Post 9 -Visual documentation of the brainstorming session

Group brainstorm of possibilities of change

The image above depicts the brainstorming session that our group had around my issue. It was decided early on, that having individual pages for each issue would invite us to throw any and all ideas on the page, and encourage us to fill the space with possibilities.

Another rule for the group initiated early in the process was that there was to be no judgement with regards to the ideas conveyed. This ensured that it was quantity being created rather than quality (a particularly strange concept to wrap your brain around when the whole course has been about the quality of work and concept).

With these rules in mind, we began to brainstorm each others problem statements individually. Spending around 15 minutes on each person, we spoke about the possibility we were imagining, and then wrote them down. Often times one idea would spark another, and branches of ideas similar to each other would be created.

What I found good and useful about this process of brainstorming was that I managed to get different perspectives on my problem and issue, and provide ideas from an outside point of view. For the past 7 weeks I have mostly been the only one researching and developing my issue, so to have people brainstorm visual responses as if they were possible users, was a great and useful experience. The process also allowed for undiscovered concepts and visuals to come to light. There were some ideas mentioned that I hadn’t thought about, and managed to spur different thoughts.

However, there were some down sides to this brainstorming process also. The main disadvantage was that the problem statement that I had wasn’t well researched and I didn’t have a sufficient understanding of the issue, this was because it was spurred from a comment of one of my peers. It would have been better to originally choose the internet f things like I had been researching, to get actual concepts and possible responses I could have developed. The other slight issue that I discovered with this process was that my peers did’t have a great understanding of the issue as well. It way have just been that I didn’t explain certain parts of it correctly or well enough, but seeing as data issues generally aren’t talked about, it was hard to brainstorm solutions.

Overall, the process was helpful in providing more eyes to bounce ideas off and see what they would do in my situation, however it would have been more effective if I had chosen a more researched (and possibly broader) topic in order to get ideas to develop.

---

After the slight disaster of my part of the group brainstorming session, I decided to do further research and try the exercise again. Since the Internet of Things was a focus  for the past few weeks, I decided to create another problem statement, but with privacy and the Internet of Things as the centre of the exercise.

New problem statements

With the map above, I felt like I had a better idea of my concept and problem, and could create more possibilities for change. Or at least there were more opportunities to look at. And so, with the top right map being a little tight, I recreated it on a larger page, and kept developing visual responses and ideas.

New possibilities of change

While it was great to redo the class and group exercise of brainstorming the possibilities for change, doing it by myself lacked the group experience and the opportunities created by having multiple eyes on the issue. The next step would be to get another person to briefly look at the ideas presented, and see if they can add some, or change any that are existing.

Advertisement

POST 9: Visual documentation of the brainstorming session

Strengthes

During this brainstorming, we are all share information and give group members feedbacks to help others do next step for solve the personal statement problem, and give feedback to others, help every found many opinions from peers.In this mapping, each group numbers are talking around 15 minutes from who, what, when, why and why five aspect about issue. Brainstorming map can help we easy understand issue, and share good information to others, also can get help from other numbers, we bring together various ideas and suggestions.some interesting proposals can be refined gradually, each one has think them up and improve them, this can allows that better and better ideas are generated. In the brainstorming created, you can develop ideas fast, remember more, eases the study process and makes it fun easy to add idea on asn connected facts.

Weakness:

The weakness of brainstorming is if a group member get worry sense, may lead all group members  thinking worry way. Also brainstorming takes many time, people waste many times to discuss issue, and might be difficult  for every to understand your senses, such as you have created and personalised your map, it might be difficult for peers to understand all your ideas and concept, you have to spend more times to explain your ideas and concept to them. 

Post 7 – Issue Mapping

Rekha Dhanaram

The tool of mapping is one that has been emphasised throughout this subject. This weeks co creating and controversy maps definitely probed us to look deeper into the issue. Whilst I unfortunately missed out on the collaborative issue mapping exercise and the valuable component of discussion, I still attempted the task on my own.

I started by reflecting on an earlier word mapping exercise we did in large groups. The list reflects around 200 words used in conversations around asylum seekers and refugees. Creating the list was tedious but it was really interesting to see the jargon-like picture around this topic. Further rearranging these words in various scales from positive to negative, emotional to factual helped us truly see the narrative of our daily discourse.

This informed my mapping exercise this week.

Map 1

In Map 1 I revisited the stakeholders map we developed as a group in the beginning of this subject. However this time saw me develop a more clear and thorough view of the stakeholders and ‘environment’ as non human factors come into play. It was interesting to see how the discussion we’ve had around this issue has influencing my mapping and links I drew out. For instance data scraping exercise saw me draw out the issue of censorship and how it affects the stakeholders of media and government whilst influencing public perception. Furthermore from our initial map we discussed the role of media in depth which allowed me to flesh out this stakeholder even more. Finally when creating maps I always have questions arise which act as prompts for areas I could delve into more. I decided to incorporate this in my map as it presented a more natural mapping process with a richer view to look back on.

Map 2

Map 2 looked at the polemics instigated by the debates and emotions surrounding this topic. I created a list of these polemics by identifying the two actors debating. However it becomes instantly visible that there are multiple debates occurring across all stakeholders created a very interconnected yet at the same time a disjointed narrative around this issue. The narrative is not purely a social one, but one that concerns dynamics and outcomes on a social, emotional and physical sense. Hence ‘the social is not the explanation for the state of affairs of an issue; instead the state of affairs of an issue is precisely the social being performed by the actors.’ This essentially addresses Latour’s idea on the ‘associations between heterogeneous elements… a type of connection between things that are no themselves social (Rogers, Sánchez-Querubín & Kil 2015).’

Reflection

Post mapping, I was able to get in touch with my peers and reflect on their collaborative maps. This was useful as it allowed me to compare my own mapping exercise to theirs and gain knowledge on areas I would’ve missed.I particularly found their Stakeholder map interesting as it drew on actors I missed out on and went to the extent of naming public figures.

(Below – their map of re-brainstorming of stakeholders)

Overall even though I missed out on the valuable insights gained from collaborative group work, I don’t feel like this exercise went to waste. Rather this week of self reflection of my personal thoughts was rather useful in really understanding the issue and identifying potential paths I would like to explore.

References

Rogers, R., Sánchez-Querubín, N. & Kil, A. 2015, Issue Mapping for an Ageing Europe, OAPEN, Amsterdam.

 

 

 

Type 1 Diabetes: Issue Mapping

Post 7 by Lucy Allen

The first mapping exercise we undertook as a group was looking at and categorising different word associations to the topic ‘Obesity and Healthy living’. Working collaboratively we collected a mammoth range of words that covered the entire topic. It was so fascinating to see what words we all wrote and which came to mind in relation to our individual topics we’ve been exploring, enabled us to come up with a diverse range of words.

The many words we came up with as a group:

After writing the antonym of each word on the back, we were then given the opportunity to ready through the words of other groups to choose five words that we felt related strongly to our personal topics.

The chosen words that I felt related most strongly to my area of interest:

 

 

Then bringing out individual words together as a group it was interesting to see that we all had quite a few in common such as ‘motivation’ and ‘support’. As a group we then voted again to draw out the key words from which we could all relate too.

The group’s collection of key words:

 

The final collection of words that we voted on as a group: 

The next section of the mapping task was my favourite. We were asked to collect the words and make maps based on what type of word it was and what it evoked. The categories we worked with were; emotive, disruptive and factual. It was this section of the mapping that really saw us working as a team and questioning each others decisions. If someone didn’t agree with the categorisation of  a certain word we would have a discussion as a group to decide. Everyone’s opinions were respected and we had some fantastic discussions about word associations and meaning within this field.

Categorising word by Its impact and type:

We next undertook an exercise in ranking our key words on a spectrum of positive to negative. Again the group had differing ideas of where these words should be placed on a spectrum however we were able to discuss this and make an informed decisions. I noticed that our negative vs. positive associations were quite influenced by our individual focus areas. For example, for me and my focus on Type 1 Diabetes, the word ‘drugs’ ranked quite positively on the spectrum as without drugs, Type 1 Diabetics couldn’t survive. In opposition to this, a group member who’s area of focus is sugar consumption, the word ‘drug’ is associated with sugar as a drug and ranked quite negatively on the spectrum. When it came to these conflicts of interest we were able to compromise by thinking about the topic holistically and from a broad sense.

Working on this word mapping with my group I came to understand something that is really vital to my own research and work based on the varied responses and understanding of words from my group members. I realised that even when it comes to medical terms and disease names there are still areas of opinion and perspective. For example, smoking is an easy to define, specific word however people have individual associations with that word and their own opinion as to whether it is negative or positive. This is important to keep in mind when analysing and judging people’s opinions and understanding of Type 1 Diabetes.

Looking at the issue mapping my group completed in class the week I was away it was interesting to explore the process they’d undertaken when mapping the actors. From my understanding the started by brainstorming all the contravercies within the topic of Obesity and Healthy Living before choosing ‘steroids’ as a topic to persue. They then mapped out all actors in this system under the subheadings of value alignment, hierarchies, politics, associations, capacities, issues and challenges

Group Brainstorm of Steroids:

Group Actor Map of Steroids:

 

I’ve noticed that all members of my group have worked in quite unique and specific areas of Obesity and Healthy Living, meaning that the work and mapping we do in class needs to have a broad approach. Not only does this mean we’re all exploring other areas but it gives us a chance to work and map broadly and then take our learnings and apply it to our own more specific topics. It gives me new perspectives to look at my issue from as well as an ever-expanding knowledge of different areas such as steroid use and the impact this has with my own topic of Type 1 Diabetes.

Taking the process and mapping work of my group, my learning’s from this weeks readings as well as my own knowledge,  I sought to create my own actor map on Type 1 Diabetes. For my issue mapping I wanted to focus on the issue of knowledge and people’s lack of understanding of Type 1 Diabetes. From here I could map out this issue space by looking at key actors to form a greater understanding of the issues surrounding Type 1 Diabetes itself. I identified the key actors as being Government, Sufferers, Health Professionals and Wider Society.

Individual Actor Maps:

After creating these individual actor maps I would ideally collate them into a larger issue map to begin drawing relationships and the cause and effect between different actors and their differing values, actions and abilities.

I can however already see in these maps possibilities for action to greater change, particularly in the areas of actor’s values and connections. I think that if all actors could exercise greater empathy and strengthen their connections to other actors there would be a better communication of information, education as well as understanding around the subject of Type 1 Diabetes. As the issue is so complex and involves such a range of actors, it would involve taking action within multiple actors to have a long-lasting impact. In saying this, most disconnections within the issue can be traced back to the Government’s lack of strategy and commitment to the awareness, treatment and education of Type 1 Diabetes. This is a potential point of intervention when thinking about an emergent practice in response to the issue.

 

 

Reference List

Rogers. R, Sanchez-Querub. N, Kil. A, C. 2015, ‘Issue Mapping for an Aeging Europe’,  Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 

Digital Methods Initiative, C. 2016, ‘Ageing Places: Digital Methodologies for Mapping the Issue of an Ageing Europe’, University of Amsterdam, 2015

Schultz. T, C. 2015, ‘Cognitive Redirective Mapping: Designing Futures That Challenge Anthropocentrism Design and It’s Wild Cards’, Design Ecologies, No. 6

Post 7: Collaborative Issue Mapping

Collaborative Stakeholder Maps

Below are three iterations of collaborative issue and stakeholder maps in chronological order, that address the issue of housing affordability. The first map that was created admittedly lacks clarity in its links between stakeholders and has quite a few generalisations and/or inaccuracies. It is rewarding to see how the maps become more precise and detailed with each iteration—our continued research into the issue leads to a deeper understanding of its stakeholders. With each iteration we become more specific by naming particular individuals and organisations as well as introducing non-human actors. Creating networks of stakeholders, both human and non-human, allows us to consider meaningful change on a broad scale. It urges us to consider how our design may have a flow-on effect that impacts an immediate but also a peripheral audience.

Working with peers allows for critical and insightful exploration. Despite researching the same topic, each person brings to the table a different focus and opinion on the issue. Additionally, through sharing our findings, we encourage each other to explore new avenues and/or consolidate existing research. Given that everyone is dedicated and invested in the issue, group discussions and mapping exercises are thoroughly energetic and productive.

Collaborative Issue and Stakeholders Map #1

Collaborative Issue and Stakeholders Map #2

Collaborative Issue and Stakeholders Map #3

Polemic Issues Mapping

I also wanted to comment on the polemic issues map because that was a collaborative exercise pivotal to informing my approach to this project.

Polemic issues map

Working collaboratively sets up an open and comfortable platform for people to discuss, challenge, agree, disagree, contemplate and speculate. In week 5, I worked with a partner to map out polemic topics and their associated emotions and stakeholders. This was an exhilarating exercise, as discussing the emotional aspects of controversial issues for various stakeholders, established powerful human connections to the matters at hand. Being able to freely exchange thoughts and opinions with my partner was very constructive as it helped uncover the multiple facets of each issue. I found it very insightful to consider emotions as non-human actors active within the issue. Peoples’ reactions, feelings and experiences about polemic issues were valid points of discussion and debate. Identifying problem areas where particular stakeholders are particularly struggling or affected by a polemic topic, highlighted potential areas for a design proposition to be situated and/or intervene.

07 – Benefits of Collaborative Mapping

The process of collaborating on several issue map exercises was undertaken across several weeks. The role of which was to augment and consolidate previous work with a refined and specific focal point on the problems within mental health. Whilst the content of these maps did tend to overlap, the manner through which the various approaches were presented allowed for fresh perspectives and ideation.

Mental Health Word Association ‘Soft to Hard’ scaling

Controversy Mapping – Physical vs Mental Health

Mental Health Controversy Brainstorm

Specificity Mapping – Health Professional

Controversy Mapping – Funding for Mental Health

BLOG VII

Issue mapping

Together with my peer, we came back to the mapping of stakeholder’s exercise that we initially started in week 3. We reflected on the structure and content of our first map and discussed how we could re-organise and build even further. Drawing on the text ‘Reassembling the Social’ by Latour (2005) we decided to break up the broad sub category of ‘society’ since this is a very hard group to define due to its conflicting values and forces. In this map we instead let stakeholders within the stand by themselves and this made it easier to define motivations and tensions between them. Since both me and my peer had done research into different areas within gender equality this broadened our map where different stakeholder were driving forces within different areas.

Issue mapping of stakeholders by Ahlstrom, C. Hartwig, Z (2016)

 

We chose to explore further on an issue revolving gender violence. To analyse the issue from a greater perspective, we defined human and non-human actors, motivations, emotions etc. within a number of subcategories. This specific issue was not something I had included in my research, although seeing that some actors are playing big roles in all issues. For example – Stereotyping and gender expectations.

Mapping of actors within issue by Ahlstrom, C. Hartwig, Z. Meland, J. (2016)

Within these categories we then chose a few subjects to interrogate by asking a number of questions. For example – Alcohol, what is the actor responsible for? What does it value? Associations, accountability? This way of questioning an actor and its role could lead finding solutions and possibilities in a less obvious space within the issue itself.

Mapping of actor by Ahlstrom, C. Hartwig, Z. Meland, J. (2016)

To summarise,

revisiting our issue mapping exercise as a group allowed both of us to add detail to our understanding and our representation of stakeholders involved in the issues. From this improved representation we were then able to isolate and interrogate individual stakeholders, and accurately frame their role within the issue and their influence on outcomes. With this method of mapping new possibilities can present themselves, and possibilities in affecting change can also be found by putting yourself in the role of an actor.

By Camilla Ahlström

---

_{Ahlstrom, C. Hartwig, Z. 2016, Issue mapping of stakeholders, Class Exercise, University of Technology, Sydney}

_{Ahlstrom, C. Hartwig, Z. Meland, J. 2016, Mapping of Actor, Class Exercise, University of Technology, Sydney}

_{Ahlstrom, C. Hartwig, Z. Meland, J. 2016, Mapping of actors within issue, Class Exercise, University of Technology, Sydney}

_{Latour, B., 2005, ‘Reassembling the social: an introduction to actor-network-theory’, Oxford University Press, pp. 4-5, 23, viewed 4 September 2016, <http://www.dss-edit.com/plu/Latour_Reassembling.pdf>}

POST 7: Collaborative Issue mapping

-Maria Yanovsky 2016

Throughout university working within a group can seem like a daunting task. However for the purposes of research co creation and collaboration have served some relatively good purposes in creating a broader understanding and enriching discourse of research topics.

(Homelessness and Exclusion Group Brainstorms, 2016)

The maps above were a part of our word association exercises. As a group we were able to fill two long study tables full of descriptive words that as a group of five, triggered ideas about homelessness. Gave the group a variety of choice when it was time to pick a set of 25 words. Working collaboratively here was useful in understanding the formation of language and bounce ideas off each other.

When visualised, this exercise is a chilling representation of how prevalent negativity is within our understanding of homelessness. Even in the flipped version that we did, there were still a large portion of negative words we associated with homelessness. (Yanovsky.M, 2016)

A Key insight that came from that exercise is the initial demonstration of how, even as researchers our collective word associations were predominantly negative. This may have to do with the fact that it is difficult to find a positive angle to talk about a negative topic. Yet, at this stage, I feel its almost hilariously contradictive that we are critiquing the prevalence of stigma, yet we are still so heavily angled at negative perceptions. Negativity perpetuates stereotypes and stigma. It may be useful, to start mapping from the angle of a homeless person and try to put myself into the shoes of anyone of the categories within the homeless umbrella.

 

Mobile Phone actors Map, this was done from the perspective of one person, and comparing it to the other maps posted in this blog, it is rather empty and bleak. This picture is a good demonstration of why working collaboratively in a group is beneficial (Homelessness and Exclusion Group Brainstorm, 2016).

Controversies issue map work in progress.

Re-Done controversies map, done for the sole purpose of re-familiarising ourselves with the initial brainstormed ideas and so we could add some more with a fresh mind. (Homelessness and Social Exclusion Group Brainstorm, 2016)

Re-worked actors map that aimed to explore the terminology and labelling used to stigmatise members of the homeless community. (Homelessness and Social Exclusion Group Brainstorm, 2016)

Collaborative issue Mapping creates a broad spectrum of ideas that maybe overlooked if the task was undertaken by one individual. Looking back at the controversies map, as a group we decided that we as a group would focus on an aspect of homelessness that as individuals we would have overlooked. This being, the location of where homeless people sleep. Different research and perspectives created a more in-depth conversation of an expanded topic and enriched our understanding of the basic foundations of our issue.

Collaborative issue mapping also helps shed light on the “hottest topics”. For example, as a result of our mapping exercises which included word association exercises and the controversies map as a collaborative team we worked out there was a gravitation towards keywords that were used as labels for the homeless community. This demonstrated, through further mapping that collectively we all had an interest in the stigmatisation of homeless people indicating its popularity and resonance within a small body of researches.

Working collaboratively in a group helps fill the gaps in mapping exercises. This creates a detailed and rich contribution to discourse as the entire issue is explored from multiple angles. Within each mapping exercise there were degrees of knowledge each participant brought to the table. However as a collaborative group, we were able to fill in the cracks and generate a greater collected understanding which would have taken a lot more individual research to come to a conclusion to. Another intriguing aspect to compel this, is that these gaps generated heated discourse where contrasting view points came to the foreground. This was especially handy within the Controversy map exercise where we needed multiple clashing viewpoints.

However, one thing I did notice from collaborative mapping is that emotions, and perceptions can herd together like a flock of sheep. I found that in my own time, away from the raw, discussion based spaces, I was able to employ the findings from group exercises and create maps that are more tailored to personality and sense of humour.

(Yanovsky.M, 2016)

As a result I made a playful illustrative map of some of the non human, object based actors, that stand out to me when thinking about homelessness. This was a lot more fun, then just thinking about words and text, and a quick little exercise of visual representation.

Post 7: Issue mapping

By Olivia Tseu-Tjoa

Mapping? Again?

Yes, mapping on those large sheets of butchers paper has become a very familiar task.  Despite that initial sense of repetition, there was something to be learnt by revisiting the previous map from Week 2. This time, I worked with a different partner from my original map in Week 2, offering another person’s perspective and collaborative approach. Ultimately, I found it enriched and reinforced the research found over the past weeks.

Post 7: Collaborative Issue Mapping – What We Thought Is Serious

Written by Meiying Lin

Within week five class, I am glad to have an opportunity to work with Lia, Julie and Susan again to undertake the collaborative issue mapping exercise in order to develop and push forward our own issue topic. According to tutor’s instruction, we did two issue maps individually, after we finished our own maps, we gave each other feedback and help to develop each others map. I gain plenty of interesting ideas and research during this exercise. It was a valuable and helpful experience as we were all working on a different aspect in obesity and healthy living.

Within this project, I would like to focus fast food branding and advertising. My group mates helped me to expand my maps specifically. Such as a few possible emotions and movements. The map below has displayed the actors involved in the fast food industry, and a few possible activities/movement and emotions of the actors.

Map One: Actors

As you can see, obesity and healthy living are a big issue that involves various groups of people even we break down to a specific area. Beyond that, there is a strong connection between a different group of actors. For instance creator such as designers, advertisement writers and photographers play an important role in expanding the fast food industry. They help to create eye-catching advertisements for fast food companies to influence the individual’s eating habits.

Base on the actor map, I create another map to clarify the controversy of my issue.

Map Two: Controversy

There are lots of controversy within my issue. The most important issue is the boundary between healthy and unhealthy fast food is unclear. According to Julie’s opinion, she thought Subway is a healthy fast food company because the consumer can choose to add lots of veggies. However, Subway also provides various cheeses and sauces which make their food unhealthy. These have made lots of consumers confused. On the other hand, Susan mentions that the label on the food package and food advertisement also make consumer confused. I believed we all familiar with the word such as ‘organic’, ‘healthy choice’ and ‘sugar-free’, however, are they really that healthy? McDonald said they are ‘healthy choice’; Coca-Cola said their products are ‘sugar-free’… I think it is a question that needs to be answered.

In conclusion, I really happy with my final maps. My group mates have been really helpful within this exercise because we were researching different aspect in obesity and healthy living. There are lots of connections between our research which really opened my mind and helped to develop my maps and my final proposal.

For my final proposal, I would like to promote the healthy fast food industry. Firstly, I need to clarify the boundary between healthy fast food and unhealthy fast food. Secondly, it would be nice to help improve a few existed healthy fast food brandings such as their packaging and/or advertising. Thirdly, I would like to promote the healthy fast food on social media platforms such as on Facebook and Instagram.

‘Big now, dead later,’ – Steroids

Post 7: Issue mapping

By Marie Good

Steroids by Magin 2016

Controversy: noun; a lot of disagreement or argument about something, usually because it affects or is important to many people (Cambridge dictionary 2016).

When it comes to living and the issues that affect us all, we are placed into a position of a passive or aggressive stance. As humans, we feel strongly about subjects such as obesity and healthy living and because of this, create controversy over and within many areas surrounding it.

Recently during a class exercise, I had the opportunity to map out actors of controversy with regards to this topic and zone in on a particular area of investigation. My group and I decided to focus on the area of performance enhancement supplements, recognising it within our first map of controversies, as a subject each group member had some knowledge about but thought might be interesting to explore. We broke this off onto one known performance enhancing drug, steroids, to investigate further in detail.

Steroid are by nature, a performance-enhancing drug, particularly found in the areas of, but not limited to, bodybuilding, strength conditioning, endurance sports and performance athletes.

We recognised six main categories we could examine closer to develop a detailed insight into the actors involved in this controversial subject, being: politics, associates, value alignments, capabilities, hierarchies, issues and challenges. From here, it was essential and crucial towards our process to involve each member’s thoughts and ideas as we all had different knowledge levels, experiences and therefore insights into steroid actors.

On looking over our end map and findings, the main issue with steroid use is formed on the basis of drug stability in regards to quality and sustainability of the individual’s life. I can identify a possibility that in order to change the minds of individuals in this area, education, potentially in the form of a health and fitness, virtual reality edutainment app could be developed or other means of education in perceiving our future selves with regards to now. This unfortunately seems to be a contradictory area within the minds of young people particularly, where by the mentality they have is focused on the idea of fun now, responsibilities later. This way of living is not sustainable to themselves, their friends and families or the communities around them.

 

Reference list

Cambridge dictionary, 2016, Controversy, date viewed 1 September 2016, < http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/controversy &gt;.

Magin, R. 2016, steroids, date viewed 1 September 2016, < http://ryanmagin.com/go/new-steroid-poormans-nobs/ >.

POST 7: Issue mapping

by Jansie Vo

The collaborative workshop is a series of mapping exercises in class considering in the relationship of team composition, effective communication, distribution, and co-ordination in order to help build deeper understanding into the issue, allows each member has an opportunity to speak and share understanding by brainstorming to toward insightful outcomes. My group members had different approach in mental health placing the issue in different angles that helped me to uncover the best information and the learning goes much deeper. In terms of collaborative group, we found that a powerful approach to understanding the stakeholders that were identified in relationships with the key words related to mental health, who/which influencers who/which to develop appropriate messages to connect with them. From this brainstorming, the most voted words were related to negative emotion and behavior ‘invisible’, ‘exhausted’, ’victim’, ‘judgement’, ‘stress’, majority affects the individuals through social media.

It was interesting in controversy mapping involves the conflict between economic benefit and humanities progress in mental health. From the feedback from our tutor, I keep working on the actor mapping, and focus on specific area of my depression issue. I chose to analyse the international student as an actor of Mental Health cause Australia is host to many thousands of international students of an age when mental illnesses are most likely to surface, has influence much in emotional and physical well-being.

During group process, we together pointed out and clarified a variety of paticipants such as medicare, policies, and social media, education, school, family and individuals that look beyond helping me with a problem, emphasize action and influence as well as reaction and adaption on mental illness.

What I learned from the collaborative workshop is a number of learning roles and ability to establish the relationship to the other team members and negotiale in group discussion. I feel these exercises especially actor mapping are very helpful to understand the issue not only one side but see the issue in many different angles in the relationship of stakeholders and the importance of actor on mental health fiels to get correct answer involving to mental illness. I further gained more comprehensive deep knowledge of the mental health issue and identify what I missed within secondary research. This will help me to identify the problem I want to target for engagement. Thus, to solve the mental health issue, whether it’s creating a call to action, influencing their thinking and decision, making or targeting some kind of behaviour change, now focusing on developing the campaign messages according to each individual’s level of interest and influence. From the things we explored, I will further gain more insight of my design proposition.

POST 7: Issue Mapping

by Jessica Avelina Horo

MAP 01: Stakeholder of the Issue

In this week, we were asked to look back at our initial stakeholders map form Week 2 and see the relations between the stakeholders. However, I worked with different partner from my previous group that made this map together. At first, it was a bit hard to combine all our information and datas but this experience has allowed me to see this issue in different perspective. After all, she also chose refugee and asylum seekers as her main topic so that it is just a matter of time until we can work together as a team to collaborate.

In the second map is what we came out together by combining all our information. We categorise them much more specific and refining the terms even more.

MAP 02: The Polemics and Their Emotions 

The second map discussed about the polemics of the issue and the emotion attached to them. Upon looking at the map for the second time, I realised that there were so many negative emotions written on the paper. All of them are what might the refugees or other stakeholders felt about the controversy. As listed in the map above, the polemics that attract both of us the most are:

1. Legitimate Refugee VS Illegal Refugee
2. Detention Centre VS Funding
3. Boat People VS Security Threat

The other polemics are quite broad, which is why it was hard to describe the emotions in result of the polemics. It was quite hard for me to think of any other polemics out there, as it requires a high level of understanding of the issue and massive researches. However, by doing this in a group of two, I feel more confident with what I understand, confirmed them to my partner, and made these collaborative maps.

MAP 03: Mapping the Stakeholders in the Polemics

It was quite confusing to write specific stakeholders and made a map where the actors intersect or diverge. We kept looking back at our main stakeholders map and then see if we can include related stakeholders to this polemics. As stated above, we started first with the Legitimate Refugees VS Illegal Refugees because we felt like that’s one of the biggest aspect in this issue.

 

Post 7: Collaboration is Key

Post 7: Issue Mapping
Christine Ye

---

As a follow up for our stakeholder mapping exercise in week 2, we used a collaborative technique to map out the issues relating to housing affordability in week 4 and 5. This was a great way to pool together a very comprehensive set of terms and issues whilst filling in the blind spots of your own knowledge, which allowed for more meaningful insights. Below is a chronological order of our mapping process with some personal thoughts.

---

Collaborative Mapping

Our week 4 tutorial started off with a self-generated list of relevant or significant words we felt were related to the issues of housing affordability and then compiling with our small table group to form a collection of 80 words.

Our table’s compilation of relevant/significant terms to do with the issues in housing affordability.

As a group, our generated word list encompassed a variety of terms from human and non-human stakeholders of our individual maps in week 2 with the inclusion of more intangible and emotional terms such as ‘sacrifice’, ‘green city’ and ‘displacement’ – these were all significant terms that reinforced and added to our own understanding of housing affordability. These terms were then further combined with the rest of the cohort also focusing on the same issue, and it was interesting to see that the direction of their terms skewed in a different direction to ours which resulted in a fresh set of words with minimal overlap to ours as you can see below.

The super duper compilation of relevant terms (very comprehensive indeed).

The next step in the collaborative task was to write down the opposite on the back of each term (however we mostly just wrote the opposite term on the same side in a different colour)… this proved to be a difficult task as some words such as ‘time’ or ‘deposit gap’ either had a very subjective opposite word or just no opposite term at all. However this helps to consider a whole different side to the story, even though the ‘simple’ task itself was not something I would have ever thought of for extra word generation – this brought to my attention that even a few weeks down the track, I was still quite close-minded in terms of my emergent practice and thinking. This also raised the insight that in a social issue such as housing affordability, opposite terms are still relevant to the issue (when usually I’d consider opposite words totally irrelevant).

Generation of opposite terms for our word list.

This was then followed by sorting the terms in alphabetical order for convenience purposes which you probably don’t need to see an image of, fairly straightforward. We then mapped the stakeholders of the issue again with a clearer understanding of the topic as a whole – at this point I feel that our maps were organised in the most efficient way and also visually depicted the groups of stakeholders and the links between them in the clearest way. This iterative process allowed me to become more confident in the way I picture the issue in regards to each factor.

Our table’s compilation of relevant/significant terms to do with the issues in housing affordability.

A more comprehensive map of the human and non-human stakeholders in the issue, showing various links.

---

Word Sets

Following the mapping exercise, we were asked to choose sets of words based on different focus points, the first to choose a word which you feel is your main focus of the housing affordability issue – I chose ‘generational’ because I felt that there is a misunderstanding or spread of assumptions in regards to what each generation thinks of the other in terms of the housing situation, when in fact it should be a combined effort to help the issue. From the word set, it is interesting to reflect on several words that indicate the importance of spatial, planning and sustainable design, possibly due to our way of thinking shaped by our studies.

The chosen word set to describe the focus of the housing affordability issue.

The second set was consisted of words we chose that we felt were surprising or compelling in regards to the topic, and the results I felt were very surprising indeed. ‘Opposition’, ‘foreign buyers’, ‘negative gearing’ and ‘generational’ all indicate words which are expressed quite often by the media, with these words being used to generate negativity on a generally superficial-based understanding on the housing issue.

The words that indicate a surprising or compelling element in regards to the issue of housing affordability.

As our final task, the chosen words from the sets were sorted in order from being a more factual aspect to a more emotive aspect, with a strong consensus that the ‘Australian Dream’ and ‘home ownership’ should sit on the most emotive side of the scale and ‘metropolitan’ on the more factual side.

Terms ordered on a scale of factual to emotive.

On seeing this laid out in front of me, it was clear to see that I was drawn to the more emotive aspect of the housing issue. This was also reinforced through all the research conducted previously, I feel that this is why housing affordability is now a social issue. However there seems to be a gap or minimal studies, research and social media generation on the issue of housing being an emotive one, and this may be due to the tradition of a house being seen as a physical aspect of someone’s life. If we can generate and influence individuals to become more emotionally aware of the topic of housing in Australia, it could be a good way to also spur change and more action to resolve the issue on a collaborative level.

 

 

Collaborative Issue Mapping

Post 7 by Alice Stollery

Collaborative issue mapping was an opportunity to expand my understanding of the issue of homelessness. My initial maps in post three were very detailed but also covered the entire issue, therefore there were areas that could still be broken down further. Co-creating maps enabled me to further interrogate areas of the issues that were less detailed or lacking on my initial map. It gave me the opportunity to step back and to discuss other perspectives of the issue with members of my group.  This helped me to break down areas that I was stuck on. I found some exercises were more insightful than others. There were times when the group lacked knowledge in particular areas which meant there was less discussion and engagement. However, on the flip side, there were other tasks that everyone contributed to, expanding our understanding exponentially. Having to articulate what I meant by the inclusion of certain actors also helped to solidify my own understanding.

Each task offered interesting and sometimes unexpected insights. Writing key words surrounding the issue was particularly beneficial. We decided that going through the alphabet and brainstorming key words for each letter together was very effective and as a group came up with around 200 words. Here you can see how the brainpower of 5 people makes for greater results than if I was at home completing the same task on my own.

Collaborative brainstorming of key words and associated words within homelessness.

Next we each chose 5 words that stood out to us. It was interesting narrowing these down and it highlighted the negative nature of the language we use to discuss the issue. This was something I had not really considered before. It was quite depressing to see these negative words collated in one place. I was particularly intrigued by ‘former-self’ and felt that a design approach that focused on the lives of the homeless before they were stuck by homelessness may be key to ridding them of stigma.

 

Key words that the group were attracted to or interested in.

Moving on, we organised these words into an emotive – factual scale. In the image below, factual words are seen at the top and more emotive words are at the bottom. This made us realise that the words surrounding the issue are no longer very emotive. The language and words we have used in our posts thus far are overused and the words often do not evoke emotion.

Emotive (bottom) to factual (top) scale

We then began writing antonyms of these words and the results were particularly insightful. Of course the antonyms were mostly positive words and when reading over them, I felt that these words could offer possible solutions to the problem. Suddenly, out of this overwhelmingly negative issue came words like; surrounded, acknowledged, visible, equality, clean, reinstated, facts, safe and understood. Perhaps these words were a skeleton for a solution. Highlighting what needs to change to move forward.

Positive antonyms of key words

As a group, we also created a more detailed map of stakeholders and their level of power in relation to homelessness. This expanded my knowledge in this area as my mapping of power in post three is very basic. Adding our key words to this map allowed us to see where particular words may stem from. For example desensitisation appeared quite a lot around the most powerful end of the map as this was connected with the media and government. Where as words such as survival appeared closer towards the bottom of the scale and the least powerful stakeholders.

Mapping of power within homelessness

From here we moved onto controversies within homelessness. This process was not smooth sailing and we had some conflicting views within certain areas and sometimes did not agree that particular areas could be considered controversies. Having multiple viewpoints at times took more brain power in attempting to organise information and account for differing views.

Initial controversies map which we then remapped to further understand.

Group process of creating second controversies map

Group process of creating controversies

Final Group controversies map

Mapping the controversies as a group was a good starting point, however I felt I needed to remap these myself to visualise my own understanding and to organise the information in a way that made sense to me. I wanted to break down each area to ensure I understood the controversy within it and the associated feelings. So below I have done a small remap.

Finally, we then chose a particular controversy and broke it down into stakeholders. In this task it was helpful having multiple perspectives  as it added further layers, enabling us to go into further detail, breaking down the general terms we had previously used. We began doing location, however then decided on technology so I have created my own map of the stakeholders of location as I thought that was particularly interesting. The words underlined in red are the non human stakeholders and those that are not underlined are human. Surprisingly, there were far more non human stakeholders within the area of location.

New Doc

---

Reflection

Overall, collaboration and co creating issue maps was a valuable process that expanded our understanding of homelessness as well as providing support in breaking down the paralysing complexity of it. Working with peers meant that we were producing more work at a faster rate and as a result a greater overview of the issue, as well as greater detail of the stakeholders involved. We saw similar emerging ideas within the group and could thus recognise prominent themes within our research. We also challenged each others ideas and inevitably, our own. However while working as a group provided these benefits, I felt that it was still necessary to process issues and exercises individually after class to ensure my own understanding. This process of collaboration has informed my approach as there were a number of very interesting insights and perspectives that have come out of it.

Key insights include:

• The negative nature of the language we use to describe the issue and the possible affects of using positive language as a solution
• The notion of the ‘former-self’ the design response could focus on the former-selves of people before they were affected by homelessness in an attempt to rid them of stigma.
• More emotive language needs to be used in the discussion of the topic as a number of words have been so over used that they no longer foster any kind of emotional response.
• Mapping the power structure within homelessness revealed that the possibility for change may lie with those most powerful. ie the media and the government. Perhaps they could be a source of data.

Reflecting on the process and findings, it has come to light that the way in which we talk about the issue is incredibly important. Perhaps the issue needs to be approached or framed with a positive outlook.

“A positive attitude will lead to a positive outcome”

A possible response could be through promoting the people behind homelessness, delving into the lives they had before homelessness intersected with their lives. I could also look into using software to regenerate news articles, replacing all negative words with their antonyms, as this process for me was incredibly eye opening. These ideas are quite vague at the moment and I am not able to articulate effectively at this stage, however the collaborative process will certainly inform my approach to designing for change.

 

 

 

blog 7- Mental Health Issue Mapping

By Marcella K. Handoko Kwee

---

 

Our mental health mapping is all started with lack of knowledge, which is also related to stigma. Some of the group members, including myself have been working on the issue mental health stigma. According to mindmap, mental health stigma does exist in or is caused by a number of different areas/factors. One of them is society’s behaviours tend to make assumptions/judgements based on idealised image of standard living quality or social trends, which can create even more pressure to those living with mental illness. As a result, mentally-ill people are being portrayed negatively by society. One of the research articles stated that media is also the cause of people with mental illness being portrayed negatively. In relation to above statements, society’s assumptions/judgements are shaped by idealised image of standard living quality or social trends that has been advertised through media with society as their main target audience.

I also want to share my own experience that I have just learned from other outside the team. This person and I were having small conversation somewhere outside campus and then this person asked me how my week was. I then replied by saying my week was quite tough that I have been catching up with blog posts related to mental health. I will be having presentation on this issue in a couple of week. Then this person said, you could bring mentally-ill person to show up in your presentation. I replied by saying mentally-ill people look just like normal people in appearance, at least to me unless they are truly crazy people. At the end of discussion, this person did not look convinced.

Back to the topic of this writing, culture as well as religion also play huge roles within society. With the government rules the society, there is shift in social focus in stigma. However, what I have learnt from the group discussion is that in case of social focus, there is difference between American and Japanese culture. American culture is exclusive while Japanese culture is inclusive. According to the dictionaries, exclusive is “excluding or not admitting other things”: “unable to exist or be true if something else exists or is true”, “(of terms) excluding all but what is specified.” and “restricted to the person, group, or area concerned.” Lastly, there is something called biological limitations: chemistry, physicalities and not superficial mechanisms, which are another cause.

From there, the group decided to take another step by doing controversy issue mapping between biology vs mentality (genetics, social pressures of gender roles which also link to social status and imbalance economy situations causing social gap), religion vs politics/culture (standard of living in the past and present) and needs vs wants (communication, the truth but also attention seeking). Focus on the needs vs wants matter of issue alone, education, health care and community connections which are family and individual/collective support systems (human contact, internet) are the most needed and wanted of all, following by infrastructure and transport. Something interesting associated with family connections was discussed in the group. It is being referred as love language. There are 5 love languages, which are words, quality time, receiving gifts, service and physical touch. Each person might have multiple love languages and everyone has got different love language.

I can relate group’s way of thinking in terms of needs vs wants to my research article. According to the article, group of paramedics, people who are qualified for medical jobs also ‘need and want’ health services and community connections. Once a paramedic desperately looked for the truth of paramedic support program’s poor management through emails from co-workers. It is believed that the support program was inadequate to deal with paramedics’ serious mental illness. Here the need is community connections. With the lack of community connections (human contact, internet), this paramedic would not be able to find the truth, which could either be the need or the want.

POST 7: Issue mapping

In this week, we are doing group mapping again, this week is asked we to do different mapping about our issue and stakeholder, our group from government, policy, organisation, nationalism and media to found idea about refugees and asylum seekers. We developed more information than last week mapping, and communicate with each group members, each one share one stakeholder information, such as I’m doing media part, I seperate it to two part which are private media and public media, private media means daily media report, email, and fax etc. Public media is a various medium, people used it share events and news, public media including newspaper, social media and journalism, then social media also can private media, for example, facebook, twitter and Instagram can used by personal account, every can share they own voice on this public media. Newspaper only can divide to public media area, newspaper is more formal. 

Media can be used to help refugees and asylum seekers, let more people understander what and who is refugees, right now, do not have more people know them, we can use media to help them, refugees and asylum seekers also can use social media to get help.

For design, we can choose media element to design a app, website or a serves platform, that can be used to connect refugees and society. From this week mapping we have learn more about our issue and help each members.

Issue mapping for sedentary lifestyle

Blog post 7. Issue mapping

Written by Hyunjoung You

In week 5, our group shared each thought about obesity, and we created mapping for the actor in controversy, which is related to obesity issue. It was opportunity to expand and obtain the knowledge about controversial issue of obesity. We are divided into 5 sections: people, emotion, behaviour, barrier, and environment. The mapping is shown below:

Mapping for the actor in controversy

 

After finished the above mapping, I narrowed down the topic to ‘sedentary lifestyle’. I found ‘Active lifestyle’ as opposite side to my topic, and I figured out the controversy between sedentary lifestyle and active lifestyle by classifying into 6 categories: people, emotion, behaviour, barrier, environment, and society / network. While I created this mapping, I recognized there are lots of associates and causes of sedentary lifestyle. Moreover, I discovered the associates were busy modern people, disabled people, and people who have sedentary work. This means that busy lifecycle and their environments bring about sedentary lifestyle except disabled people. Therefore, I would like to do further research about work environment since I have thought it is hard to do physical activities after hard work. I believe that their workplace environment is the most effective solution to people escape from sedentary lifestyle. Hence, I decided to make actor mapping using sedentary work.

Controversy mapping

To create actor mapping, I should think about different aspects of sedentary work: trigger, capacities, associates, politics, value alignments, weak connections, hierarchies, issues and challenges.

Actor mapping

It helped me to organize diverse factors surrounding sedentary work properly: the associates are related to sedentary work, the results by sedentary work, and issues and challenges. Especially, issues and challenges was useful aspect to come up with the possible actions to change. Also, it made me consider the barriers would come along to practice these possible actions. Here are possible solutions to sedentary work:

– The companies provide the employees with some programs or work environment to promote their physical activities such as morning yoga program, team sports activities, and standing desk.

– Creating info graphic poster to help the employees being aware of the importance of physical activities to prevent from being obese.

– Short animation or visual narrative about how sedentary lifecycle affects negatively to people.

Group mapping exercise for mental health issues

Post 7: Issue Mapping

By collaborating with two other group members who investigate the same issue, I was able to build up my knowledge of mental health issues and the connections of stakeholders.

Week 2 Mapping Exercise

In week 2, each member engaged into identifying human and non-human stakeholders regarding mental health. We were able to demonstrate and share our understandings of mental health from our own research and collaborated together to figure out how each stakeholder holds power, the hierarchy and its connections between other stakeholders. During this mapping exercise, we were able to discuss and unravel the issues collectively, enhancing our ability to effectively work as a group.

Week 4 Exercise

In week 4, it was amazing to see the numbers of words we had resulted with that holds a connection to mental health issues. This exercise allowed the group members to further engage into the issue by analysing and drawing out numerous words relating to mental health from many different approaches.

We were able to identify a few words that each member mutually wrote down such as “stigma” and “preconception”. Having the opportunity for other people outside our group to highlight words that stood out to them was an extremely successful way to narrowing down the most concerned and important words. Ultimately, this exercise allowed us to start using these key words as a filter when researching mental health for our own research whilst also increasing numbers of convincing words that we could use when writing about our issue.

Overall, the group exercise allowed each member to gain greater insights concerning mental health.This will help us for future research as we now have an extensive understanding about mental health and will be easier for us to identify key words and key situations that we should consider thinking about.

By Nozomi Nakano

Blog Post 4.2: Mapping Steak holders

In an attempt to better our understanding  refugee and asylum seeker issues we spent time in class mapping different participants and steak holders involved within selected issues.

This was an initial map that my team made together. It was essentially a categorising of a bran dump that we completed earlier. We tried applying basic categories under which each participant fell. Minimal detail was put into the specifics in this mapping exercise.

The map above is an example of human and non-human stakeholders within the issue of refugees and asylum seekers. The focus within this map is local, keeping the focus around Australian’s our laws, values and the steak holders e.g the Australian media, Australian NGO’s and resources. Whilst completing this task we realised how complex and diverse the issues surrounding refugees and asylum seekers are. As a result, some participants have conflicting interests and views, and in many ways were interconnected, creating a cross over effect.

Here we mapped key steak holders and their influence on the issue of refugees. An interesting element to note was that the steak holders who held the least power were refugees themselves.

Extending some of the ideas we had when creating the first map, we attempted to categorise the different steak holders and rearrange them based on the levels of power and influence. Indicative of the complexity of the issue, it was difficult to create a clear hierarchy as participants were interconnected and overlapping (e.g individual politicians and the government as an entirety). Interesting element which we discovered were that the participants who were greatly effected (refugees and asylum seekers) held the least amount of political influence whilst participants who held the greatest amount of power and influence held conservative views on immigration law (the government and mainsteam media).

These sort of exercises were particularly helpful as they promoted communication of different resources as well as drawing attention to areas where we needed to research. The secondary mapping of power and influence was particularly interesting as it showed the complexity of the problem and how hard it would be to shift attitudes which are so deeply ingrained in our society but also within our laws.