our own bit of belt tightening which necessitated some self-reflection. So we wondered in the most broad terms, what could studying people and money tell us about the human condition? We certainly weren't the first people to ask this question, but the point wasn't to be original. It was mostly just to be curious.

When I undertake research like this, my first step is simply to turn on my radar. While I'm reading or talking to people or watching movies or television or doing crosswords or whatever, I try to be hyperaware of the moments that spark a connection with the topic and put them away somewhere. Often I simply put them into my brain which is not a great idea because their recall becomes dependent of other factors so now I try to put them down on paper. And then put them in a pile. Or sometimes on the wall. It is not a sophisticated system and it could definitely use some evolution, but it works. Most of the time.

In the name of evolution, I'm going to try using the elmtwig blog as my wall. Posting some of the things I see or read or hear about that make me think of money or finance or economics. And then after awhile, we'll look back and ask "is this anything?"

Theories and facts

2009-01-20T08:00:00.000-08:00

A few years ago I went to see an exhibit about Darwin at the Field Museum in Chicago. They used Darwin's journals and animals (actual lizards and birds!) to recreate his journey on the HMS Beagle and attempt to allow you to have the experience of seeing what he saw; the moments and observations that would form the basis for the theory of evolution. It was an amazing exhibit. (Describing it now, I realize how much it is reminding me of John Dewey's Art as Experience. sigh. I guess I did learn a few things in grad school.)

But perhaps my favorite part was at the end when the exhibition took on the issues surrounding evolution and intelligent design through Q&As with scientists. One of them said, "Theories are not facts. Theories explain facts." And I was almost bowled over by what a succinct, powerful statement that was in part because it illuminated a fundamental issue in our misdirected national conversation. When we argue about evolution and intelligent design, we're not only arguing about theories, we're arguing about what counts as a fact.

And that is such an interesting argument. In Darwin's time, a fact was an observable truth meaning (maybe. I'm making this up as I go. Write to understand, remember.) that others could look at it and see the same thing. Birds on one island had different types of beaks than birds on another island. But somehow, that act of looking has become so much more subjective, influenced by belief as much as observation. Theories begetting facts as opposed to facts begetting theories. What qualifies as a fact in today's day and age? How is it different in different academic disciplines? We tend to use the same words (data, facts, theories, arguments) but we're not really referring to the same things and at what point does our quest for a common language (an absolute necessity in our multi-disciplinary world) hide important conversations that we need to be having?

This post includes more questions than answers, but I suppose that is as good a place to begin as any. I think Darwin would be proud.

The Other (Half) of Elmtwig Collective

2009-01-19T13:57:00.000-08:00

I'm nervous to write this post because this blog feels so Julka, but I suppose it is better to jump in rather than wade.

(splash) Hello. I'm Maggie.

It was Julka and I's wintertime conversation(s) that led to the rejuvenation of this blog as a place to have, share, and evolve thoughts we have constantly about theory and design practice. And after a long couple of weeks, here I am. I won't try to explain more than that because well...that's what the blog is for; we write to understand.

Additionally, our goal (my goal?) is to see if the blog is helpful in allowing us to move beyond individual thoughts on a topic and towards something more like our conversations which always leave me heady and excited about possibilities. I'm not convinced it will, but my enthusiastic side loves nothing more than to prove my skeptical side wrong.

2009-01-05T10:42:00.000-08:00

Here is an outtake from one of my interviews on our project about money. She is insightful, endlessly entertaining, and in love with JCPenny.

2009-01-05T09:12:00.000-08:00

The first Elmtwig Collective design research project will explore the domain of money. We are currently working to define our research question and to start interviewing and collecting stories. Through the process of defining our project we've had an interesting conversation about methodology. We would like to strike balance between academic research, journalistic research and design research, but this has presented an interesting challenge. While academic research (and here I am referring to the social sciences) offers the most robust method and theoretical foundation, it is generally only accessible to a small population of academics. Journalistic/nonfiction research reaches far more people, but tends to be a bit more shallow with a less robust data collection method (which can be due to constraints like time) and lacks a strong theoretical foundation. Truthfully, I don't fully understand the methodology of journalists and have been reading this to gain some insight. Finally, design research is very applied and solutions focused. It generally prefers practice to theory (while in reality they are actually related). Design researchers might not like it when I say this, but most design research lacks a theoretical foundation. What design research is great for is offering contextual solutions and opportunities to make changes or take action (I am being very reductionist on all three accounts, but you get the idea).

My question is, how do we collect data that will be academically robust (so that we can make claims or theoretical generalization from the data we collect), accessible and interesting to a larger audience and offer solutions and ideas for action?

The starting point is deciding who is part of our population. We know the kind of data we want to collect and we know we are interested in stories and narrative, but how do we know who to include in our project? This is particularly challenging for me because in my own academic research my population must always be clearly defined.

As part of my research, I have turned to three people to consider how they collected data on a broadly defined domain, Studs Terkel (pictured above), Alastair Cooke and Alexis de Tocqueville. Who was their population? What were their units of analysis? How did they get their information? They are all very different, but their work has qualities that seems relevant here at least to finding the balance between academic research and journalism. Maggie and I will continue to post about these ideas as we work through them.

2008-12-29T19:45:00.000-08:00

Four minutes of Paul Rand .

"Don't try to be original just try to be good"

"Without aesthetics you can't find the truth"

"No matter how perfectly you do something it can still be improved."

2008-12-26T17:21:00.000-08:00

Two days ago, I considered removing this blog from the web. For months it sat here static and lifeless. Since starting my other blog, I neglected this one mainly because I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. While the other has a very clear focus, this one felt scattered and aimless; I lost track of its purpose. But this changed today.

My friend Maggie and I are starting something new. For some time now we have been thinking of starting something and we recently decided to take action. Today we made our first steps with a brainstorm session (above), which will continue on Sunday. So far we can share we are starting a design/research collective called, The Elmtwig Collective. Maggie actually chose the name and I objected slightly because it might be too strongly associated with my name. But we both agreed that we loved the symbolism of the twig, its poetic nature and its reflection of our base in Minnesota.

This new project will breathe some life back into the elmtwig blog. It is now a space for Maggie and I to explore our design projects including ideas and images, work on our writing, ask questions and start conversations. I have a feeling things are going to get interesting around here.