The HourSchool Blog

HourSchool at SXSWedu

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 17:26:49 -0500

Christina presented a Future15 talk last week at SXSWedu on “Designing for Peer Learning.” See audio & slides of her talk here.

Her presentation includes some of the lessons we’ve learned about peer education and tips for:

changing people’s perception of “classes” and “teachers”,
scaffolding the journey from student to teacher, and
supporting new teachers in peer-learning environments.

Featured Mission: Parlez-vous français?

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 08:00:37 -0600

After learning a foreign language in high school or college, many people want to pick it up again later in life but have a hard time finding the time, place, or people to practice with. The mission to “Learn more about French and the Francophone world” is bringing together French speakers of all levels in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Mission members are able to practice the language amongst new friends AND explore the rich French culture—from the country’s folk music to its famed cuisine.

“The past few months have been exciting, as I have met many people interested in building a French HourSchool community in Ann Arbor. The mission is now more than30 participants strong. Thanks to creative and inspired teachers, we now have many different classes that are meaningful and original. As a mission creator, I feel gratitude toward the whole crew.” ~Mijo, mission creator

Above: Francophiles discuss the play “Rhinocéros” by Ionesco at an HourSchool gathering.

Here are some upcoming events in the mission:

Nov. 3: Drop by Downtown Home and Garden in Ann Arbor. Our French chef, Brigitte, is giving a cooking demonstration about how to make madeleines. It will be delicious.

Nov. 7: A French wine tasting evening.

Nov. 15: A sing-along of traditional French songs at Sweetwaters, a well-known Ann Arbor café. Bonnie Ion who plays the ukulele will accompany us.

Nov. 29: A cooking class by our French chef to help us prepare for the Holidays. We will learn how to cook duck and make a “bûche de Noël”.

Mijo continues: “Our deep thanks go to all our members. It has been a pleasure to see how much interest there is toward this kind of informal and convivial learning. Everyone is cordially invited to join the mission to learn more about French and the Francophone world.”

How to Make Tomatillo Salsa

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 13:58:00 -0500

A few months ago we were blown away by the support at our Mission Launch Party. It was an awesome event, full of great people, great conversation…. and incredible homemade SALSA! Well a few of our friends were kind enough to cut a short vid on how to make the Tomatillo Salsa we had at the party! Check it out below:

Here’s the recipe directly from Chef Henry:

INGREDIENTS:

- 1lb of tomatillos (washed and with paper removed)

- 1x avocado

- 5x limes (juiced)

- 1x ripe green jalapeno

- 1x bunch of cilantro (washed)

- 4x cloves of garlic (without paper)

- 1x bunch of green onions (stems removed and washed)

- 1 Tablespoon of olive oil

- Salt and pepper

METHOD:

- Blend all ingredients in batches until smooth. If your blender blades have trouble moving, add some water.

- Combine all blended ingredients and add salt and pepper to taste and olive oil.

- This will taste better the next day after all of the ingredients have had time to marry.

Happy snacks!

HourSchool Missions Activate Communities of Practice

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 18:00:03 -0500

Each HourSchool mission is a community of passionate people helping each other achieve their goals through in-person classes. This is how educator Etienne Wenger describes a community of practice:

In a nutshell: Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.

The key word is “practice.” As we learn-by-doing, we develop practices that change who we are and the way we define ourselves. As we grow and achieve our goals (“I want to learn how to cook” “I want to run a marathon” “I want to make my own website”), we can adopt new identities (“I’m a cook” “I’m a runner” “I’m a hacker”).

HourSchool missions help people participate in a community of like-minded peers. In addition to learning new things, the community’s support allows people to practice and experiment in a new mindspace. Learning becomes ingrained when it extends beyond the classroom setting, so we built it into our missions: HourSchool encourages people to host a variety of events, from classes and workshops to socials and working sessions.

What does this end up looking like? Here’s an example grounded in the kinds of conversations we hear every day.

I recently attended a day-long introductory workshop to Ruby on Rails, but I won’t become comfortable in the programming language unless I continue learning through my own projects. The chances of me continuing with my own projects are greater if I surround myself with other Rails developers, if I attend hacker nights where I feel comfortable asking questions, and if I start to feel part of the Rails community. I want to find people to pair-code with, and I also want to find people I can hang out with at the next Rails happy hour event. HourSchool lets me start a mission and rally people in my local geographic area. I can connect with others with similar goals as me (learn to program), and I can find support from those who know a little or a lot more than me.

Communities of practice are everywhere, and we are naturally a part of many different communities. But sometimes when we want to try something new, have moved to a new place, or are just dreaming BIG…it can be hard to jump into a new community. HourSchool wants to make it easier for people to achieve their dreams. We want to help you activate your community of practice.

What have you always wanted to do? Get started now! Or contact us to start a conversation and explore the options.

—-

HourSchool wants to be part of the conversation at SXSWEdu about building learning communities and engaging students in peer learning. What do you want to see at this year’s conference? Vote for our talk here: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/7478

What have you always wanted to do? Check out what some of our...

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 14:47:42 -0500

What have you always wanted to do? Check out what some of our Mission Launch Party guests had to say, explore our current missions, or start your own!

Tips from IdeaMensch: Bringing your Ideas to Life

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 16:53:23 -0500

by Christina Tran

I went to an event called IdeaMensch last week. Their goal is to bring together speakers and audience members around the idea of entrepreneurship; the theme of the 4 talks was tips for bringing your ideas to life. The Los Angeles event was the kick-off to IdeaMensch’s 48-state, 50-event roadtrip over the next 4 months. Check them out if they’re coming to your city!

Here are my takeaways and the stories that most inspired me.

Charlie Capen of HowToBeaDad.com, an entertainment website for a new generation of dads (read: not absent, not dumb) using humor “as an anesthesia to get points across.” Examples: Zombie vs. Baby and Baby Sleep Positions (1-10)

Connect with the community. Think about how you can serve the community. They were constantly tweeting not about the site but about life like crazy before site launch to get out into that community. Recognize that each platform has a different model of message half-life and “viral” spread (Twitter: lots quickly but then dies off. Facebook can have a long tail and longer life.)
Forget soft launch; do it right. They spent a 9-month gestation period backloading the site with content and making it the way they wanted to see a website for dads.

Josh Dykstra of Strengths Doctors, a consulting firm helping companies create healthier cultures and systems. He shared 4 principles of building healthy start-up cultures. (I also liked his presentation flow: introduce the principle, share a story, provide an action item).

Strengths: Deliberately focus on strengths. Two groups of school kids given the same speed reading course. One group went from 90 words per minute to 150 wpm. The group that started out at 350 went to…2900. Great becomes excellent; bad becomes not-quite-as-bad. Focus on your strengths, be comfortable with what you’re not good at, and find complementary strengths in your partners and the people you work with. Action Item: Do a strengths assessment like StrengthScope. (Focus on strengths during performance reviews, not shortcomings.)
Simplicity: Get rid of the crappy stuff and focus on the good by being relentless about your focus. Apple’s focus is “creating better products” and they’re ruthless about cutting the crap. Action Item: Have 1 noble cause. What’s the one thing you do? How would the world be worse off if you weren’t doing what you’re doing? Use your 1 noble cause to focus.
Space: Build rhythms and cycles into your culture that create space. Rests & space are the difference between music and noise. Alternate really intense periods of activity with rest (think athletes or musicians). What you plant now, grows later. “Hectic cultures don’t grow into rhythmic, restful ones.” Action Item: Build post-production times into your schedule.
System: Structure determines function. Alignment determines whether you’re spiraling up or down (can’t do both at the same time). Action Item: Ask “WHY?” Make sure all your systems (including meetings and communications) reinforce strength, space, and simplicity.

Shivani Siroya of InVenture, a social enterprise focused on bringing financial access to people in developing countries by giving them tools & data (read: credit score to prove they are low-risk for loans from traditional banks).

Shivani structured her talk around the quote:

“It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.” ~Alan Cohen

Dream jobs are sometimes not enough.
“I started solving it and ended up with a company.” She started creating InVenture with partners on top of their full time jobs since no one was solving the problem at the level she wanted to solve it (ground level, working with the micro-entrepreneurs in a holistic sense. Not just providing capital, but also asking why and whether they even wanted to start their own businesses. Some people just wanted jobs.) InVenture Fund started as a “micro-venture capitalist” fund with 3 pilots that successfully had a 30% ROI, and the micro-businesses created 3 new jobs each. From there, they grew fast.
Constantly and relentlessly ask why. They were constantly asking themselves: What is it that we’re solving? Is this worth solving? Are we the best ones to solve it? Do we actually have to provide the capital? Do we have to do the training when dozens of other NGO’s do that? Can we solve the inefficiencies in the system?
Pivot as your understanding of the problem evolves. Though pivots are talked about a lot in the tech entrepreneurship world, social enterprises usually don’t. They don’t share the story and reasoning of their pivots with the world, leaving the public to figure out why you have a new name or new look for themselves. However, social enterprises who are committed to solving a specific problem will NATURALLY grow, evolve, and “pivot” more than the average new company that is founded around a specific solution. As InVenture talked to more people and were in the space longer, they saw that the real problem wasn’t access to capital but rather lack of access to formal institutions because of a lack of reliable data—people didn’t have credit scores, and banks weren’t willing to take that risk. InVenture created an SMS-based accounting system called InSight. Micro-business owners can use it as a tool for basic accounting, and banks can use it as a source of data to determine credit-worthiness.
Trust the dots. The dots only connect looking backward; trust that they will connect in the future.
Her greatest strength? Perseverance. The InVenture team recently used Strengths Finder 2.0, and Shivani’s ended up being “competitiveness,” which meant persevering through criticism and thus being willing to get tons of feedback constantly throughout the journey.

Mark Mertens of SESO, a digital marketing design firm which focuses on designing experiences for purpose-driven organizations in the health, education, science & tech, and arts & culture fields. They started out as a traditional advertising firm (design in service of business), made a decision to do more fulfilling and passion-driven work, and gradually shifted their client base and portfolio over time to design of ecosystems (design shapes nature, culture, and business, like this Bruce Mau diagram).

He shared 4 design tools that anyone could use:

Design Journalism. (AKA design research.) Build relationships with your community. Prototype early and often in the field. Surface challenges and opportunities along the way. (You don’t know what you don’t know.)
Imagination. Can’t solve a problem in a new way by playing by the old rules. They make a deal with their clients that for 6 weeks, they throw out all limitations (money, resources, feasability) and design the best, most ideal solution. From there, after everyone’s on board with the big vision, they work backwards. 80% of a big vision is better than 100% of a small one.
Human-Centered Thinking. People. Use experience maps to think about things from people’s POVs. Example they gave was their experience map for LACMA including a spectrum of low levels of commitment to high levels of commitment. How could they create low levels of demand of a new visitor to the site to ease them into the experience? They came up with a model of “surprise me” —> “explore” —> “experience” for the art museum’s website.
Rapid Iteration. Example: the new TED Ed. They built it over 4 months, launched it, and are giving themselves a year’s window to perfect it. The plus side is having real users interacting with it and giving feedback, so they can evolve the product for the community.

What big ideas do you want to bring to life? What have you always wanted to learn to meet your goals? HourSchool is all about helping passionate people turn their ideas into action, so let’s get started!

Elements Of A Great Trip

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 11:25:00 -0500

And How To Plan & Execute An Excellent Adventure

By Katie Inglis

I just returned from traveling around Costa Rica for 8 days. It was my first time out of the country in a few years and the first time I’ve travelled to a primarily non-english speaking country with my significant other. It was also the first time I’d ever planned to meet anyone in a foreign – and rural – place and the first time I’d ever vacationed with my family as an adult. So! Not only did I have a fantastic and memorable adventure, I learned a lot too – about how to plan and execute an adventure appropriate to different age groups with varied interests, about how to communicate when you don’t know much of the language, when to put the guide book down, how to roll with the punches and have an awesome time even when things don’t go as expected. Today I want to share the things I learned with you!

BEFORE THE TRIP

When you have to plan a trip for multiple people it’s important to keep a few things in mind:

• Research the destination. Check out guidebooks and maps, talk with people that have been there before, cruise the internet for objective information about the area, and and check the weather forecast before you go.

• I’ll call this out because it’s really important: become familiar with the local culture and its customs before embarking. Get a phrasebook and a dictionary if you don’t speak the language. Find out if there are religious or social mores in place that might affect your behavior or your plans. In going to Costa Rica I didn’t realize beforehand that the streets and roads don’t have widely used names. I’d printed out a bunch of Google maps that were totally useless because they only showed road names. Next time I’ll find out how the locals navigate before heading out on the road.

• Think about the interests and abilities of the people you’ll be traveling with. If you know someone is mortally afraid of a specific activity, avoid it. But don’t be afraid of to push you’re party to experience new and exciting things that they wouldn’t try at home.

• Talk about what kinds of equipment and supplies each person in the party will need. Make sure everyone is prepared to bring what they’ll need or share supplies as necessary. Being prepared makes every adventure more fun.

• Don’t sacrifice everything you want to do for the sake of the group. It’s important for your sanity that the activities you plan are things you’ll enjoy too.

• Create an itinerary. Estimate travel times and estimate the cost of paid activities. Share the itinerary with the group and iterate on it. Then when you go, if you’re traveling to a remote location or in the backcountry, leave a copy of your itinerary with an emergency contact back home.

DURING THE TRIP

• Make sure the party informed about the plans by discussing them right before embarking. People like to know what’s going on and when they are expected to be somewhere. This can be as formal or informal as you want, but good communication in the group is key.

• Stay flexible with the schedule and remember that the more people in your party, the slower it will move. Remember that you’re on an adventure and go with the flow!

• Keep an eye on each other. Offer water/sunscreen/snacks/breaks to anyone who might need it, and encourage the group members to do the same. Keeping everyone hydrated, fueled and sunburn-free is the best way to ensure each person is having a good time.

• Respect the land and the community. Stay on the trail, don’t touch delicate formations and don’t remove anything, no matter how seemingly insignificant, from its natural setting. Follow the Leave No Trace philosophy and pack out what you pack in. Preserve the place for future generations to enjoy.

• Stay open to the unknown. You never know what sort of unexpected events might pop up that can really make your day, so stay flexible in your plans and welcome the unpredictable.

• And don’t forget to stop and smell the roses! Take a moment to absorb your surroundings. Really look at where you are and commit it to memory. Take a deep breath and be thankful for your ability to get yourself to where you are!

AFTER THE TRIP

• Rest, refuel and rejuvenate! Take some time to relax, eat some nutritious food and get ready for your next adventure.

• Share stories and memories. Figure out the best way to share your photographs with each other and arrange a swap so everyone has an opportunity to relive the experience through another’s lens.

And a few other things to keep in mind when you’re travelling:

ON GUIDEBOOKS

Guidebooks are a great way to get to know a new area and what it has to offer you. Get a good guidebook well before your trip and read it! Choose your guidebook based on your interests – different publishers and editions often focus on different elements like history, eco-tourism, extreme adventuring, budget travel, etc – flip through all of your options before you pick one. Reading a guidebook that you chose because of its content or layout will inspire your trip and will give you lots to think about while planning. Guidebooks will help pass the long hours of traveling and can keep you informed about your next location but don’t forget to put down the guidebook and really experience what’s around you! You might miss something if you’ve got your nose in a book the whole time.

ON LANGUAGE

Do your homework before heading to a country where a different language than your own is primarily spoken. Get a good, simple, scannable phrasebook that you can reference on the go. I learned that it’s really helpful to write down key phrases that I commonly use in the beginning of the book, for easy reference. If you have time, do some background research on language to understand the different forms of gender, tense, and grammar. Also get a thorough, pocket-sized dictionary for reference.

CONSIDER THE COMMUNITY

When you travel to another country, consider where you’re staying, where you dine and your activities and ask yourself: “Is my money enriching the local economy? Is it staying local? Am I supporting small businesses and families or huge international conglomerations and chains? Are local foods and local guides being employed? Are my activities supporting responsible stewardship of the land or am I contributing to waste and mismanagement of resources?” And of course, check in with yourself to evaluate if these considerations are important to you. You have the potential to enrich and positively impact the community that you visit.

YOUR REASONS FOR TRAVEL

Ask yourself what you hope to gain by traveling to a new place. Is it to check items off a list or to enrich your life by expanding your worldview? How will your trip live on afterward, and how will you share your experiences? How can you fold them in to your day-to-day life and incorporate your experience into your becoming?

In summary, traveling to a new country can be as exciting or as relaxing as you make it. Traveling with a group of friends or family is a lot of fun with a little bit of planning and flexibility. Take some time before and during your trip to check in with yourself and your party, evaluate your plans and expectations, prepare for the worst and make the best! These principles can also be roughly applied to discovering what you might want to teach as an HourSchool class, so next time you get that creative urge consider this advice and make your class the ultimate adventure!

Moving from one-way knowledge transfer to networked learning

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 12:22:09 -0500

Top-Down or Bottom-Up Education?

A lot of traditional education is top-down. When I was teaching for a summer writing camp, I made executive decisions about the curriculum—what we would read, the activities we would do, and the structure of the class. I always gave my middle school students a choice whether to complete a particular group exercise or to work on their own writing projects, and I continuously adjusted the curriculum to their progress and goals (explicit or assumed). Since the camp was a short few weeks long, I felt I had to set a structure in place to create a safe space to hold their unstructured creative work as writers. Thus, the choices students made were limited to what they were going to write, how they would interact with their classmates, and how they would use their time in class—not necessarily about what they were learning or how.

A lot of peer education is bottom-up. When I was working at a medium-sized design firm, I picked up a bunch of skills from my co-workers and bosses. I learned file management, more efficient ways to use software, and how to present my work in client meetings. None of this occurred at “professional development” seminars or with explicit training. One day when I was looking for certain logo files, a co-worker showed me how this particular company organized their files and what he liked and disliked about it. As I was walking by a colleague’s desk another day, I glimpsed something cool on her screen, stopped to chat, and she showed me a couple Adobe Illustrator tricks. During presentations, I observed my bosses and took note of the language they used when explaining and defending our designs. This kind of learning was driven by my curiosity and desire to become a better designer. My co-workers were limited in their teaching to the context of my current questions.

Top-down education provides students safe and reliable structures to learn within, but the burden is on the teacher to plan the curriculum and to ensure their lessons are meeting student needs. Bottom-up education provides teachers context and scope for their knowledge sharing, but the burden is on the student to initiate their own learning and to ensure they’re getting what they want out of the experience. Both remain one-way knowledge transfers.

How about both?
The HourSchool team is working to design platforms that combine the best of both approaches, and in doing so create more directions for knowledge to flow.

I’m currently working on HourSchool’s program framework for peer-education programs at non-profit organizations. Typically before we’re involved, nearly all classes are initiated and planned by staff. (Staff are like the teachers planning the curriculum based on perceived student needs, and the community members are the students.) To start changing this, first HourSchool helps to start conversations about what people want to learn and we introduce request forms—ways for the community members to start asking for the classes they want to see. Now the community members can initiate classes, and the staff continues to plan the logistics. This helps staff and teachers plan classes that are in direct response to student needs and goals. Over time, the staff encourages really active students to start teaching classes. Our program framework scaffolds these community members as they start planning classes and dealing with logistics themselves. In the end, we consider our programs successful when community members are actively initiating and planning classes for other community members.

In reality, there will always be both organization-initiated events AND community-initiated events (top-down AND bottom-up). But instead of just one staff member being responsible for deciding the topics, finding teachers, and setting up ALL the classes, the HourSchool platform allows and encourages everyone within the community to complete any of those steps. The lines also become blurrier between “teacher” and “student.” Everyone in the community has potential and opportunity to be either at different times and in different contexts. In blurring the hierarchy, one-way knowledge transfer gives way to a community of learners. Everyone has something to learn; everyone has something to teach.

Our program framework’s intentions are to:

- encourage more direct collaboration between the people organizing the education programs and the people taking the classes;
- shift the learning model from linear to networked; and
- disperse the responsibility of initiating and planning by sharing it among all community members

The HourSchool team is also currently working on new features for the website that incorporates these ideas of networked learning happening within an active community. Because learning can begin anywhere—top, bottom, or sideways.

~Christina Tran

Local Spotlights: The Ghisallo Foundation

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 15:36:37 -0500

This past week I had the pleasure of sitting down for a brief interview with Christopher Stanton of the Ghisallo Foundation. The Ghisallo Foundation works on various cycling related initiatives in Austin, including trail maintenance with Keep Austin Beautiful and sponsoring a cycling team. But their main initiative is the expansion of the youth programming initiatives at local middle schools.

We are a mentoring program, realistically, we’re not just trying to give an info sheet, we’re trying to engage with them at an interpersonal level, to produce some sort of community within your group, and it’s not just between the student and the instructor, you’re trying to build a cohesive group among the students…. the interesting part of our program is that we use bicycle maintenance and riding skills to provide a framework for all those interactions. And the end desire is that the student begins to feel connected to cycling as a social interaction and a lifestyle interaction.

Another great aspect of the organization is their take on how bicycling is attached to choice of activity:

Through cycling you can increase the volume of choices you have

Kids whose worlds used to encompass their block now have a new freedom, a freedom of choice to explore their surroundings at an entirely different scale. (with permission of course)

One of the core beliefs of HourSchool is the simple notion that everyone can and should teach. We believe that we all have knowledge to share, and our communities are better off when we actively share that knowledge. We love how the Ghisallo Foundation shares this belief.

You have to engage the individual with both the content provided and a way to own that knowledge.

Check out the full interview here, including an incredible story of kids learning to teach each other at an impromptu cycling event.

For more information on the Ghisallo Foundation, please visit their website here: http://ghisallo.org

Thanks to Christopher and to the Ghisallo Foundation for taking the time to sit down with us.

Cheers,

The HourSchool team.

Teacher Tip: Invite a Friend, Gain a Helper

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 12:14:18 -0500

We’ve been talking to HourSchool teachers, listening to their stories, and asking them for tips to share with the community.

One thing we’ve known at HourSchool HQ for awhile now is that classes are always more fun with friends, so we’re always encouraging people to invite their friends! Teaching and learning from your friends breaks the ice and increases the comfort level of any class. But we also found that for teachers, a side benefit of inviting a friend to class is having an extra pair of hands during set up and an extra dose of friendly during class.

HourSchool teacher Monet, a food blogger who taught a Bread baking class earlier this year told us she had planned out the timing of her class very carefully, since she had prepared multiple doughs to be used at specific moments during the lesson. She was grateful for the extra help her husband provided on class day. She held the class at her home, and while she was setting up, her husband made sure the students were comfortable, got drinks, and met each other.

“My husband was around, and he’s great at talking to people and interacting on that level,” Monet said. “It was good because I didn’t feel like I had to bear the weight of making sure everyone was connecting. There’s something to be said of tag-teaming a class. Even if they’re not teaching it, have someone help with getting people fed, getting them drinks, talking to them. Have somebody, even a friend, come just hang out with you—someone who knows the space and can help people get what they need. Have a friend come over and help you with the hospitality aspect so you can focus on teaching.”

So the next time you teach an HourSchool class, invite a friend or two—and don’t be afraid to ask for help! It’ll make the experience better for everyone, including you!

P.S. Monet’s teaching another class on Homemade Bagels on June 16—sign up before the seats fill up!

[Photos by Monet, from her blog Anecdotes & Apple Cores]

Interview with the HourSchool’s founders

Thu, 31 May 2012 21:19:41 -0500

Interview with the HourSchool’s founders

How can companies ask better questions?

Wed, 23 May 2012 17:58:18 -0500

One core pillar of human-centered design is the idea of seeing the world through other people’s eyes, gaining empathy for their worldview, and meeting them where they are. Many companies are getting on board with the idea of putting the user or customer at the center of their business and design decisions. One good place to start is actually talking to people, and design research uses qualitative methods to gain insights from interviews, observations, and workshops.

One useful thing I’ve found in teaching or training others in design research methods is that I’m forced to externalize and synthesize my own habits. Because they’re ingrained in the way I think, I take for granted certain important aspects of the work. One important thing that needs to be learned and continually practiced is asking good questions. You can use all the fancy design research techniques you want, but they’re only as good as the questions you’re asking and the mindset you’re asking them with.

I was a journalist throughout high school and college. I worked on both print publications and with broadcast media shooting film for tv and recording audio for radio. I learned a lot of interview techniques and interviewed a lot of people. I even took one course on conducting oral histories. We worked on writing good questions specifically and learned from firsthand experience when we held bad interviews that led to uninspiring stories filled with boring quotes. Although a journalist hunting down a good story and a design researcher seeking human insights have very different objectives, my time as a journalist definitely trained me to be critical of the questions I ask and why I’m asking them.

QUANTITATIVE & QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

There are two basic buckets of research: quantitative (hard data driven and deductive) and qualitative (inductive and considers multiple variables, their relationships, and context). An example of quantitative research is a questionnaire sent out to a large group of people. An example of qualitative research is conducting longer interviews with a small set of people. There are advantages and disadvantages to both, and a thorough research project may need both types of research methods for different types of data — always depending on the goal of the research efforts.

We (sociologists, anthropologists, design researchers, and others) choose methods of qualitative research to “[enable] the researcher to give the subject leeway to answer as he or she chooses, to attribute meanings to the experiences under discussion, and to interject topics. In this way, new hypotheses may be generated.” (1)

It’s key to remember that with generative design research, you want to stay open to new insights and new hypotheses that come from the participants themselves. When I am conducting design research (particularly generative research), I want the interviewee to tell me their story and guide me whereever they want to go. I cannot predict where their stories will lead, and I need to make sure I let them tell me what is important in their lives, in their contexts, and in their words. To do this, I start by asking a lot of open-ended, non-leading questions.

OPEN-ENDED & CLOSE-ENDED QUESTIONS

Close-ended questions prompt short, concrete answers like yes, no, or a number. Most surveys and questionnaires are comprised of close-ended questions. Open-ended questions leave the interviewees room to answer in the way they choose. Open-ended questions allow interviewees to direct the conversation. Again, you’ll need a mix of both open-ended and close-ended questions for a good interview (depending on your focus/goal), but err on the side of more open-ended ones. An easy way to create more open-ended questions is to be aware of the way your questions begin:

Closed

Did you…?
Have you…?
Are you…?
Do you agree/disagree…?
When did you…?
How long…?

Open

What…?
How…?
Why…?
Tell me about…

LEADING & NON-LEADING QUESTIONS

However, you can still ask all “why” questions and still be asking leading questions, which can be particularly limiting or even harmful during an interview. A leading question includes a presupposition or indicates what the interviewer wants to hear in the answer. The interviewer ends up directing the conversation instead of the participant. For example, any question that includes a proffered reason is usually leading: “Did you choose that program because your friends were already members?” It’s really really easy to ask leading questions, because most research is designed to answer questions or test hypotheses about new or existing programs, services, or designs.

Consider the following question in the context of a new business trying to discern what is important to potential customers. Though they will try to implement “green” practices, it is not the main selling point or focus of their business model. But they want it to be a part of their research because they have a hypothesis that the “green” messaging will win them some customers. One of their questions is…

Would you consider a business that uses solar or wind power over one that doesn’t?

First, how can we change this close-ended yes/no question into an open-ended question?

How does a business’s environmental impact or sustainability efforts affect your decision as a consumer?

That still pre-supposes that the interviewee cares about sustainability in the first place. Even if a business’s “greenness” doesn’t normally affect their decision, they’ll probably still provide some kind of answer and might give something that will make them sound good. This will skew the research data. Thus, an even more open-ended question:

When was the last time you made a [similar business decision]? Tell me more about your thought process and how you came to a decision.

This degree of open-endedness allows the participant to steer the conversation. They may not even mention sustainability at all. Though you’ll need a variety of questions with different degrees of open-endedness in a single interview, always try to work backward to find the broadest, most open-ended question you can start off with. In a brainstorm of research questions, it’s useful to include the very specific questions that you know you want answered, but know you may never ask them specifically of the interviewee. They can help you guide the interview once you’re in the middle of it if the participant has taken you to topic areas you’re interested in by mentioning sustainability FIRST.

Of course, your question can also be TOO broad. We at HourSchool have learned that it’s really hard for people to answer, “What do you want to teach?” It’s hard for people to have an answer off the top of their heads if they haven’t been thinking in those contexts or in those terms. Luckily, there are a hundred other ways to get at the same question.

What are you passionate about?
What do you geek out about?
What have your friends asked you to show them how to do in the past?
Do you find yourself automatically helping people with something when they’re stuck? What is it?
What’s something you’re good at, but you want to learn more about yourself?
What do you do for a living?
What side projects do you have?
What are some things you’ve done in the past year that you’re really proud of?
What online and offline communities are you actively a part of?

Here’s some advice from Recording Oral History: A Practical Guide for Social Scientists that jives with my mindset:

“A workable strategy is to use a broad question at the beginning of a line of questioning and then pick up on what the narrator says by asking more specific questions. The advantage of the broad question coming at the beginning is that the narrator follows his or her own thought processes or paths of association. You can learn much that you did not even guess about before the interview, including a new framework in which to view this topic. Rob Rosenthal, who interviewed people in Seattle to find out how their experiences in general strike had changed their lives, explained the advantages of a broad question: ‘Letting people talk about their worlds with as little structure as possible is a good way to see things through their eyes, and ensure against interviewer bias.’”

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT

One core pillar of human-centered design is the idea of seeing the world through other people’s eyes, gaining empathy for their worldview, and meeting them where they are. The mindset of respecting and valuing other people’s experiences, mental models, and worldviews without imposing your own will help you gauge whether you are asking the right types of questions. A quick check of the types of questions a company asks of its users is a good gauge of where they are on the spectrum of human-centered design and whether they’re walking the walk.

How much leeway do their questions give to participants to shape the answers (and thus their products, programs, services)? Are they mostly sending out surveys and questionnaires asking close-ended questions? Or are they talking to people face-to-face and asking open-ended questions? Are they open to people’s stories and experiences and questions? Or are they looking for specific answers to validate their hypotheses? Are they open to being surprised in the field, and are they ready to start with those learnings and run with them?

How can organizations and companies ask better questions?

Whether they’re aware of it or not, the types of questions a company asks sets the stage for the type of work they do and sets the culture for the type of relationships they have with their community.

-Christina Tran

Jesse Bowley Schlabach on Exploring Southeast Asia

Mon, 21 May 2012 13:43:00 -0500

Jesse Bowley Schlabach is an expert traveller – she loves spending time exploring new places and immersing herself in local cultures, sampling regional cuisines and engaging with fellow travelers to expand her experience. Growing up in a military family, Jesse was born in Turkey has lived throughout Europe and America, and has an instinctive need for travel and a vast appreciation for space. Jesse has been based in Hong Kong for the last two years as the Associate Director of Recruitment for the Savannah College of Art and Design Hong Kong, where she spent most days traveling around Asia and the South Pacific talking with prospective students, counseling portfolios, conducting workshops and attending conferences and events. In January Jesse left her position and decided to spend the next six months traveling! A few months in she’s made her way down to Austin and we finally had a chance to catch up about her incredible adventures. Here’s Jesse on some of her most memorable experiences and a few perfect tips on what to bring and expect when traveling in Asia.

By Katie Inglis

Besides turning 30 and quitting your job, what was the catalyst that made you want to travel Southeast Asia?

I had grown up in the Middle East and in Europe and in a lot of places in the States but most of Asia was a very unexplored, untouched region for me, so it was as simple as that. Because it felt like even if I didn’t enjoy it, I could do anything for a few years. I was just as excited about going to the other cities in Asia as I was about Hong Kong. There wasn’t anything specific about Hong Kong, and I didn’t know much about it when I decided to move there – it was more about the region itself.

You said you visited 14 countries in 2 years. Where did you go?

I had to leave the country to activate my visa, so Macau was the first country I traveled to right after I went there. The next one was Singapore, and then Vietnam, Thailand, and Mainland China. Then after that Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan. I did go back to Turkey, which is a weird one because it’s half in Asia and half in Europe. In the Pacific I went to Australia, then New Zealand. The most recent were Cambodia and Laos. (I guess it’s only 14 if you count Hong Kong as a separate country. You do get a different passport stamp so I think that counts. And Macau is really a territory not a country but that’s getting too complicated.)

Tell me about some of the experiences that really stood out to you in your travels.

The first time I went to mainland China I was in Beijing and I met up with one of our alumni for a night on the town. We got into his car (he had an amazing car!) and I remember looking over and seeing this little contraption that had been inserted into the seatbelt clip. He did not have his seatbelt on but he had this thing clipped in there. I asked, “Did your seatbelt break? What is that thing?” and he says, “Oh no no, Chinese don’t like to put on their seat-belts and if you don’t have it on the car goes bing-bing-bing-bing constantly. So you just buy these little clips to stick in there and the car doesn’t make the noise.” That stuck out to me because that country is so tightly controlled, those people are tightly controlled; it is a communist regime, and that was his tiny act of rebellion, enacting that little bit of personal freedom. But it was over something so completely nonsensical like keeping himself safe – like his personal freedom was more important than his personal safety.

In Japan it’s their totally outrageous, extreme visual culture, especially with fashion. I was really surprised at how, even though the people seem to love and appreciate spectacle that doesn’t equate to wanting to engage with people. In the States, you see something like Comic-Con where people get really into expressing themselves and they do that in part as a communal thing, to talk about it and geek out about it. I was devastated at how little contact the costumed Japanese wanted to have with me. Staring at them is fine and they seem to invite that, but they don’t want to personally engage with you. (This could have been as simple as them not speaking English, or because I was an outsider.)

In Bali, being in some of the schools, I loved how harmoniously some of traditional and western things lived together. The average teenager would wear a traditional sarong, and a head wrap, but sandwiched in between two traditional fabrics would be a sports jersey or Adidas or Nike sportswear shirt.

In traveling to all of these places what was the most unusual or unexpected place?

Indonesia. The first city I went to was Jakarta. It’s so different from the rest of Asia, primarily because Indonesia has the largest population of Muslims. Throughout a lot of Asia religion doesn’t really feel present. The other day we talked a bit about how Hong Kong is not a particularly religious place. A lot of Hong Kong Chinese would say they’re influenced by Buddhism, or Confucianism but they wouldn’t identify themselves as strict followers. But going to a predominantly Muslim place was a very, very different experience. I’d seen a lot of Mosques from the outside, but I don’t think I’d ever been inside a Mosque until I’d been to Indonesia. I felt it had an enormous impact, being in a place where religion is such a large presence.

What was it like going into a Mosque, in Indonesia, as a woman who’s traveling alone?

It was much more open than I thought. I’d never really thought about what would be inside a Mosque in terms of furniture, and then it makes sense when you enter, you think, “Oh right, everyone is on the floor.” Everyone is on prayer rugs, kneeling or sitting; there isn’t any furniture. Being in architecture that is not filled with anything, an unfurnished interior, is very interesting. And there were a lot of children. I was speaking with them and they were asking me questions about the possibility of studying in America. Their first questions were a lot about, “Will there be a place for me to worship where I’m going to go?” and “Will people be kind to me?” There were these very personal considerations, so before you could talk about what program they might be interested in, we just discussed a lot of things about their personal comfort, which was very unusual. It was very beautiful. Some of the people I was with were a bit nervous when some women came up to us and gave us things to cover ourselves with before we went in, and I think that kind of setup made people feel on-edge. (Putting something on your body that you’re not familiar with is enough to throw you off.) I don’t remember feeling uncomfortable. Some of that could have been that I lived in Turkey before and where I lived was a very conservative area, so it was expected that if you were going to go downtown you would have on the proper attire.

What was the place you felt you had the most personal or spiritual connection with?

I felt different types of connections. When you go to a place like Australia, its alarming how similar it feels to America. It was strange.

Like the uncanny valley – It’s so close but it’s not quite?

That is exactly right. It doesn’t sound the same but it’s very similar visually. In terms ofa more spiritual or personal connection, probably Japan. I think that is typical for designers or artists because any time you’re studying Asia, you’re usually studying Japan or India, so it was a culture that I already had a lot of context with. You familiarize yourself with the art, the furniture or the craftsmanship – you have a reference point. I’m sure that’s part of it, but the other part that I remember was being in the city and thinking, “That’s exactly how I would do it!” It felt like a place where the inner-workings of my brain were on display. Everything just made sense. It was the way you moved through a space, it just felt so intuitive. Everything about the place is so considered that it’s hard not to fetishise it. Sometimes you visit a place and you have an immediate connection to it. And for me that was, by far, Japan.

Traveling for short bursts of time, with a timeline in mind, or for business, what have you found is the most important thing to have with you?

Something to document it with. Whether it’s a journal or a camera, have something that will allow you to take notes, because it is pretty amazing how distant it can become, so quickly, once you leave. If you want to keep reliving the experience after you come back you have to be immediate about recording those first impressions. Those things that you see that make you think, “I will absolutely remember that” – it’s so easy to have absolutely no clue six months later. If I had to choose between a camera and something to write with, I would choose something to write with because you can easily recall images but it’s a lot harder to recall the detail of something that happened or someone you interacted with.

I find that journaling can help you recall your mental picture – by writing down small points you can jog your memory. What is your favorite thing to travel with, your favorite object or piece of clothing?

I always have something that is pretty impractical. It’s so easy to make a list of things you really need, but having something that is totally unnecessary can lift your spirits when you’re having a bad day of traveling. When you’re having a shitty day because your plane was delayed 14 hours, having that thing that maybe you didn’t need but really makes you happy, whatever personal memento that might be, that is the best thing to take. Or something like a gorgeous dress, that you wear one time on the trip. I think that having something that you don’t need but you want to have with you makes that day particularly special when you use it or wear it.

Do you have any advice for anyone that’s thinking about traveling to Asia for the first time?

Take some real time, a month if you can, to really make the trip worthwhile. And go over there with the right attitude. Never over plan, never have everything totally figured out before you go. That would be my best set of advice. My tactic was to book my first night or two ahead of time. But after that first day you will likely have been in a few neighborhoods and you may have just found the neighborhood that you love. A lot of people don’t want to have to move, but whatever, don’t pack a lot of stuff and it’s not a big deal. It’s way better to get to experience a few different neighborhoods in a place. Leave things open, at least a little bit, or you’re going to miss out. My most important piece of advice for Southeast Asian countries like Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, always have a mosquito net for your bed. You can do without running water or your own bathroom but malaria is no freakin’ joke! Also, you can’t underestimate how far things like the right tone can go. Asian languages are very tonal, and tone just has a very different connotation and context in Asia, and that permeates pretty deep through the culture. It’s just incredible how far having the right attitude can go.

Local Spotlight: Women Design Build

Mon, 14 May 2012 16:26:00 -0500

For the latest conversation in our local spotlight series, we sat down with Christina Mirando of Women Design Build (womendesignbuild.org) to talk about their approach to learning and knowledge sharing.

Here’s an excerpt from the chat where Christina talks about what is unique about their program:

What’s unique about these programs is that we’re very collaborative. We bring together local leaders and partners and all of those individuals and organizations bring something new to the table. In that knowledge sharing space it’s so highly collaborative, because we’re always learning something new and all the participants are bringing something new to the table as well, so everyone is becoming a leader and a teacher in some way.

I really love the way Christina talks about leaders and learners throughout the interview. The idea that everyone has knowledge to contribute and share is something we strongly believe here at HourSchool.

Check out the video below to hear one of their great success stories, and to learn more about what Women Design Build does:

You can follow Women Design Build on twitter for updates on events and meetups, @WomenDB, and on FB here.

Thanks a ton to Christina and to Women Design Build for taking the time to chat with us!

Cheers,

The HourSchool team

What ice cream has to do with co-design

Wed, 09 May 2012 18:00:00 -0500

Co-design is an integral part of HourSchool’s program services for organizations who want to build peer education programs within their communities. We want to collaborate with ground staff and clients to collaboratively design peer education programs that will meet each community’s unique values and needs. Truly collaborative co-design requires more time and effort because collaboration requires trust and a shared sense of ownership—things that aren’t built overnight. As Ruby mentioned previously, we want to document our experiences and POV on certain topics, and this post’s about one helpful ingredient we’ve found for fostering trust between design teams and the people they’re working with: ice cream.

(image via)

When I met Carl diSalvo and Thomas Lodato last year at the Interactions11 conference, I had all sorts of questions about how he and his team at Georgia Institute of Technology were engaging with farmers in co-design workshops that would help small farms incorporate robotic technologies into their daily practices. In addition to sharing stories about wrangling logistics for workshops (including one instance when a stubborn, noisy rooster joined the day’s events), they also shared tips about the longer-term relationships that these kinds of co-design engagements necessitated.

My memory may have swapped out a few of the following details, but here’s one of their stories that really stuck with me: Carl and his team had been trying to engage a group of librarians for a different co-design project, and attendance to their official Saturday workshops was spotty. But the thing that helped the project gain traction was ice cream. You see, there was another grad student who would do interviews and observations with the staff on weekdays. Every Thursday, after the work was done, the librarians would go out to get ice cream together at the local farmer’s market, and she ended up tagging along and soon enough became part of their routine. Not only did these “ice cream sessions” help the team build trust and get to know each other outside of planned workshops (therefore increasing interest in the Saturday workshops), they also gave the design team research insights that could never come out of structured interviews.

So around HourSchool HQ, we now use “ice cream sessions” as a code name for the extra time we budget into our projects for when we’re just hanging out and getting to know the people we’re working with. And when HourSchool asked me to help them solidify their program offerings for community organizations, I made sure to formalize co-design and “ice cream sessions” into the roadmap.

At Green Doors, where we’re piloting a peer-education program at one of their housing communities, we’ve been showing up for “ice cream sessions” that have nothing to do with ice cream (yet). We’ve gotten our hands dirty at a bi-monthly gardening class that helps residents grow their vegetable gardens (pictured above). We’ve attended every month’s Resident Council Meeting since we started our partnership—sometimes we talk a bit about HourSchool and upcoming classes, sometimes we pitch in to get chairs set up, sometimes we just listen and hang out with the community. Not only do we know a lot of them by name now, they know who we are and why we’re there. Now, whenever HourSchool shows up in the middle of a weekday for a meeting with the community manager, the residents say, “Hi, Ruby.” People are starting to request classes and want to know, “How do we go to their school?”

“Ice cream sessions” have helped us build a good foundation for a growing partnership.

-Christina

The First 70

Mon, 07 May 2012 11:10:00 -0500

Or, On the Importance of Wilderness Preservation By Katie Inglis

Open space is, to me and to most, an essential part of living a full life. When I got the opportunity to talk with my friend Cory Brown about his latest collaboration, The First 70, my eyes were reopened to the importance of preserving our precious natural resources. The First 70 is a short film created by Cory, Jarratt Moody and Lauren Valentino, that dives into California’s most pristine wilderness to tell the stories of these vulnerable state parks and the hardworking, intensely caring people that are trying to save them. These are my thoughts from our conversation…

Watch The Film Trailer »

Exploring wilderness, being amongst the stars and trees and animals, admiring the beauty of the natural world, breathing fresh air, getting away from the bustle of the city – these are experiences state and national parks enable for people. Our national and state parks systems strive to preserve endangered species and delicate ecosystems, protect habitats for native flora and fauna, conserve open spaces and educate about the importance – and contents – of these lands.

Whether or not you spend much time in local parks impacts how much you know about the world around you, and if you know that that world, that wilderness, is often threatened – by land development organizations, city planning commissions, the collective drive of “progress”, by lobbyists and officials, by taxes and by budgets.

Here in Austin we saw our parks and preserved spaces threatened and destroyed by wildfires during last summer’s record droughts. Thousands of acres and homes were burned in Bastrop County and the state park there is now struggling to clean up, rebuild, and attract enough visitors to remain open. A similar but even more distressing challenge is facing residents of California: last May a bill was passed to completely close 70 state parks, to try to close the state’s huge budget gaps.

Because of severe budget cuts these many of these under-staffed and under-resourced parks have been operating solely on volunteer and donation bases. In one case, a single park ranger is overseeing the care of 5000 acres entirely by himself. In another, the Observatory at Sugarloaf Ridge state park was built by a community of donors and gifted to the state only to be put on immediate closure notice, and still needs help. But closing a park to the public makes the land vulnerable to vandalism, hazardous dumping, and improper use in the least, and closing rustic infrastructure makes it instantly more susceptible to destruction and disrepair – and of course the controversy of denying the public access to publicly held lands.

But people are doing something about these problems. Non-profits are getting involved in supporting the parks and communities are coming out in droves to encourage their local lawmakers and preserve these unmeasurable resources for future generations. Films like The First 70 are being screened around the country and the word is finally being spread.

Once these areas close they will each be much, much harder to reopen and rebuild. They will become unsafe for visitors while the delicate ecosystems that are preserved could easily be overlooked, abused, or worse – destroyed.

Have you thought about what you would do without open spaces? Vast wilds are a mysterious and unmeasurable resource that need to be protected and shared responsibly amongst us. Sharing is as simple as visiting these places that are so close to us but are still another world, mostly untouched by urbanization. We need to preserve the spaces where we live and around the world as well, because together we have a much louder voice and can advocate for the preservation of our natural world. In the spirit of The First 70, we must share the stories of our experiences and the value these places bring to our lives.

Check out The First 70’s Website for information about their upcoming screenings, follow them on Facebook for updates about the film, and keep an eye out for their beautiful book highlighting California’s endangered state parks. Get out to your local parks, do some exploring, and help keep these places open to us all.

Recap: How to Teach an HourSchool Class

Thu, 03 May 2012 11:06:05 -0500

Last week we had our first “How to Teach an HourSchool class”. It was tons of fun with lots of engaging participants, inquiring away their questions and hesitations about teaching their first class.

Here are some sample questions the group asked:

What should I teach How do I decide what to teach?
How do I know if I’m ready to teach?
Are shorter or longer classes better (intro vs. longer workshop) ?
How do I plan where to teach?
Days of week - most popular? least popular?
Pricing - what range seems to be most popular?
How much $ should I charge? How do I value my skill/class?
How do you know what a good class size is?
How long should my class be?
How do I structure my time teaching?
How do I describe my class so it will interest people?
Promotion of the class beyond your site?
How do I know I’m not forgetting something?
How do I build activities for my class?
Do people want to hear my talk or should it be all hands-on?
Execution - what works, what doesn’t?
How do I end my class?

We are having another one of these on Tue May 15 at 7pm. If you have been thinking of teaching a class for awhile but just didn’t know where to start, we would love to chat about it.

If you don’t live in Austin but are interested in joining, send us a note at hello@hourschool.com - we’re thinking of trying this out on Google + as well.

Cheers, HourSchool HQ

Bridget Quinn On Pay Phones, Open Spaces & Urban Renewal

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 10:01:36 -0500

By Katie Inglis

I got in touch with Bridget Quinn, a sculptor of whimsical things and painter of beautiful scenes, to talk about the next chapter of her ongoing installation, the Pay Phone Revival Project, which is kicking off this weekend!

[KI] So tell me about the project you’re working on.

[BQ] The Pay Phone Revival Project reanimates abandoned pay phone booths by commissioning artists and designers to use them as the epicenter for creative interventions in the urban landscape. The resulting installations transform abandoned pay phone booths into objects that inspire play and interaction, create a new function, or tell a story.

Where the idea came from?

I have always loved pay phones. I began photographing them about 4 years ago for a school project. I was particularly interested in the way the photographs captured the sometimes awkward placement of pay phones relative to their surroundings. Some of these photographs highlighted some pretty poignant and humorous expressions of our need to be connected to each other.

As time progressed I began noticing more and more pay phone booths without phones in them. Many pay phone companies would de-install the phone and just leave the booth. For some reason these empty pay phone booths seemed invisible to everyone else. Business owners wouldn’t even be aware that there was an empty pay phone booth outside of their business. I tend to anthropomorphize objects, so I started to see them as sad little ghosts of a phased out technology. They looked like little empty frames. The phone booths needed a new function, a new reason to exist! Ideas flooded into me, so – that’s when I realized I needed to bring other artists and designers into the process of reclaiming and re-purposing these forgotten objects.

What inspired you to create this opportunity for very public interactive experiences?

I made the decision to encourage interactive art and design interventions because most public art opportunities are very conservative. Most entities that commission public art expect the artworks to last forever and to be graffiti-proof. This requirement is extremely limiting. I wanted to encourage artists and designers to innovate and experiment. I want artists and designers to think about creating new functions for these abandoned objects that suggest a level of interactivity.

About half of the installations are interactive. The artworks that are not intentionally interactive are still responsive to their environment and tell some sort of story about their context. It was my hope to support very diverse approaches to art-making, hence the range of materials, concepts and aesthetics.

What kinds of interactions and experiences are you hoping the Pay Phones will generate with people in the community?

At a minimum I hope that the installations will cause people to look more closely at their environment. I want people to re-engage with their everyday surroundings. Oftentimes we take our landscape for granted…we see it as something static and unchanging, when in reality it is a complex and evolving – or, at times, devolving – ecosystem with all sorts of narratives embedded within the structures, both natural and man made.

The best possible scenario is that the installations will cause pedestrians to interact with each other. I hope the artworks will spark conversations and interactions between pedestrians.

I’m really into a growing trend in public art that has been called “tactical urbanism”. This entails the creation of small interventions serve the larger purpose of making cities more livable and humane.

It sounds like you guys are using some new electronic gadgets to make these mini play-spaces really unique and even working! What kinds of challenges have you and the artists experienced in making this work?

Three of the installations incorporate electronics, but most of them are actually really straight forward. Overall, most of the artists whose work incorporates electronics collaborated with experts to help them realize their visions.

Kate Watson and Gabriella Levine’s piece incorporates Arduino components. Arduino is a pretty exciting product that makes creating electronic interactives much more accessible to DIY makers and artists. This piece is already installed at the Longbranch Inn if you want to check it out. Beth Ferguson of Sol Deign Lab worked with a solar electrician to help her design the solar charging station.

Generally interactive artworks that incorporate electronics are much more expensive, so I would like to continue to grow my project budgets to foster more of this kind of work in the future, thus allowing for more complexity and innovation.

How will this project continue to improve the Austin urban landscape after the installations have been completed?

Most of the artworks are temporary. This was a very conscious decision on my part – permanent artworks can become irrelevant to the people who use the space. Also Because the landscape changes overtime, the artworks should grow and evolve with these spaces. I’m not arguing against permanent public art – there is an important role for permanent artwork in public spaces. I am more drawn to temporary and ephemeral public art because it is better suited to deal with controversial issues and changing spaces – it feels more democratic, more responsive and less arrogant.

I hope that these interactions will encourage ordinary citizens to feel connected to our shared spaces, and feel empowered to make positive interventions of their own. Or at least think about the public spaces as places rather than just space between destinations.

That being said, I would love to have a more persistent and enduring effect on the landscape of Austin by working with the vast creative community here. I will continue to produce projects like the pay phone revival project, and look at other successful models that inspire me to help me grow and evolve my projects.

Is there anything else you want to tell the world about the Pay Phone Revival Project?

This project was made possible because of the generous support of over 120 people and organizations and the artists have all been really generous with their time and talents. I will continue to advocate for and facilitate more of this kind of work, and I am so grateful for such a supportive community!

I can’t wait to see them in action! When does everything begin?

The installations will be going up this week! We have teamed up with the Fusebox Festival for an opening Bike Tour of all of the art installations! It’ free and open to the public! The bike tour will lead you on a meandering route through central Austin, past all 9 of the brand new Pay Phone Revival Project art installations. The ride will last between one and a half and two hours.

The tours begin at El Chilito (2219 Manor Rd) on April 28th at 11am and on April 29th at 4pm, and end at The Tops Building (1100 East 5th). You can also take the tour on your own and a map can be found here.

For more information about the participating artists and locations check out the Kickstarter campaign!

So many thanks to Bridget for her contribution to making Austin a more creative city and a better place to live, work and travel! We can’t wait to see what the next round of Pay Phone Revival brings…

Thoughts on Design, articulated.

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 07:55:00 -0500

The one thing I admire the most about the developer community is the culture of open-source and community-driven content. Look at the number of self-taught programmers, Github, Stack Overflow, Railscasts, local Hack nights - just an incredible amount of resources and inspiration to draw from for anyone who is interested and willing to learn how to code.

Recently, I’ve noticed an irony. Most of the web companies that are well-loved these days - Instagram, Dropbox, Etsy - all run tech blogs in addition to their company blogs. The irony is that these are also the companies that have been recognized for their design - beautiful, useful, and usable. Why aren’t their designers sharing their approaches to problems like their engineers are? Even with Facebook’s recent focus on design, a design blog is nowhere to be found. They do, of course, have one for developers.

So with the recent talks around designer-founders, still, where is the design leadership from the best designers working at these great companies? Like when Marc Hedlund, VP of Engineering at Etsy, announced their grants for Hacker School or when his team writes about code as craft - that’s really cool. Design consultancies write about their POVs, 37 signals has a design and usability blog, but where are the rest? If Apple is the default example for everyone arguing why design is important, where is the Apple design blog? Where is the Hacker News equivalent for design?

I feel like we collectively could make more of an effort to articulate “design thinking” in real life, not just as case studies of how design can be a driver of disruptive innovation, but rather in the day-to-day life, how are designers making decisions and identifying problems? This is important because it matters what problems we choose to solve and what we spend our time working on. At HourSchool, we want to foster a culture of active contribution and participation, so we are going to practice what we preach and write about our intentions, values, and process. We’ll start with the following topics, in the context of our work and the way we approach the problems we face:

Service Design and Interaction Design
HourSchool’s single most important goal is to discover and create more teachers. “Put Teachers First” is the motto around our HQ these days. Our metrics for success is the number of people we are able to transform into teachers and we are here to make sure our teachers feel supported every step of the way. We aspire to turn all the low points of the journey and make them a more enjoyable experience - whether it’s planning, promoting, or soliciting feedback. We want to remove all the barriers of teaching.

For example, one of the biggest barriers to teaching is that most people don’t see themselves as teachers. Through research, we know people are more likely to teach if they are being nominated by someone. So we implemented a feature where one can nominate others to teach a class:

Then the challenge becomes, how do we translate all those insights into the product? How do we turn something so human into a digital experience? These are all questions our team strives to answer everyday so we can build something desirable, beautiful, and delightful.

Designing with, not for
We are a proponent of co-design. When trying to understand if we are meeting users’ wants and needs, we don’t do A/B testing nor look at heat maps. We go to where people work and play, we hang out and we observe. Often times, people might not be able to articulate their experiences in a way that points to an immediate solution—the research techniques we use and the synthesis is up to us as designers, but these ongoing dialogues build trust, empathy, and most importantly, the right product for the right people.

For example, when designing a peer education program at Green Doors, we realized early on that—although the residents had access to computers and although computer literacy was an important goal for the organization—the residents simply didn’t communicate with each other online (duh-they live right next door to each other)! Our role then shifted to being the facilitator and translator, challenging and collaborating with residents and staff through a series of work sessions to extract insights and stories from them.

All that resulted in “HourSchool on paper”: hand-drawn flier, sign up sheets on bulletin board, and nomination postcards that you can slip under someone’s door. The end goal is to design something that the community finds relevant, feels ownership in, and eventually can’t imagine life without. By translating needs into action, we have co-designed a solution at Green Doors that creates engagement and excitement through fun classes and continual knowledge sharing with each other.

Designing for Wicked Problems
Every designer bears responsibility for the consequences of their design - but some consequences are more detrimental than others. For instance, screwing up when designing for a photo-sharing app is different from screwing up when designing for a foster care agency. Staying lean and working iteratively still applies, but not in the same way. In Collective Invention’s “Detailed Plan for NOCCA’s Future”, they described the difference between random experimentation and thoughtful iterative improvement:

We recognize that the language of ‘prototyping’ is tricky when used in the context of education. To some it implies random experimentation, that children’s educations will be put at risk. This plan, however, describes a rigorous learning process that requires that multiple iterations take place before we ever enter a classroom. Our job is to ensure that as many problems have been worked out in advance of student interaction as possible. That means that each time we prototype a new program or class we’ll need to invent a mechanism for trial and error that is cost-effective, relevant to the context and able to yield the greatest insight possible by the time we begin interacting with students.

In order to design, we have to gather data and stories. Again, doing research for how people commute is different from doing research on why someone is homeless. Kat Davis, alumni of Austin Center for Design and now an interaction designer at frog, wrote about ethical challenges after her research last year:

I realized that I was not probing into someone’s life habits but into someone’s life. The stories people told me were so personal. Some people refused to answer my questions. With those who answered, sometimes I probed too far. Other times people opened up too much and told me things I didn’t know how to respond to. Good researchers can lead a conversation toward information they want to learn about, but I often found myself just simply listening. I felt as though I constantly walked a fine line between what I was supposed to be doing as a researcher and what I felt I should do as a compassionate human being. At times, I felt more like a counselor and less like a researcher, giving out hugs instead of business cards. Other times, I simply didn’t know how to respond, with my hands awkwardly in my pockets.

Are there situations where a designer should just walk away? Is it okay for a designer to make physical contact with a participant? Is there an ethical responsibility to share information with authorities if the participant talks about law-breaking activity? There must be a certain amount of trust between the designer and participant, but how far does this trust extend?

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Document Everything, Design Publicly

We don’t have all the answers, but as we work and design for social impact, we will share our learnings and opinions with you. Christina Tran, our program design lead, will be leading this conversation, drawing on her rich experiences, sharing our values at HourSchool, and curating other work in the field.

If you work in the fields of design, education, and/or social innovation, join us in this conversation. We look forward to hearing about your experiences. And if your organization is looking for facilitated program design and like what we offer, we’d love to talk to you. Send us a note.

Have a good day!

- Ruby (@rubyku)

Local Spotlight: Urban Roots

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 09:38:59 -0500

One of the great things about starting HourSchool is all of the incredible people and organizations we get to interact with along the way.

Over the past few months it became very apparent that we needed a way to capture and share some of these conversations in order to make public our larger conversation about approaches to learning and knowledge sharing. So, we’re starting the “Local Spotlight” series.

Every other week we’ll interview someone whom we’ve met along the way,ask them some variation of the following set of questions to showcase their approach to education, and to share some of their success stories.

1. Who are you and what does your organization do?

2. What makes it unique in the education, training, and or knowledge sharing space?

3. Can you share a success story with us, and tell us what your favorite part of that story is?

4. What does that story, or experience, tell you about successful teaching, learning, and or knowledge sharing?

We’re really excited to share these stories we’ve been hearing along the way.

For the first interview in this series we sat down with Leigh Gamon-Jones from Urban Roots, a nonprofit based here in Austin, TX.

“Urban Roots uses sustainable agriculture to transform the lives of young people and increase the access to healthy food in Austin”

Check out the first video below!

Thanks so much to Leigh, and to Urban Roots for taking the time to chat with us. Make sure to check out their website www.urbanrootsatx.org for more great stories about what they do.

If you know of any cool companies educating people in unique ways, send us a note, we’d love to meet them!

Cheers,

The HourSchool team.