Assignments

Learning Tools and Activities

In addition to their core project, participants in this course will engage with a series of texts and activities, discuss them together, and share their reflections on the progress of their projects in the context of the history and theory of co-design. Learning activities may include:

Attending virtual community events
Working with community partner throughout the semester
Creative writing
Documenting and sharing the co-design process
Engaging with class texts and discussions
Creating paper prototypes, storyboards, and/or mockups
Conducting peer review of each others’ work
Completing multiple project iterations
Project presentation at the end of the term (public presentation by design teams, including community partners)
Project reflections

Project

The studio project is done in groups. Its deliverables include a project proposal, final presentation, and design book.

Journal

Over the course of the semester, students are expected to keep a journal in which they respond to the readings and the journal prompts.

Activities

Stakeholder Interview

Interview a community mentor in the class. Explore how and why they do what they do. Document. If the interview is conducted over Zoom, it might be productive to record it, so you don’t have to worry about taking notes during the interview (and you can pay attention to the person with whom you’re talking). Create 2–3 slides that contain summary and high level insights from the interview. This guide to empathy interviews is useful.

Problem Definition Worksheet

With your group, and factoring in input from interviews, answer the questions in the problem definition worksheet. Prepare a 5–7 minute presentation to share in class.

Problem Definition Worksheet (PDF) (DOCX)

Research Phase Results

Groups report on their interviews or data collection over the last few weeks. What methods did you use? Why did you use those methods?

Workshops

Workshops are in-class activities.

Memorandum of Understanding and Research Ethics Workshop

This interactive workshop will give you the opportunity to develop a memorandum of understanding and agreed-upon research ethics that works for your project.

Evaluation Workshop

Develop a realistic evaluation plan.

Paper Prototyping Workshop

Groups will make a paper prototype for testing, or, as is more likely, groups will make a digital paper prototype for remote testing.

User Testing Workshop

Design a user test that maximizes insights. Consider how many people you are testing with, how they provide feedback, and how you make sense of it.

The design journal is a documentation of your process, from thought to prototyping. It should include visual and verbal documentation of research, development, and thinking. Each week, you should respond to any reading, conversation, or other input, and reflect on how it has changed your perspective.

Weekly Prompts

Week 2: Write a personal reflection on the topic area you hope to address in this course. Why does it matter to you? Responses should be about 250 words in length.

Week 3: Where do you see opportunities to open up the design process? What needs to be changed or established?

Week 4: What does policy co-production entail? We’ve talked a lot about co-creation, participatory design, etc.. What are the additional complexities in working within a large institutional setting? And what are the complexities in dealing with policy, in particular? Do any of the readings provide clarity on this matter? Explain.

Week 5: Reflect on how your problem statement is addressing the overall challenge of the course: creating the capacity for local government to co-create policies with communities, especially those who have been historically marginalized or lack traditional power?

Week 6: Reflection on ideation process.

Week 7: How are you thinking about data in your project? Who is creating the data? Who can benefit from the data? How are you thinking about sharing your data?

Week 8: No prompt.

Week 9: Open topic based on readings and conversations.

Week 10: Open topic based on readings and conversations.

Week 11: Open topic based on readings and conversations.

The Civic Media Codesign Studio provides an opportunity for students interested in working with organizations to develop civic media projects that connect to grounded strategies for social transformation. We typically build teams with diverse skill-sets, including (for example) storytellers, designers, artists, media-makers, developers, researchers, and community organizers, and support the teams through an iterative project development process. We provide design teams with template working agreements, and strive to connect successful projects to the support networks they’ll need to grow and thrive. The co-design studio is also a space for shared inquiry into the theory, history, best practices, and critiques of various approaches to community inclusion in iterative stages of project ideation, design, implementation, testing, and evaluation.

Civic Media Codesign Studio approaches partners not as (solely) consumers, test subjects, or objects of study, and instead imagines them as co-designers and coauthors of shared knowledge, technologies, narratives, and social practices. Our goal is twofold: to develop an understanding of the ways that media and technology design processes often replicate existing power inequalities, while at the same time, moving beyond critique to travel as far down the path of community co-creation as possible, within the constraints of any given project.

Many projects continue at the People’s Collaborative Governance Network.

Project Proposal

This is a group assignment that will take the form of a written document and a presentation. The following sections should be included in the written document:

Introduction and problem statement (1–2 pages)
- This is a refining of the problem statement developed earlier.
Literature review (8–10 pages)
- Literature review should include a review of the academic literature on your topic. What disciplines are you exploring and why? This section should include 15–20 references with clear justification for their importance.
Design philosophy (2–3 pages)
- What approach is your group taking and why? How are you thinking about power in the design process? What design tradition are you most aligned with?
Proposed Methods (2–3 pages)
- Explain design methods you intend to use, for example, interviews, observations, workshops, creative sessions, etc. Provide as much detail as possible.
Limitations (2–3 pages)
- What are the limitations of your approach that you already know? Is it time, resources, knowledge gaps, networks, etc.?

In addition to the written report, presentations should be 6-8 minutes long. Pay attention to presentation style and visuals to maximize clarity of information.

Final Presentation

Prototypes should be documented in an appropriate form (website, video, etc.). Presentations should tell the story of the process and outcome.

Presentations should be approximately 10 minutes long.

Design Book

The design book is the documentation of your process from beginning to end. This can take the form of a website, a book, or anything else that represents your process. Design books should tell a compelling story about how you arrived at your completed prototype, and document all the important decision points along the way.

Components:

Project team - Description of your design team, including community mentors. Please include all other partners or contributors that have a stake in the project.

Revised Problem Statement - This is a revised version of the problem statement that was included in the project proposal. It should represent your final prototype.

Revised Literature Review - This is a streamlined version of the literature review that was included in the project proposal. The literature review should be revised and shortened to match your new problem statement.

Process Documentation - Explain your thought process, from early stage thinking to final prototype. Tell a story around your major decision points. Where did your project pivot? What was the reason? Did new input inform choices? Make sure to include relevant mural boards or any other visual documentation you have.

Assessment - How well do you think your prototype works? Why do you think it would work or why won’t it work? What’s your evidence? Have you developed an evaluative framework to understand possible impacts? If resources were not a factor, what would you want to see happen next?

Reflection - Each group member contributes a 2–3 page reflection on the process. Explain what you did, what went well, what could have gone better.

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Civic Media Codesign Studio