pulse: rri promising practice example
TRANSCRIPT
PULSE: CO-DESIGNING HEALTH COMMUNICATIONInvolving the public and creating new organizational collaborations
RRI Tools: Building a better relationship between science and society
PULSE: Promising practice example
Experimentarium, Copenhagen Steno Diabetes Centre, Copenhagen University of Copenhagen
PULSE-project:Create innovative research-based science exhibitions and community activities that motivate and support families to take action to develop and sustain a healthy lifestyleSponsor: The Novo Nordisk Foundation EUR 5,313,974.66Duration: 5 years (2012-2017)Partners: Experimentarium & Steno Diabetes CenterCollaborators: City of Copenhagen, Municipality of Gentofte, Uni. Copenhagen, Roskilde & Southern DenmarkTarget group: Families with children aged 6-12
From focusing on decontextualized phenomenas to communicating science in relation to the everyday world we live in.
Science centres have a golden opportunity to create sustainable and socially desirable science communication: By opening up the organization, be adaptive and risk engaging in controversial subjects and display science research as an ongoing process with open answers and a lot of unknowns.
Embracing the complex nature of the subject ‘health’, the PULSE-team decided to co-design the exhibition with the future visitors to involve a many facetted framework of understandings.
Science Centres in transition
Front-end study
thematic analysis - design game developed
Workshop 1+2
workshop 3
pre-opening
puls
co-designwith families
self-documentation
interviews
participatorymethods
designgame
visual ethnography
The PULSE development process
Front-end Study
From exercise to movementFindings
• Health is a personal and sensitive subject• Families experience a high degree of bad conscience • Families know ‘what’ to do, but lack competences in ‘how’ to act• Clash in family ideal vs. health ideal
Implications• Project group move away from an information based exhibition with ‘friendly teasing’ as motivational factor • Everyday life becomes a bigger part of the design process
Three Iterative Workshops
Workshops 1+2
Inviting families inside the engine room of the exhibition development
Findings
• A shared experience is central to the families
• Parents want learning to be an active part of a family visit to a science centre
Implications
• A whimsical universe is chosen as scenographic and narrative concept. Focus is on creating and facilitating shared experiences, where health is a physical and social experience rather than readable information on text boards etc.
Workshop 3
Asking the families to revisit the project and have a dialogue on concrete exhibits and overall game-play of the exhibition
Findings
• Families don’t want to see 1:1 illustrations of their everyday life. It needs to be fun and extraordinary
• No health preaching!
Implications
• Plans to let the family discuss the family's own everyday situations in the exhibition are abandoned.
Pre-opening Event for the PULSE-families
Pre-openingPULSE-families were interviewed about their overall experience in the exhibition:Correlation between the good and extraordinary experiences and major impact of co-design process on the final exhibition designs.
As one mother puts it:
“I thought it would be much harder to par4cipate. As a mother I thought, oh no, now I need to do these physical ac4vi4es. But it was much more fun to par4cipate than I expected. It was a good idea that you had to check in together. So you simply have to do things together. So it has been a very social experience, much more social than our previous visits to Experimentarium."
The co-design process has contributed positively in qualifying and renewing science communication in the 21’st century.
Major impact of the co-design process on the final exhibition design being:
• All activities are multiple user activities where everyone is able to participate successfully.
• Game rules/framework for the family's behavior in the exhibition designed to foster the positive teamspirit in the family – and get everyone in the family to be active.
Co-design is a relevant method in exhibition development processes, when communicating and facilitating inclusion, openness, reflexivity and responsiveness in science.
Conclusion
Project manager: Mette Stentoft [email protected] PhD-fellow: Catharina Thiel Sandholdt [email protected]
For more information:
PULSE-Project is financed by the Novo Nordisk Foundation