5. Design Research

Task: Conduct more design-centred research based on what we had learned so far

Methods: Workshop hosting, and brief writing

Team: Tanya Singh, Zuzana Galova, Roshni Suri

Timeframe: 25th September - 6th October

With the outcomes of our research, we were taken by four key ideas which we could pivot upon:

• Shame and isolation

• Lack of education

• Money is a tool

• Community + money.

These paired together set us on a path to write ourselves a brief we could then answer.

The brief writing material we used to support us. Image by Roshni Suri

Brief writing

We utilised the tools we had to write the briefs; in this case, it was all the previous briefs we’d worked on. Kindly compiled by the tutors on the Padlet, we used these as a basis to phrase the briefs together.

We created two briefs to begin working underneath:

• Problem: Money is losing value due to its inability to satisfy human needs and wants.

• Context: We live in a consumer capitalist society where the influx of capital expands the list of items we consider ’basic needs’ and deforms how we satisfy those needs.

• Task: Your task in this project is to examine, understand and manipulate the current perception of money as a transactional tool.

• Problem: Money influences emotions, social obligations and decisions beyond its capacity as a tool to satisfy human needs.

• Context: Money’s original role was to serve as a universal token of exchange. Its universality made us dependent on using it as a tool for assigning value and facilitating exchange. Its move from material to representational shifted the focus from “the things we need” to “the money as the symbol to afford things”. The focus on acquiring money over things enabled money to become desirable; this is no longer just a tool.

• Task: Your task in this project is to investigate the emotional and societal impact of ‘money as a symbol’ in this current era, to question the behaviours and interactions money elicits, and to transform the power dynamics of money and people.

We intended to hold a workshop for both briefs to explore our ideas about money as a tool or symbol. We also wanted to explore money's impact on people by creating a scenario where money was removed entirely and added back. This was where the barter exercise was born.

Workshop planning

Planning the workshop, we wanted to explore both emotional and societal impacts and interactions, so we decided upon three activities:

• The 'date your money' worksheet - to enable personification of money, so people would have a recognisable way to express their feelings about money

• The barter workshop - to test how the removal and reintroduction of money could affect people and interactions

• The 'minute-by-minute money decisions' exercise - to get people to help us identify leverage points, we would get all the interactions and thoughts throughout a standard day from people

Designing the worksheet was simple, as we were using a well-known dating app for the inspiration, however, working out the barter exercise was more complicated. Instead of figuring it out on paper, I took the role of host, and we ran the barter exercise ourselves.

I hosted four rounds of the exercise, each increasing in difficulty:

1. Specific item trade with no monetary value

2. Catergory-based exchanges, with no economic value

3. Catergory-based transactions, with values now shown

4. Hidden categories (new, not as previous) starting without money, added in part-way through.

Working out the barter framework. Video by author

This was successful as a test, as each round was productive whilst still challenging for the team. The feedback from the team acknowledged that the lack of and subsequent addition of money had entirely changed their priorities when bartering and that their personalities still significantly affected whether they were generous or mean with their trades.

Workshop testing

Having previously taken part in a course alumni’s workshop, we knew it was critical to test the workshop with others to identify and work out any issues before going live to external participants.

Eight members of MAUX kindly joined us for our trial workshop, undertaking the dating profile and barter exchange. As a team, we had given ourselves roles to undertake to ensure we captured as much data from the test, while ensuring the participants had a clear set of tasks. I was to host the workshop and lead the explaining and monitoring of the progress whilst the team were documenting with photos, videos and noting observations.

Below are the worksheets from the workshop:

Outcomes by the participants for the dating worksheet. Images by author

Below is a video snapshot of the barter exercise within the workshop:

Barter exchange. Video by Roshni Suri

Below is a timelapse of the whole workshop:

Timelapse of the workshop. Video by author

The workshop was a success, and our peers gave us valuable feedback, the most critical being to include narratives in our barter exchange to provide context as to why they were undertaking these activities.

Presentation and tutorial

As I couldn’t attend the presentation and tutorial, my team generously undertook these tasks. Our feedback included:

• How can we apply friction and trust in a situation with money?

• Who are we designing for? Where does it have to be? Where does money come into play? What are we interested in, and who do we want to deal with?

• What are we making? How is it different to marketplaces?

• Should we go back to religion? The microelement of religion applied to the microelement of money

• Where in the system are we trying to interject?

We were advised to summarise the project well, including the findings, and we should find a way to formulate the research question from there.

The feedback was fair; we knew that we lacked a research question. We hadn’t tried to convey a design idea, focusing on the workshop to guide us. However, with this postponed indefinitely, we needed to move on to ideating quickly.

Ideating

Whilst there were good reasons for the feedback, being faced with so many questions was tough. We reviewed our research insights to keep us grounded and conducted a session of Crazy 4’s to get some ideas flowing.

A series of sketches. Images by Roshni Suri, Zuzana Galova, Tanya Singh and author.

The most exciting ideas from our sketches were:

• a blockchain of life

• a stock market for life events.

They both focussed on bringing an aspect of money into people’s everyday lives and accentuating the influence of money from different perspectives.

There was a moment after ideating for many hours when the team felt demotivated and disengaged with the idea of money, resulting in a conversation around switching the topic. However, I didn’t think this would solve the problem, and I perceived that we were overly critical and generally frustrated. In hindsight, this was to be expected, as we had started with a vast topic; therefore, we were trying to produce ideas at a highly macro level.

Over the next few weeks, the direction of design ideas and outcomes took many turns. In the following three blogs, I will showcase our most successful ideas along the journey to our final outcome.