TAG TEAM Process
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Transcript of TAG TEAM Process
WONDERLAB FALL 2011
Luci Laffitte and Manuela Kind
STARTING POINT
As a starting point, we randomly chose
cards with one word each. They had a
service, a location, a group of people
and an object. We used these words as
inspiration to go out and have new ex-
periences and wonder about our world.
We decided to just jump in and go bow-
ling, get waxed at a beauty salon, eat
chicken nuggets and meet adrenaline
junkies playing paintball, to see what we
could discover in those places. We cap-
tured our adventures with cameras to
document what we experienced.
Emotions and reactions at the bowling alley
BOWLING ALLEY
We went to the bowling alley with a
group of about nine people. Some of us
played better, others were “unlucky”, but
everyone enjoyed the outing! We were
intriqued that each player had their own
routine, style of throwing, and way of
showing their reaction to the the row.
It was also interesting to see, that
Manuela‘s dad who doesn‘t speak any
English, was as much part of the group
as anyone else, as the communication
during the game was mostly based on
gestures and facial expressions.
Sharing stories at paintball
ADRENALINE JUNKIES
We arrived in a bus with other students
and once we got there, we got instruc-
tions for how to play the game safely
from a scary ex-marine. It was very inte-
resting to see how at first the group was
quiet and seperated, but after just one
round of play everyonewas really ex-
cited to share their stories from what
happened during the game and show
off their battle wounds. We found that
throughout the day, the individual cli-
ques melded into one big group.
Getting waxed!
EYEBROW WAXING
Monday morning at nine, we arrived
at “Judit”, a beauty-salon in Southside
for our appointment to get our eyeb-
rows / arms waxed. We entered a very
carefully decorated room with little figu-
res, flowers and lots of little beauty sup-
plies. The whole procedure of the wa-
xing itself was very relaxing, even though
it was painful. We wondered about how
much pain people, especially women,
are willing to take on in order to fit into
society.
Analyzing chicken nuggets
CHICKEN NUGGETS
We decided to eat some chicken nug-
gets very attentively. Before preparing
them, we read carefully what‘s inside the
nuggets we were about to eat. Although
everyone knows that eating chicken
nuggets is not healthy and that it‘s not
only chicken in there; it was weird to
read about it and eat the nuggets at the
same time. Usually we tend ignore the
truth about what we out in our bodies.
We questionned – why do we eat Fast
Food, even if we know how harmful it is?
CONCLUSIONS
As we started to analyze and try to un-
derstand the experiences we had over
the weekend, we realized how much all
the things had in common, even if they
seemed to be very different at the begin-
ning. All of them we‘re somehow related
to how people interact which eachother
or society and the norms in it.
How do we act in certain places? Why do
we pay for experiences that can be pain-
ful, hurtful, or unhealthy for us? When do
we decide to really engage in something
and behave that way? How much a part
of an experience are the people around
us? Would we act differently, if we were
with other people? Why would we act
that way? We decided that we wanted
to dive deeper into how we act/interact
in certain situation and and with certain
people.
QUESTIONING
To synthesize deeper what we had ex-
perienced, we rearranged all our pictu-
res and sticky – notes. We tried to figu-
re out, what all those experiences have
in common and how can we break this
common ground apart to very concre-
te questions. A very interesting moment
seemed to be the point when people
switched between certain behaviours.
Where do we decide in playing paintball,
that this is just a game and has nothing
to do with real war? How can we get
really emotional about the score in a
bowling game, even if there are so many
more things to care about? Why is it im-
portant for us to be able to play? What
do we gain from a game? Why do we
still enjoy it that much, even when we‘re
“grown up”? Do we interact different-
ly if we play the same game with our
closest friends than when playing with
our buddies from the soccer team?
When is it appropriate to play, and are
there people with whom we can never
play a game? How do we make that
choice?
DRAW US A PICTURE …
After all those questions emerged, we
decided to go out to discover people‘s
opinions about their behaviors with re-
gards to groups. We went to different
places in Squirrel Hill and on CMU Cam-
pus to talk to people from a lot of dif-
ferent age groups, cultural background
and genders. We asked them to draw
us a picture of the groups they belong
to, what they do with each group, and
what their role is in each group. It was
interesting to see that people were very
willing to participate. A lot of the people
we talked to told us that they had never
really thought about what groups they‘re
in until then.
TRYING TO FIND AN ORDER
After recieving more than 25 responses
from people from age 16 to 55, we tried
to arrange them in a meaningful order.
We hung themup based on age and also
seperated them by gender. We listed
the different types of groups that people
listed on purple sticky-notes and all the
roles that they think they have on pink
sticky-notes. After a little while, we dis-
covered, that age really affects how peo-
ple see their own role in a certain group.
First of all, the older people were, the
less groups they listed. It seemed as if
they chose to only draw the more im-
portant ones — or maybe had become
to focused or busy to be part of more
groups? We wondered – do people really
have less time or interest in belonging
to groups when they get older, because
of their responsibility to a family or job?
It was also interesting to see, that the
roles that younger people defined for
themselves were rather superficial, for
example: “I‘m the funny one” or “I‘m the
well dressed one”. We also found that
the 40+ crowd tended to describe their
role in a more functional way, such as
“I‘m an electrician” or “I‘m the mom”.
While, people in their 20s were more
likely to use specifics and personality
traits. We wondered about how our un-
derstanding and awareness of our own
role changes over time?
the decision maker
don‘tbuildstuffyourself beconfident bedominant,evenifunsure beunwavering makejudgements speakyouropiniondirectly talkloudly
talkoverpeople
the listener
beattentive understandeverything beempathetical makepeopletalkaboutideas don‘tjudge
don‘tquestionideas beopen-minded
the maker
makeitwork experimentwithmaterial thinkconcretly focusonoutcome limitdiscussion
the idea maker
beforwarthinking beidealisticandcreative delegate don‘tbuildstuffyouself seethebigpicture thinkabstractly communicateideas
the decision maker
don‘tbuildstuffyourself
beconfident
bedominant,evenifunsure
beunwavering
makejudgements
speakyouropiniondirectly
talkloudly
talkoverpeople
the listener
beattentive
understandeverything
beempathetical
makepeopletalkaboutideas
don‘tjudge
don‘tquestionideas
beopen-minded
the maker
makeitwork
experimentwithmaterial
thinkconcretly
focusonoutcome
limitdiscussion
the idea maker
beforwarthinking
beidealisticandcreative
delegate
don‘tbuildstuffyouself
seethebigpicture
thinkabstractly
communicateideas
the mediator
gatheropinions
thinkneutrally
actrationally
beempathetic
staycalmandfriendly
connectandcompromise
becurious
the class clown
entertainpeople
becharmingandclever
winpeopleover
don‘tcontributetothetask
berelentless
makeitfun
bringtheparty
the disagreer
questioneverything
don‘texplainyourself
bepersuasive
bepicky
makepeoplerethink
speakdirectly
the organizer
bestructured
makeitrunsmoothly
makeaplan
tellpeoplewhattodo
overseethesituation
keepitcleanandincontrol
the mediator gatheropinions
thinkneutrally actrationally
beempathetic staycalmandfriendly
connectandcompromise
becurious
the class clown entertainpeople becharmingandclever
winpeopleover don‘tcontributetothetask
berelentless makeitfun bringtheparty
the disagreer questioneverything
don‘texplainyourself
bepersuasive bepicky makepeoplerethink
speakdirectly
the organizer bestructured makeitrunsmoothly
makeaplan tellpeoplewhattodo
overseethesituation
keepitcleanandincontrol
CREATING A TASK
We spent a lot of time discussing how
people take on roles in different groups
and how these roles work together. How
do we define our role in relation to other
people and their roles? We realized that
we stumbled on something really inte-
resting and decided to create an activity
to gain more information from people.
What would happen, if people were told
to take on a different role? We tried to
develop a task that would be taken on
by a group of strangers with roles given
by us. Example roles- “the mediator”,
“the disagreer”, or “the decision maker”.
We created a list of attributes to help our
participants get into their new roles by
surveying our peers. But after we trying
a test-run of this activity with our class-
mates, we real ized that we might
not be able to gain that much informa-
tion from this activity, and that our idea
was too dependent on the task itself to
really gain insights about the behavior of
people.
GIVING ROLES
We decided to stay on our path, but we
had to change the way we approached
the probe. Should we really make them
do something specific and fullfill a mis-
sion, or would it be more interesting to
see, how they behave in the “real world”
on a saturday night? We invited friends
to go out with us after a dinner at Luci‘s
house. Before we actually went out to a
bar, we pulled out a bunch of name tags
that people usually wear at first mee-
tings or group gatherings. But on our
name tags, we wrote roles and stereo-
types like “listener”, “artist”, “foreigner”
or “the flirt”. We had our friends choose
tags for eachother, with the propositi-
on that the tags didn't have to exactly
match each person's personality. It was
funny to see how much people enjoyed
to do this, and that all twenty tags were
distributed after a few minutes. Howe-
ver, there were some undesirable roles
that people didn't want to wear even if
they knew that it was just for fun and
didn‘t really represent their actual per-
sonality. But mostly, the decisions were
made very easily, and soon we were rea-
dy to go out and observe what would
happen next.
TAKING ROLES
Only a few minutes after arriving at the
bar, we realized that our simple name
tags got a lot of attention. People that
weren‘t involved showed a lot of reac-
tions to it. These ranged from “Hey,
what‘s this?” to “Why would you wear
that?” and “Can I have one, too?” We
were surprised how much feedback we
got. In some way, people seemed to
believe in what the name tags said. A
stranger wentup to the person who was
wearing the “Pushover”-tag and told her,
that he could totally see that in her. Ano-
ther person, wearing the “Princess”-tag,
got handkisses from strangers, and the
nametags seemed to actually affect the
service at the bar. The person wearing
the “do-gooder”-tag didn‘t get a drink,
while the person wearing the “out of
control“-tag even got kicked out of the
bar by the end. We also noticed that
some people that participated hid their
tags after entering the bar or changed
it during the night because they found
their tag to be unfavorable or embaras-
sing. How could those little name tags
cause so much action?
CONCLUSIONS
We got back from this roleplay excursion
with a lot to think about. Obviously, we
had hit on something that resonated with
people. We tried to split up the evening
in three parts: 1. What happened when
people could define roles for eachother?
People had a lot of fun, picking roles for
eachother and discussing if this was a
good choice or not. Even if the role was
supposed to be the opposite of the acu-
tal personality, often there was still some
spark of truth in the role that the per-
son got. 2. What happened, once they
started to get into that role and played
the game? Once people got the name-
tag slapped on, they started to expe-
riment with what they could act like... if
they would really be like that role. It was
surprisingly easy for everyone. We
found that people really enjoyed taking
on the roles, even if we didn‘t tell them
specificly to act in a different manner.
3. What were the different kinds of re-
actions that we got and how did those
reactions affect us? We noticed that the
tagged people got a variety of different
kinds of reactions. And obviously, the
reactions and potential judgements from
outsiders influenced how comfortable
people felt wearing the tags. Somehow,
people were also very ready to accept
and believe in the roles …
it‘s not good for my kids
if it‘s «diet», it won‘t be that harmful
i should get my picture printed on it
if it‘s not cold enough, i won‘t take it
CREATING A TOOL
Now we reached the point where we
wanted to show what we learned from
our experiences, and how other peop-
le could benefit from them. How could
we apply our new-gained knowledge to
a useful tool for designers? Our experi-
ment showed us, that people are willing
and able to take on roles, and believe
in it to a certain degree. What if desig-
ners could also take on different roles,
and through this gain new perspectives
on the product they are designing? We
decided to work further in this direction,
and try to develop a kit that would help
design teams who are stuck on a pro-
ject, to change their point of view and
gain new approach to their work in a fun
and playful way.
WHATis iT
A plAyful WAy To reseArcH And find inspirATion.
WHois iT for
projecT TeAm THAT is sTuck And needs To discover neW perspecTives.
HoWiT Works
escApe from your usuAl perspecTives by selecTing neW roles for eAcH TeAmmATe. imAgine HoW your neW self inTerAcTs WiTH your projecT.
WHenTo plAy
leAve THe office An Hour eArly And HeAd To THe neAresT bAr. slAp on THe TAg before you depArT And leAve your old self AT THe door.
WHereTo go
pick A plAce WHere you HAven‘T been before And geT inspired by THe environmenT, seen THrougH neW eyes.
WHyiT Will cHAnge your life
design isn‘T jusT for you. Try To see your projecT THrougH THe eyes of An user you mAy noT HAve considered yeT.
CREATING A TOOL
If we wanted to create a tool, we first
had to answer a few questions to our-
selves, to better understand what we
were creating.
PREPARING THE FINAL PROBE
To make sure that our idea could actu-
ally function in a space that we couldn‘t
control, we decided to re-run our expe-
riment and try to get strangers involved.
Maybe our first try was just lucky or our
friends only participated because they
wanted to do us a favor? We set up a
board full of prepared name tags with
roles on it. We also posted simple inst-
ructions: “Pick a role. Pick a friend. Slap
it on”. We wondered what would happen
if we just set it up and watched. Would
people be curious about it? How long
would it take until people started to play
the game? Would people get bored of it,
or would it just need one person to start,
so that others can “catch fire”? Well
prepared with more than a hundred name
tags and lots of curiosity, we went to a bar
in Shadyside and set it up.
TRY OUT IN PUBLIC
Only a few minutes after we arrived at the
bar and started to unpack our project, the
first person came and asked us what we
were doing and why. She immediately de-
cided to participate and took three name
tags to slap on her friends. We started to
make the rounds, carrying a few name tags
with us, slapping them on random people
to gauge their interest and reaction. At the
beginning, a few people even asked if they
had to pay for it. It was interesting to see
that most people enjoyed being “involved in
something”. On the rare occasion that the
first person of a group that we approa-
ched didn't want to participate, the rest
of the group often didn‘t want to either. Af-
ter a while, we just let people pick and play,
and waited for others to come up to the
board and ask what it was. People seemed
to enjoy it a lot, to pick tags for eachother
and the feedback was very positive. We
couldn‘t believe that after only two hours,
almost all of our nametags were gone! The
few leftovers were all unfavorable roles e.g.
“over-confident” and “unhappy”. The name
tags seemed to be a real icebreaker – peo-
ple wearing the tags started conversations
even if they didn‘t know eachother before.
THE TAG TEAM KIT
We packaged our probe in a kit that
could be distributed to or purchased by
design teams. The kit contains name
tags, a sharpie, a disposable cameras,
and instructions for use.