Last time we met, I promised to tell you all about the second kind of design jam, so here we go!

Design Jams, Part 2

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So I’ve Got This All This Great Data and Scholarly Writing About My Specialty, And I Want To Do New Things With It, But I’m Not Sure What That Might Be Or What’s Possible

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The Focused One

If you’ve got a project that you’ve been working on for a while, and a set of data that’s answered the questions you initially set out to answer, but you’d like to bounce some ideas around about how you might explore answering new questions or presenting the results of your scholarship in new and exciting ways, have we got the design jam for you!

This kind of design jam is really about looking at your data in new ways, exploring new questions to ask of it, and designing refreshed visualization and presentation of your scholarship, so it’s a much more focused consultation.

So what do we need from someone who wants to do this kind of design jam with us and how should you prepare? What a great question, I’m so glad you asked. What do you want to communicate about your work? And who’s your audience? Have you seen other websites or data visualizations that you liked, and if so, what was it that sparked your interest?

Once again, you need to give some thoughts to the existing constraints on this research. What’s your timeframe for completing this work? Is there additional data that you need to collect and analyze? What sort of budget are you looking at for producing the end results? Any other constraints? If you’re coming to us, there’s assuredly a digital component, and we can help you better understand the technology, the costs, and how long the work is likely to take.

We’ll schedule a meeting for you with a Scholars’ Lab expert or two who have the expertise you need given the type of data you’re working with, maybe the librarian who specializes in your discipline, and potentially, experts from another of the Library’s technology units with skills we don’t have in the Lab.

The overall goal of a focused design jam is to come out of it with a project plan for visualizing, or re-visualizing scholarly work. Sometimes that’s a plan for the scholar/researcher to do the work themselves, sometimes the end product is a list of requirements that will feed into a grant application, including both technical specs and budgeting needs, and then sometimes what’s revealed in the consultation is fresh data gathering so that new questions can be asked of the data. Like everything we do in the Lab, this variety of design jam is meant to be an iterative process: consultation to work iteration to results review to refined work iteration.

So what would an agenda for this kind of design jam look like? You’re full of great questions! Here’s a sample agenda:

• Gathering
• Introductions all around
• Scholar introduces their work, shows current digital outputs and visualizations, if any
• Chat about adjacent projects and projects that you admire

The goal for a meeting of this type is a full understanding of the new questions you want to ask of your data, and your new ideas about how to present the results of those questions to your chosen audience(s), so that we can assist you in generating an initial workplan, and potentially provide you with the information you need to create a grant application to provide the funding to collect any new data required and to create the new digital products.

Sound interesting? Have some cool scholarship that you’d like to look at with fresh eyes, or communicate about in new ways or for new audiences? Please contact us! We’d love to chat with you about your ideas!

At a consultation in the Lab a couple of weeks ago, the group we were chatting with had never heard the term “design jam” before, so I thought I’d get some ideas into a couple of blog posts, in case there are others who’ve never encountered this way of working before.

So what the heck is a design jam?

Design Jams, Part 1

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So I’ve Got This Great Idea, But I Don’t Really Know Exactly What I Can Do With It or How To Get Started, and Other Sundry Considerations

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The Big One

Design jams are group brainstorming and idea generation sessions that are intended to solve design problems by generating a wide set of possible interventions. So, think of it like getting about 1000 feet up above the research you want to do with a bunch of smart, experienced people, and just riffing on ideas for a while. By going broad before you try to go deep, you can help to insure that you’re asking the actual question you want to ask (aka, the one that actually interests you and pushes your research in the direction you most want it to go), that you’ve got the right data collection approach to get what you need in order to generate the answers you’re seeking, and that you can creatively approach presenting those answers to your intended audiences in ways that help them deepen their understanding of your research.

Hang on! Don’t run! Design jams are fun! I promise. Really.

So how do we do this kind of design jam in the Scholars’ Lab? I’m so glad you asked!

You take one or more scholars and/or researchers who have a project idea, add in several Scholars’ Lab staff members with varying education, training, and practical experience, sprinkle over subject specialist librarians from the appropriate disciplines, technical specialists from other units in the Library whose perspectives and input will be needed and valuable to the scholar/researcher, a large whiteboard with a variety of markers, and about 1-2 hours time.

Note: You remember the meeting facilitation for beginners post that Brandon and I posted a couple of years ago? Yeah, for a design jam, throw most of that out. The last thing you want for a “big” design jam is a really rigid agenda. You do want an agenda, but not one that’s timeboxed in the same way a regular staff or project meeting is timeboxed. That’s also why a design jam is generally longer than a regular project meeting, too.

So what do we need from someone who wants to do this kind of design jam with us? You have to have a project idea that’s got enough breadth and depth for the meeting to be generative. So if you’re refining ideas that you’ve already spent a lot of time researching and writing about, or if you want to use the results of an existing body of research to create a digital presentation of its data, it’s unlikely that this variety of design jam will be required. (More about this in the next post in this series. Coming soon to a Scholars’ Lab blog near you!)

But if you’re looking at new projects, projects that connect to your existing work in new ways or at new depth, it’s likely that a “big” design jam could be helpful in getting focused and aiming your work in the right direction.

How should you prepare? That’s another great question, I’m so glad you asked. You need to have done some basic research into the overall scholarly landscape in which your project will exist. Who else is out there doing work and asking questions that are similar? Whose project in their own discipline, or topics within your discipline, made you wonder how similar techniques would benefit your own research? What tools are being used to gather and process the data required, what technical skill sets are needed, and which of those do you already possess or want to acquire, or have available funds to pay someone to do?

Finally, you need to give some thoughts to the existing constraints on this research. What’s your timeframe for completing your project? What sort of budget are you looking at for doing the research and then producing the end results? (If you’re coming to us, there’s assuredly a digital component to the data gathering, and likely to those end results, and we can help you better understand how long processes are likely to take.)

Here’s the basic flow, which is the only agenda that we’re likely to use:

• Gathering
• Introductions all around
• Project idea summary from the scholar
• Questions from us about the landscape of scholarship, and tools and techniques, if known, any known constraints, and desired audience for the products of your research
• Open ended questions from us about the scope of your work and the vision you have for any end products
• Brainstorming and gathering ideas that the group comes up with about refinements to the research question, sources for data gathering, potential tools and techniques, analysis ideas, presentation opportunities

The overall goal of the jam is to come out of it with a project idea with which a first iteration could be built. What happens if you apply these data collection, data cleaning, and data analysis tools?¹ What research questions can you actually answer with those results? Is that actually the question you wanted to ask and answer? What can you build from those answers to communicate your scholarship to your intended audience?

So the product of the jam is an initial project plan, which can be refined after an initial small iteration into the final project plan that will allow you to do the scholarship you most want to do. Once that short iteration is complete, we can help you refine the workflows, evaluate the tools you tried out, and then write a new project plan.

The goal overall for the second pass at data gathering and analysis is to set you up to actually do the project you want to do, and hopefully, get to a place where you have proof of concept that will feed into a grant proposal, should you find you wish to pursue this scholarship further.

Sound interesting? Did you just realize that you’ve got just this kind of idea kicking around, but didn’t know where to start planning? Please contact us! We’d love to chat with you about your ideas!