Approach (to Design, User Research, and Metrics)

Notes of the Human Systems Curriculum Project Weekend with Marina Grün, Anne-Lorraine Selke, and Joe Edelman.

PRINCIPLES

Work towards meaningful experience. When we design something, we always have the chance to make a space for meaningful experience — both for those who use what we design and for us, the creators. But if we don’t focus on what’s meaningful, we will likely miss this opportunity.

We work towards creating meaningful experiences ...

1. By considering our project as a practice space for the values we share with those who will use our project—values which will work for them, values for which we think practices spaces (in the contexts of the project) are rare.
2. By working only on what’s of pressing relevance w/r/t our own lives. We are all here to fulfill deep missions in our lives, and that this project may or may not be that mission. So long as we work together, or decide we won’t, we are always supporting each others’ highest purpose. (We acknowledge that a loss of meaning is an ever present danger in work. This is why we have the LoM fire alarm.)
3. By agreeing as a team on the value of creating what we create together. We should be working on something that expresses our values, that has pressing relevance for our own lives. If this project does not do this, we should move on to something else that does (or retreat to find out what might). (This is why we use the flower diagram and the airlock.)
4. By working as our full and experimental selves. Supporting each others’ highest purpose sometimes means disappointing and confusing each other. (This is why we work out of character, why we do the “it would have been enough” feedback, and why we have the alt lifestream vault.)

BEFORE WE BEGIN

Achieve Basic Literacy w/r/t Values & Practice Spaces

1. What are values?

• Values: The ideas a person has about how they want to live, especially ideas about what kinds of relationships and what kinds of actions are of lasting importance in their life.

IDEAS WE HAVE

1. Share the values that would guide each of you in a certain situation (e.g. homeless approach)
2. Marina’s game of rapid approaches from team members
3. Out of Character / Questionable Virtues
4. Looking at a big list of values
5. Marina’s physical tour of values