Jo’s consultancy with the project ended in October, but the next meeting with my partners was pushed into November. This meeting was a chance to present what Jo and I had come up with, get feedback and do some planning together. I had blogged about some of the progress we had been making, but I had not had the chance to speak with my partners about them. So in addition to sharing our mock-up design drafts, I also needed to share that we should do some user research and that I had decided I should be willing to scrap the designs if we had ended up in a situation where we were working on my rather than our ideas. This was supposed to be a project about working together in new ways – not about me using my partners to create a digital product I thought would be useful.

Having spent some time catching up and communicating the concept of paper prototyping, I began by presenting the personas and scenarios I’d fleshed out for our users. This caused some alarm in the group because it was felt we had already dealt with this – we had discussed personas way back in our first meeting together in July. The expectation was that we had moved on from this and would now be looking at draft designs. While assuring my partners that we did have something for them to look at did calm these concerns, the momentary panic reminded me of the expectation of progress. My partners are investing time and energy in the project and want to see something come of it. For me, the process of working together may be what is the most important, because that is the focus of my research, but for my partners, perhaps not surprisingly, it seems to be more about the product.

Going over the mockups I had prepared proved a really useful exercise. Having something tangible as a reference, however rudimentary, proved really helpful for discussing expectations of what the platform would look like and how it would function. One of the things I really wanted was to provide users with tools to intuitively explore uploaded content. One of my pet peeves problems with similar platforms like Know Your Place, is that they rely exclusively on a pin-on-map interface. It is really useful for professionals doing desk-based impact assessments, but not that great if you just want to explore.
I played around with a couple of visualisations that I’ve copied in above. The right half is a network matrix that attempts to show how different entities on the site are linked. Seeing it laid out in this way let my partners engage directly with the design process and express that this feature was confusing and unhelpful. It initiated a really helpful conversation of what we want and don’t want this platform to be like. The left half is an attempt to give an overview of what people find important about a place. It is a way of organising information that is adapted from Janet Stephenson’s Cultural Values Model for landscapes. I had been very unsure about including it, but I left it in because I felt very strongly that we needed a way of communicating what is there at a glance. While I think the headings need more work, they get at the fact that places are important because of what is there, physically, the things that go on there and because of the things we know, remember or believe about a place. In the end, this feature was one of the ones my partners were the most positive about.

From the beginning, the idea behind this digital tool has been that people should be able to share what they consider their heritage to be and explain why it is important to them. As a result, it is a platform for capturing and communicating opinions about heritage. That said, an early concern raised by my partners was that the platform should aim to impact how people interact with heritage in person, not just online. There has also been a concern about the role of fact or truth as opposed to opinion. Seeing what the platform might look like, opened up the possibility for clearer conversations about expectations of the type of information that would be available on the site. While I’ve been quite stuck on the point that I believe that heritage is mostly about opinions, the point was raised that we want people to be able to direct users to places where they can learn more – like other websites, libraries and museums. Web addresses and opening times for institutions like these are arguably facts not opinions and a clear desire for there to be room for this kind of information on the site was expressed. In the current context of threats of closures, encouraging the use of cultural institutions was seen as especially important.

As I’d mentioned in my previous blog post, I was increasingly concerned that this co-design project was not achieving what I had hoped. I had hoped we would be designing together, but recently it had felt that my partners were simply a sounding board – consultants rather than partners – for my research project. I was concerned that I was using them to push my agenda and that this project was turning into the kind of participatory project I am critical of. As a result, I felt it was important to mention that if my partners did not think this was a worthwhile project and that we should be designing something else together, we could scrap all these ideas and work on something they thought was more worthwhile. This idea that we would throw away all the work we had already done was met with dismay. It was also mentioned that ‘this is your project’ (my PhD). I really can’t blame anyone from reacting in this way, but it did add to my concerns. I set out to sustain community heritage groups through co-design. That was what my partners signed up to be part of. I am committed to seeing this co-design project through and I still think we can come up with a really useful product, but I had hoped we would end up truly designing together. This may have been unrealistic. These kinds of expectations should obviously be discussed at the beginning of a project, but back then I don’t think any of us thought we would be making mock-ups like these ourselves. Now it has taken me back to considering roles and responsibilities. I think it’s great that we can take more control over the design process, but it is time-consuming, especially in the beginning. It raises new requirements and introduces expectations we had not discussed. Ultimately, it brings me back to considering what I should expect of my partners and what they should expect of me. Which kinds of participation are useful, reasonable and realistic – and in which contexts?

Central co-design session at Council for British Archaeology offices 3rd July 2016 with representatives from Pontefract Civic Society, Bridlington Civic Society and Friends of the Chalk Tower (Flamborough). Meghan Dennis joined us as a consultant at the end of the day.

Things we hoped to get out of the day and from working together:

• Engaging younger people
• Learn from experienced groups
• How digital tools can help struggling towns interested in heritage
• Find ways to let people interact with their towns – not everyone has time to attend meetings
• To help ensure that Civic Societies speak for people
• To build up around local decision making
• To break out of insular groups and committee meetings – to talk to other people, not just ourselves as first step to attracting new members
• Embrace social media in an effort to reach new audiences
• Link with other groups

Then a moment of bonding over hatred of litter ++: it was becoming clear that this exercise of sharing hopes and expectations was helping connect individuals from different groups

• To create a tool that shares information and connections to people – a place that points people in direction of where (or to whom) to go for more information
• Again, to build consensus, or at least the sense of speaking on behalf of more people

Early expectations for what we are co-designing:

• Must accommodate culture/nature, sea/land, practices/relationships/people/etc. not just monuments
• Must accept images and video, not just text
• Noted concern about sharing/pooling ignorance
• It must be simple to register
• Easy to navigate and use
• Give near instant gratification
• Intuitive search function that gives desired results
• No initial requirement to agree to conditions – puts people off
• Pictures to draw you in
• Remember that some people have slow computers and internet connections
• Let you use it before registering etc. and have functionality to draft and then share/publish as distinct phases.

The full list of requirements, intended users, etc. have been compiled and organised in a design brief draft document which is attached. It was clear that having a range of people present who were drawing on their own personal experiences and frustrations with websites was highlighting a range of different issues – making a case for co-design with regard to useful products.

We talked specifically about our users and did an exercise creating personas. While this got us thinking, I think the exercise should have been introduced and explained better to be more useful. Despite this, it got us thinking about who we are designing for and the implications of this. By the end of the day, it was very clear to me that we were designing for two different types of people, broadly speaking: those who want to share and contribute views, and those who want to use these views. In the room, we represented a range of different people who wanted to use views, but we need to be creative about how to attract people to the platform and make them want to share, contribute and interact with personal identifications and interpretations about heritage. While my focus coming in had been on the analytical back-end, or how we could use contributed data (and designing a system that made access and analysis simple), by the end it was clear to me that where we really need to focus is in making it appealing and intuitive to use on a casual basis.

Bringing Meghan in was very useful, initially because it forced us to pull all the ideas we had brought up together so we had something to present. There seemed to be a general consensus that what I (assisted by the group) presented to Meghan was a fair reflection of our discussions. Gratifyingly, it seemed our presentation was clear – when Meghan delivered a summary of what she understood our wants to be, the response was overwhelmingly positive; it felt as though Meghan had described what we wanted better than we had been able to ourselves. Especially the expression “emotional response” struck a chord – this is what we want people to express: their emotional responses to places and use this as a way to identify “heritage”. This led to the idea that what our platform will do is “add colour to black and white” descriptions of heritage, and about moving forward, about how we want something to be and how we want to use something. A number of other points were sparked:

• We need a clear design to ensure that people can do what they want – useful from first visit
• Instant gratification looks different to different people
• We need to understand how people use social media, not just that they do
• Information should be open – access should not be restricted
• Let people set filters rather than have filters be imposed

This is only a very partial account of the meeting, which lasted four hours. Some of my initial reflections on the meeting are below:

I think the meeting achieved introducing participants to other groups and creating ties – at times it was a challenge to keep us on track due to so many other connections and useful conversations being initiated, but this was part of the point of the meeting. There was not enough time to work through the design process together – there was definitely not enough time to work through the process together and make room for creating connections between people and groups. For me, this has re-emphasised the importance of building in more time throughout the process, as these connections that are formed and the ideas, skills and knowledge that are shared during the process are a central part of the reason for choosing collaborative design.

I was reminded again how much expertise there is within this group, which makes me reflect on my own role. I was very grateful to the response at the end, when I re-iterated that the work this summer is partly about learning how to work together, about developing a way of working that builds capacity and sustainability in participating groups. It is clear that those participating are as interested in facilitating sustainability and connections between groups as I am – again, this leads me to reflect on my role in this process.

As we concluded the meeting, it was perfectly clear to everyone (I hope) that we had only just begun the co-design process. We had really just started formulating what we wanted to create together. Again, this emphasises the need to resist the temptation to rush the process: if we want to reap the benefits of everyone’s input, we must make time for ideas to be formulated, shared, captured and integrated.

While I think the participating groups already had many characteristics that underpin capacity and resilience (or if you like, sustainability), I like to think that our work together has been productive in facilitating sustainability already. We have linked groups and people, linked to a supporting organisation (the CBA), secured grants to make our collaborative work possible, shared ideas and knowledge – and we are working toward a common goal. I hope that the digital design work we do together will just be one part of the many activities we are inspired to initiate by working together toward fostering resilience, diversity, vibrancy and relevance in groups of people who want to take care of their local heritage.