An Evaluation of Tool no. 90

The Return Beat

What Were the Research Questions?

  • How do we get teams to work together towards a common goal more swiftly?
  • How best can a metadesign tool to promote entrainment: -

a) foster synergy in a multi-disciplinary team?
b) move the participants from ME to WE?
c) enhance a common culture for co-designing?

  • How does a shared set of values created through the team use of entrainment affect team bonding?
  • With this tool we sought to synchronise people through a phenomenon called entrainment.

Keyword:entrainment can be further explained thus:

  • Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) noticed how adjacent clocks synchronised.
  • In a chemical form, this phenomenon can also occur in women's menstrual cycles where two or more women living together may experience menstrual synchronisation. This is said to be due to female pheromones.

How Successful / Effective Was this Tool?

  • This tool worked well in promoting synergy according to the feedback received.
  • According to Olu both teams had a completely different feel. Team two, who came to the tool after the storytelling tool, were more cerebral and harder to synchronise initially. However, the rhythms that they achieved at the end of the session were far more complex than those achieved by team one. This did not mean that one team was ''better' than the other. Olu merely noticed a difference in the synchronicity of each team. (This was recorded by the note taker for team 2, Julia, in a conversation over lunch with Olu directly after the tool had been used on both teams.)
  • According to the note taker for team two synergy was actively and physically captured.
  • According to the note taker for team two and from Olu's recollections, at the end of the session team two become more than the sum of its parts.

Particular questions:

  • How did the participants experience the tools?
  • In the transcriptions Colm Lally (Team 1) said, "I was intrigued by the drumming one {a} it was nice to clap in a rhythm! And it was amazing to see how it worked out so quickly."
  • In the transcriptions, Michaela Magas (team 2) said: "One thing a lot of people commented on what that the rhythms tool {a} was quite surprising because we didn’t expect it. I believe it was designed to kick things off with group one, but as group two got as a second exercise. It was very surprising because the first thing we did was fairly straight forward. Sort of brainstorming that one would do in a group was fairly predictable. So we expected more things that, were useful or predictable, and so that (rhythms tool) really broke it up. I think creative people, in my experience, they tend to become more passive when they expect of predict something to happen, and therefore they creatively engage less. When they are surprised by a method being imposed on them, they’ve been made to think in a different way, or use a different part of their creativity, they open up, they have to engage. They then respond better. That probably happened by accident, because I think it was designed to relax people at the beginning, and get them to thinking later. But I think it was actually really good for us because it happened in reverse and it created an element of surprise, breaking up a standard way of thinking."
  • In the transcriptions Nic Hughs (team 2) said: "One was Olu’s one {a} as he was talking about inhabiting the beat, which triggered of something I had being thinking a lot about whether its possible to inhabiting technically inhospitable places with a notion of can typography be a machine to live in."
  • In the transcriptions Malcolm Evans said, "Olu’s African drumming session {a} was absolutely amazing, putting you in a different frame of mind and forming the group. The group I remember very much, any time I bump into anyone from that group is going to be an enormous bond that’s going to reassert its self. Because the process and the people in terms of forming the group and how we worked together, were phenomenal."
  • What was the level of exchange between the participants? (On a continuum from data to wisdom)
  • How well did the tool work in practical terms?
    (E.g. were the resources appropriate, the right amount of time allocated)
  • How well did the tool meet its particular brief/s? (I.e. what we say that it can achieve on the wiki)
  • How did the tool operate in terms of divergent and convergent processes?
  • Which cognitive styles did the tool draw out?
  • How well did the tool engage all participants?
  • What were the similarities and differences in how the tool worked between the two teams?
    • (This may be difficult because of the level of information for Team 1)
  • What were the reasons behind the similarities and differences respectively?
  • To what extent was the tool accessible, usable, useful in the context of the work, and applicable externally, i.e. portable?
  • To what extent did the tool embody, promote, bring out the values implied by sustainability
    (e.g. environmental and ethical soundness)
  • What did the tool bring to meta-design?

Emergent themes:

  • What other insights did the evaluation of the tool generate?

Research questions for the whole event

  • How well did the tools work as a sequence?
  • What was their relative significance and role in the workshop as a whole?
  • What did the tools bring to metadesign?
  • And lots more

Emerging themes:

  • What other insights did the evaluation of the workshop generate?

Division of the analysis work

Data to be considered

  • A) Transcriptions from follow up interviews
  • B) Scribes' Notes
  • C) Data ports from the days (all drawing and writing that the participants produced in the respective activities)
  • D) Notes from us processing the days through the Story-telling tool.
  • E) Film footage (only to be used as secondary data, when we identify an ‘itchy’ patch to dig deeper into)

[|DOWNLOAD The EndNote film archive details]

Analysis process

Step 1 - All data in one place

Step 2 - Data presentation

    • Pull together the data from the various sources into one document and organise in appropriate categories.
    • This can mean putting together everything that has been said about the particular tool.
      (In the scribes’ notes, in the interview transcripts.) **Make sure you include a reference, ideally person, page number, date.
      Some references will be straightforward whereas other are more subtle.

Step 3 - Data evaluation

  • Research questions to answer
    • Overarching question:
    • How successful was the tool in terms of prompting synergy? (See suggested template below from Julia's definitions.)

Particular questions:

First impressions
How did the participants experience the tool?
How did we experience working with the tool?

Process
How well did the tool work in practical terms? (E.g. were the space and resources appropriate, the right amount of time allocated)
How well did the tool meet its particular brief/s? (I.e. what we say that it can achieve on the wiki)
How did the tool operate in terms of divergent and convergent processes?
To what extent was the tool accessible, usable, useful in the context of the work, and applicable externally, portable?

Learning and exchange
Which cognitive styles did the tool draw out?
What was the level of exchange between the participants?

Group dynamics
How well did the tool engage all participants?
What were the similarities and differences in how the tool worked between the two teams?
What were the reasons behind the similarities and differences respectively?
Here it might be useful to cross-reference everybody’s experience of the tools. See tables above.
(By external commentator, I mean somebody else who sat in… Team 2 continues with participant 3 etc.)

Synergy
Levels (vertical) and modes (horizontal) of synergy

Metadesign

  • What did the tool bring to meta-design?
  • To what extent did the tool embody, promote, bring out the values implied by sustainability (e.g. environmental and ethical soundness)
  • We might use this model to process the data and write up the findings.

Emerging themes:

  • What other insights did the evaluation of the tool generate?
  • Draw out metadata – i.e. overarching themes from the findings as a whole.

Overview of whole event

  • Research questions to answer:
    • How well did the workshop manage to achieve synergy and how do we know?
    • How well did the tools work as a sequence?
    • And lots more

C.f. Ring of Fire model

Step 4 – Report

  • 3-4 pages per tool
  • Answers to research questions
  • Emerging themes
  • Key findings
  • Recommendations

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return / go to m21 meetings AGENDAS
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