Design Research Get Lost: An asset-based approach to support young people to self-organise

学者、设计师和社区之间的参与是研究和社会设计项目的共同特征。参与式研究和设计有很多原因，例如，它可以减少学者和公民之间的权力不平衡，并有助于产生与现实世界相关的项目。然而，令人关切的是，参与研究，特别是年轻人的参与，并不像所声称的那样真实或实质性，而是存在一种人为的参与或服从形式。造成这种情况的原因有很多，但我们只关注两点：1。为了获得资金和伦理许可，学者们面临着制定明确计划的压力，同时也面临着研究成功实施、产生高影响力和强有力的学术发现的压力。因此，当研究开始，参与者参与时，他们被要求做的事情往往是预先确定的，并且希望他们能够履行自己的角色，以确保事情按计划进行（Fox 2007, 2013; Dentith et al. 2009）。当年轻人参与研究时，研究人员倾向于根据他们的缺陷而不是他们的能力和资产来感知和接触他们。因此，一个参与式项目可能会与一群年轻人合作，教他们如何成为一名艺术家或设计师。一些人认为这是对年轻人的一种控制形式，试图使他们适应项目，并通过扩展他们的研究人员希望项目成为（福柯1997年，弗罗曼和科林2010年）。该研究项目的目的是根据年轻人已经拥有的技能、知识和资产，与他们合作并对待他们，并寻求创造帮助他们自我组织做他们想做的事情的工作方式。我们将与两组年轻人在DIY数字制作（曼彻斯特编码Dojo）和自我组织（Woodcraft Folk）方面具有令人印象深刻的技能和能力。这项研究的重点是，作为成年研究人员，我们如何从尖端的设计实践中学习，创造一个支持年轻人自我组织的空间。重要的是要认识到，这项研究的目的不是一个“让碎片掉落在他们可能掉落的地方”的实验，看看年轻人是否可以自我组织——这个问题已经得到了回答，年轻人可以令人钦佩地做到这一点。相反，我们会提出一个包含一系列条件的“挑战”（例如，你的父母必须让你做这个活动），让他们自己组织做他们想做的事情，并给他们3000英镑的预算。研究将有两个组成部分，从成人研究者和年轻人的角度来看。1. 作为研究人员，我们将对年轻人如何应对自我组织的挑战进行参与者观察，以及这是否是一种将年轻人聚集在一起并避免人为参与的有效方式。然后，在研究结束后，我们将写自己的民族志，讲述我们作为成年研究人员如何应对将研究情境中的权力交给年轻人的挑战。2. 作为挑战的一部分，我们将要求年轻人记录和记录他们做了什么以及他们是如何做到的。我们不想把任何特定的研究方法强加给他们。我们希望他们使用各种印刷和数字媒体来分享他们所做的事情和原因，我们将适当地策划以庆祝他们的成就。根据研究结果，我们将撰写一篇学术论文和一份两页的研究结果报告，与实践者分享。

Participation is a common feature of research and social design projects, between academics and designers and communities. There are many reasons for participatory research and design in that it, for example, reduces power imbalances between academics and citizens and helps produce projects that are relevant to the real world. There are however concerns that participation in research, especially young people are involved, is not as real or as substantive as is claimed and instead there is a form of contrived participation or compliance. There are many reasons why this is the case but we focus on two: 1. Academics are under pressure to develop clear plans of what they intend to do to get funding and ethical clearance, and there is pressure that the research is successfully implemented creating high-impact and robust academic findings. Thus when the research begins and the participants participate what they are asked to do tends to be predefined and there is a hope that they will fulfil their roles to make sure things run to plan (Fox 2007, 2013; Dentith et al. 2009).2. When young people participate in research, there is a tendency for researchers to perceive and engage with them in terms of their deficits rather than their abilities and assets. So a participatory project might work with a group of young people to teach them how to be an artist or a designer. Some argue that this is a form of control of young people, trying to make them fit into the project and by extension what they researcher wants the project to be (Foucault 1997, Vromen and Collin 2010). The aim of the research project is to work with and treat young people in terms of the skills, knowledge and assets they already posses and seek to create ways of working that help them self-organise to do things they would like to do. We will work with two groups of young people with impressive skills and abilities in DIY digital making (Manchester Coder Dojo) and self-organisation (Woodcraft Folk). The research focuses on how we as adult researchers learn from cutting-edge design practice to create a space that supports the young people to self-organise. It is important to recognise that the intention of the research is not a 'let the pieces fall where they may' experiment of whether young people can self-organise - this question has been answered and young people can do this admirably. Instead, we will pose a 'challenge' involving a series of conditions (i.e., your parents must let you do the activity) and ask them to self-organise to do something they want to do and give them a budget of £3,000. The research will have two components, from the adult researcher and young person perspective. 1. As researchers we will carry out participant observations of how the young people respond to the challenge of self-organising and whether this is an effective way of bringing young people together and avoiding contrived participation. Then, after the research, we will write autoethnographic accounts of how we as adult researchers engaged with the challenges of letting go of the power in research situations to young people. 2. As part of the challenge we will ask the young people to record and document what they did and how they did it. We do not want to impose any particular way of researching on them. We hope they will use a range of print and digital media to share what they did and why, which we will curate appropriately to celebrate their achievements. From the research we will produce an academic paper and a two-page findings report to share with practitioners.