This document discusses making research visible, tangible, and experiential beyond just text. It suggests considering reading, viewing, listening, interacting, sensemaking, strangemaking, mapping, timing, feedback, teaching, pattern making, innovation, and managing attention when planning a major research project. Various visual and design-based research methods are outlined, including visual thinking, diagrams, images, objects, environments, dialogue, experience design, and time-based media. It emphasizes the importance of visual sensemaking and strangemaking to understand complex situations.

1. Beyond Text: Making Research Visible, Tangible, Experiential
Beyond Text: Making Research Visible,
Tangible, Experiential
Ideas for candidates, MDes in Strategic Foresight and Innovation
February 2014
Greg Van Alstyne, Associate Professor, OCAD University
Director of Research, Strategic Innovation Lab (sLab)
Anthropometric drawing, Henry Dreyfuss Associates
c. 1960
Greg Van Alstyne
Strategic Innovation Lab

2. Planning your Major Research Project?
Consider:
Reading + viewing + listening + interacting
Sensemaking + strangemaking
Mapping + spacing
Timing + telling
Feeding back + feeding forward
Learning + teaching
Pattern making + pattern breaking
Inventing + innovation
Changing minds + changing the world
Attracting + managing attention
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulwatson/7484420/

3. Beyond Text: Making Research Visible, Tangible, Experiential
we
are
here
Greg Van Alstyne
Strategic Innovation Lab
OCAD Thyssen, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Malene
MaleneUniversity, Toronto, Canada

4. Beyond Text: Making Research Visible, Tangible, Experiential
Research through design (Frayling, 1993)
Design-based research creation may include:
Visual thinking
Mapping, diagramming
Tangible futures (images, objects, environments)
Design with dialogue
Service design
Communication design
Publication design (books, posters etc.)
Time-based media (video, interaction)
Experience design
Greg Van Alstyne
Strategic Innovation Lab

5. Design is increasingly
about qualities of experience,
psychology, ergonomics, perception,
tactility, sensuality,
emotion and flow.
Yet time is increasingly scarce.
So our economies are becoming increasingly centred around
ATTENTION

6. Beyond Text: Making Research Visible, Tangible, Experiential
Innovating (sLab-SFI foresight model)
futures
thinking
business
thinking
systems thinking
+ visual thinking
design
thinking
Greg Van Alstyne
Strategic Innovation Lab

7. Sensing (How do we experience the world?)
Model of William Penfield’s Homunculus
1993

8. Beyond Text: Making Research Visible, Tangible, Experiential
Sensemaking (van Patter+Pastor, Humantific)
“Visual SenseMaking is the activity of
making sense of ambiguous complex situations
through visual methods and tools including words,
images, drawings, diagrams, charts, graphs, etc.
This involves not only visual thinking, but
creating visual ordering systems.”
Greg Van Alstyne
Strategic Innovation Lab

9. Sensemaking (Peter H. Jones)
Structured
Dialogic Design
Strategic
Charettes
Scenario building
Visual
Sensemaking
Town Hall sessions
Simplex
Future Search
Democratic
World Café
Open Space
Socratic inquiry
Generative
Nominal Group
Technique
User co-design
Brainstorming
Open
Guided
Structured

10. Beyond Text: Making Research Visible, Tangible, Experiential
Strangemaking
Design thinking is about sensemaking, right?
Designers excel at training, practicing, and
theorizing how to make sense of complex or
ambiguous situations and information.
Still, sometimes what we need is not sensemaking.
Sometimes what we need is strangemaking.
Proponents of this idea include C.W. Mills (1959),
Stewart Brand, Noah Raford, Greg Van Alstyne
Greg Van Alstyne
Strategic Innovation Lab

11. Beyond Text: Making Research Visible, Tangible, Experiential
SuperStudio, c. 1969
Greg Van Alstyne
Strategic Innovation Lab

12. Timing
Greg Van Alstyne, Happy Solstice
Quicktime animation, 1993

13. Beyond Text: Making Research Visible, Tangible, Experiential
Spatializing
Massive Change Image Economies gallery, 2005
Greg Van Alstyne, Chris Bahry, Ilene Solomon with Bruce Mau and the Institute without Boundaries,
Greg Van Alstyne
Strategic Innovation Lab
Visit VR

14. Mapping
“Patterns
cannot be
weighed or
measured;
they must
be mapped”
– Fritjof Capra
Gabe Sawhney
SFI Independent Study with Greg Van Alstyne

15. Styling
Philip Rae, DSK, 2005
Typeface Design studio, OCAD University

16. Gesturing
The Un-Private House interactive installations
Terrence Riley, Andrew Davies, Greg Van Alstyne, Paul Niebuhr (MoMA) and Neil Gershenfeld et al. (MIT Media Lab) 1999

17. Storytelling
MC Market Economies “DeSoto” film
Tobias Lau, Bruce Mau, Greg Van Alstyne, Daniel Wigdor, 2005

18. Feeding back
McKim, R.H. (1972). Experiences in visual thinking. Monterey, Calif.: Brooks/Cole Pub. Co.

19. TransText
McKim, R.H. (1972). Experiences in visual thinking. Monterey, Calif.: Brooks/Cole Pub. Co.
Greg Van Alstyne
Strategic Innovation Lab

20. Drawing conclusions
Visual thinking is as innately human as art itself.
To solve our most difficult challenges, we’ll need
to leverage this ancient skill in new ways.
Upper Paleolithic art in Lascaux Cave, >15,000 BCE. Photo Sisse Brimberg/National Geographic

21. Beyond Text: Making Research Visible, Tangible, Experiential
Many thanks.
Greg Van Alstyne
gvanalstyne@faculty.ocadu.ca
Strategic Innovation Lab (sLab)
http://slab.ocad.ca
Greg Van Alstyne
Strategic Innovation Lab