Design and Design Thinking has been business and management for some time, with influential thinkers like Roger Martin at Harvard, and Tim Brown of IDEO promoting the approach as a way to address complex problems in the public and the private sector (Brown and Martin 2015). Part of the interest relates to the way design tools have been used in the digital economy to create artefacts and systems, the success of these things leading to the sense that the design is an approach to problem solving that can be applied in a number of contexts. This paper is an attempt to make sense of design based approaches as a research tool. It is based on my own interest in, and experience of, using these approaches in work with Third Sector organisations as they explore and develop their engagement with the digital world. Influenced by Dorst and Cross (2001) my own work places the focus on the organisation, and on how values are articulated, explored, contested and narrated through design, production and use of digital media. Even a simplistic account of design practice recognises it as a creative inquiry. However, in order to develop a more sophisticated understanding of design practice as research practice there is a need to look at the mode of inquiries used within design. In particular, what kinds of questions can design based approaches address. The paper will report on the insights that a design approach to action research can bring by focussing on Voluntary Organisations and value.

1. Design as a Way of Knowing
Ronald Macintyre
@roughbounds
Cite as: Macintyre R. (2018) Design as a Way of Knowing, Qualitative Research in
Management: Praxis and Performance in Research, Albuquerque, New Mexico,
27th-29th of March 2018, CC BY SA 4.0

2. Structure
• Design as Practice
• From Research into Design to Design as Research
• Value and Design Based Approaches
• The Reality of Design Work with Volunteer Scotland
• Conclusion

3. DESIGN AS PRACTICE

4. OpenLearn
Source: Patrina Law (Head of Free Learning) The Open University, “10 Years of OpenLearn”, April 2016

5. What do we mean by OEP?
We think of Open Educational Practices as
those educational practices that are
concerned with and promote equity and
openness. Our understanding of ‘open’ builds
on the freedoms associated with “the 5 Rs” of
OER, promoting a broader sense of open,
emphasising social justice, and developing
practices that open up opportunities for
those distanced from education.
The P in OEP?
… Practice
… Participation
… the public

6. FROM RESEARCH INTO DESIGN
TO DESIGN AS RESEARCH

7. Research into Design
• Designerly Ways of Knowing (Dorst and Cross 2001), looks at
reasoning, deductive, inductive, abductive, draws on Peirce and
Dewey
• Participatory Design, drawing on Scandinavian approaches to
explore how to involve people in design process (Gregory 2003)
• Critical Design, looks at the role of non functional design, to
provoke, tracing the past speculating on the future (Malpass 2017)
• Craft looks at how the way we imagine value and use in the
future shapes what we do in the present (Valentine 2011).

8. Design as Research
For example … As it flows from
the design
process,
investigating
particular
aspects relating
to users or
production
Research into your
own Design
Practice, common
purpose with
applied action
research e.g.
education.
Does design
suggest a particular
way of knowing that
allows us to make
visible things which
would otherwise be
obscured?

9. VALUE AND DESIGN BASED
APPROACHES

10. Start with the value you
want to create for the
learner and/or your
organisation rather than
what you know (or think
learners ought to know)
and how you think we
ought to communicate
VALUE How What
Figure adapted from Dorst and Cross 2001
In my work I start with Value … this
very slide … but how did I arrive here
…

11. … “Sensitising Concepts” …
As normative discerned from deliberative discussions, surveys, intertextually and
critically through the democratic process (Bozeman 2008)
What “the public” values and what is valuable to “the public” (Bennington 2009)
Is relational, arises from the valuer, the object, the criteria (Meynhardt 2009)
Is shaped by dimensions of publicness (Moulton 2009)
Is co-created, arising from the work done (Vargo and Lusch 2004; Osborne et.al
2013)
Is a matter of how well an organisation is aligns it resources and capabilities to the
external environment (Grant 2010)
VALUE
Messy Problems … Clumsy [illfitting] Frames

12. In Design …
Is concerned with transformation, as imagined and
through this realised (Malpass 2017; Green et.al 2014)
Is concerned with speculation, with throwing oneself into
the future to imagine use (Di Salvo 2012)
With these imagined uses and values shaping our
understanding of how to act in the present (Valentine
2011)
VALUE

13. The Expression Values based Value Creation faces
different ways:
• Facing into an organisation, norms and values;
• Circling within the organisation, how the organisation
creates value.
Then …
• Facing out from an organisation, how it is created
through use or work, and the values expressed.
Involving …
• Double movements, where speculations on future
value inform present practice.
VALUE

14. THE REALITY OF DESIGN WORK
WITH VOLUNTEER SCOTLAND

15. Volunteer Scotland.
The Education Team at a
workshop on the 17th of
January 2018
Group Work First Design Workshop at Volunteer Scotland, Stirling, 17th
of January 2018, Ronald Macintyre CC BY SA 4.0

16. Ask participations to ..
Exploring Learners Journeys: Exercise on …
IDEA EXPLORATION
Drawing a “rich picture”
• “Rich Pictures” are a way to capture issues and
relationships that can be difficult to put into
words
• You don’t need to be able to draw, and people
should “share the pen”
• Try to come to a shared view, note differences
of view
• The discussion about what you might draw is
just as important as the drawing.
Ideal Crofting Learner, SFC Workshop,
Kyle of Lochalsh, 15th of October 2015,
Ronald Macintyre CC BY SA 4.0

17. Exploring Learners Journeys: Exercise on …
IDEA EXPLORATION THROUGH SPECULATION
Draw out an “rich picture” of your “ideal”
learner
• Think about the learner, who are they at the
start of the journey
• Who are they at the end, what is it they are
able to do
• Think about how the value realised by the
learner and the organisation.
More Group Work First Design Workshop at Volunteer Scotland, Stirling,
17th of January 2018, Ronald Macintyre CC BY SA 4.0

18. Themes from the Ideal Learner Pictures
• Diverse backgrounds and experiences,
• Recognise problems they need to solve
• Willing to learn, and willing to learn from
each other
• Be able to apply the learning within their
context
• Recognise learning is a journey that does
not stop at the end of the course
• Continue to support others after the course
is finished
• Be advocates for volunteering within the
organisation,
• Promote Volunteer Scotland and its values
The Ideal Learner, Volunteer Scotland, Stirling, 17th of January 2018,
Ronald Macintyre CC BY SA 4.0

19. Adapting Soft Systems: Exploring Learning Journeys
with Participants
Traditional SSM Learner Centred
C/B – Originally Customer later
beneficiaries
Who are the learners? Learners are not customers in any normal sense,
in open education the question is who is “your public”?
A – who are the main actors Actors, who is around them, helping create the content, supporting the
learner, what is around them, think about the socio-material/technical
context.
Activities, what is the nature of the activities, where and with what or
whom
T – Transformation Process What is it they will be able to do in the world at the end of the journey
W – Worldview What is the worldview, does it represent/challenge particular positions or
sets of values
O/V – Owners, later also to
include victims
Who is are all those affected
E – Environment What is the wider context in which this sit?

20. Exploring Learning Journeys: Transformation
SSM Volunteer Scotland
T – Transformation
Process
The Ideal Learner
They will come with lots of questions and perhaps some frustration, they want to change and will change practice
in their organisation.
Carries forward echoes of the past, formal “volunteer manager” and internal organisational tensions over
formalising informal volunteering
Facing Out
The course is an act of persuasion, it calls a particular public into being, as part of a broader change in VS, want
to use openness to engage a broader range of volunteer experience and draw informal volunteers closer to the
organisation.
The learners will be confident advocates for the value of volunteering and VS values within their organisation and
in their interaction with volunteers and peers. Tensions between formal and informal, and listening and telling.
Facing In
It is part of a strategic realignment, which means more direct engagement with and listening to a broader set of
voices in the voluntary sector identified as part of an internal values review.
In order to enable the engagement with this broader public their will be a change in the alignment of resources
and a redeployment of staff

21. CONCLUSION

22. Speculating on Value for the Learner
• Organisational narratives over “who they are for” and
their public plays on questions of value(s) past present
and future.
• Work based learning for “affective labour” (Fraser 2014)
like volunteering is political, expressing particular values
• Speculations about the value for the learner focus on
what the learners ability to enact change based on VS
values

23. Reflection on Value(s) in the Organisation
• For values based organisations values past, present
and future inform “the way we do things around here”,
leading to tensions over possible futures.
• Real and imagined “publics” are evoked top down and
bottom up to support (re)alignment of resources and
capabilities
• Tentatively suggest … Acting in a designerly way asks
people to “look to the future” allowing you to surface
these discourses

24. Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership
The Open University Business School
The Open University
Walton Hall
Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA
www.open.ac.uk

25. Acknowledgements
• Some of the work presented here would not have been possible
without funding from the Scottish Government for Open
Educational Practices Scotland (OEPS) a programme hosted by
the OU in Scotland, and special thanks to Pete Cannell the
Director of OEPS.
• James Rees and Alessandro Sancino for support and hard
questions
• Adrian Murtagh at Volunteer Scotland for being open and honest
and helping me understand value and values a little better.

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