Four years of Handling Mind and Materials 2012 – 2016

The Handling mind research project aimed to provide a bridge between areas of neuroscience, education and design research – all concerned with embodied activities, social creativity and the extended nature of the human mind. Art, craft and design was understood as a multifaceted activity that involves complex cognitive processes and embodied interaction with materials and tools. This post introduces snapshots on some of our interesting results and provides links to the published doctoral dissertations and research articles.

Independent clay throwing by deafblind participant after receiving tactile guiding. Images by Camilla Groth.

Assisted clay throwing, tactile guiding

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Camilla Groth

Link to Doctoral study:

Making sense through hands: Design and craft thinking analyzed as embodied cognition

The importance of touch and haptic experiences in decision-making processes and the link to emotions in the context of craft-making was one of the key findings. During the making process, the practitioner seems to gain manual skills and tacit knowledge but also builds herself as a practitioner. Manipulating material could be seen as a way of being in and affecting the world as well as negotiating meaning related to our abilities and limitations. Read more in Tactile augmentation: A multimethod for capturing experiential knowledge.

Many different levels and notions of emotions surfaced through and in connection with haptic experiences. Emotions related to haptic and tactual experiences in a craft-making process affect and regulate risk assessment, decision-making and problem-solving. Moreover, a form of re-knowing of previous knowing aids in overcoming challenges. Read more on Emotions in Risk Assessment and Decision Making Processes.

Touch was an essential evaluation tool for making decisions on materials and for testing materials, but also for communicating ethical and social aspects of the design. Read more on The knowing body in material exploration.

Tactile skills could be taught relying solely on tactile means (omitting verbal and visual means), as the embodied knowledge of the teacher, including exact timing of movements and limb pressure, is more readily available to the student in such a setting. Furthermore, modelling can become an act of making sense (in a similar way as drawing is generally considered) through its capacity to give form and initiate ideas and through its iterative properties. Read more on Making sense: What can we learn from experts of tactile knowledge?

Tarja-Kaarina Laamanen

Link to Doctoral study:

Generating and transforming representations in design ideation

Design ideation is a multimaterial and multimodal process where representations and objects of the material world – important triggers for ideation – inspire and direct the ideation process. Importantly, creative ideation requires gradual development of ideas. Studied design situations required constraining the task in personally meaningful ways. A design situation that started as open was framed by generating and transforming representations, and these intertwined efforts created the dynamic nature of ideation. Read more on Sources of inspiration and mental image in textile design process.

Professional designers had developed strategies of efficiently finding and using sources of inspiration as well as different types of representations for their current cases. Developing a professional vision meant also competence in seeing a common underlying characteristic such as a pattern, a concept, a class membership, a rule, a process or causal relation.  The four approaches to ideation, graphic, material, verbal and mental approach illustrated these versatile processes. Read more on Interview Study of Professional Designers’ Ideation Approaches.

Students had to find their own self-imposed constraints in order to manage their design ideation processes. When they did this successfully, they framed the situation in ways that resembled professional designers’ practices. However, novices who did not yet have mature design-thinking capabilities, anchored their process too early to a chosen source of inspiration. Read more on Constraining an open-ended design task by interpreting sources of inspiration.

To conclude, the exploratory process of generating and transforming representations is a holistic making-related activity that is best supported by interaction with peers and different types of externalization methods. In teaching design ideation, deliberate practices and a variety of techniques for generating and transforming representations to develop visual ideas, as well as meaning-making for personal engagement and exploration should be included.

Mimmu Rankanen

Link to Doctoral study:

The visible spectrum: Participants’ experiences of the process and impacts of art therapy

The study focused on clients’ experiences of art therapy process and it’s impacts. A case study described how the changing qualities in the embodied creative art process, in the context of art in therapeutic group, affect the participant’s mental relation to the emotionally problematic issue. The transformative change process proceeded during the creative process from embodied experience into the perception of an alternative meaning.

The quality of aesthetic creative experiences can either hinder or aid a participant’s mental and emotional change processes. In the studied case, the changes from cognitively controlling art-making into a spontaneous and playful approach to art-making – which the client made her way to make art – also affected other levels of her experiences by changing a helpless relationship with a traumatic experience into an agentic position, wherein more flexible observation and experiences of resourcefulness became possible.

Read more on The space between art experiences and reflective understanding in therapy and Clients’ experiences of the impacts of an experiential art therapy group

Contradictions or challenges that are experienced within a therapeutic relationship, group environment or during art processes affect the participants’ experiences of therapeutic change. Interestingly, these experiences can either turn into significant aiding processes and a good outcome or become stagnant and hinder the therapeutic process. Unpleasant emotions that remain unsolved could arise during sensory interaction in art-making or in social interaction, and a fear for others’ interpretations could prevent or restrict expressing personally important issues. The results create a clearer and better structured understanding of how crucial it is for the experienced outcome of art therapy to encounter and reflect those intrapersonal, intermediate and interpersonal experiences, which awake unpleasant emotions during the process.

Artistic interaction that takes place in a group context may include unique therapeutic mechanisms or processes. Any aspect of this intervening interactive relationship between art, participant, therapist and group can either have positive influences or negative influences on the participants’ art therapy process or the outcomes they experience. The results include an overview on how clients described the therapeutic or un-therapeutic effects of art as well as the kinds of positive processes or influences that participants have experienced in relation to art therapy group. Read more on Clients’ positive and negative experiences of experiential art therapy group process and The three-headed girl. The experience of dialogical art therapy viewed from different perspectives.

Tellervo Härkki

Link to Doctoral study:

Handling Knowledge: Three perspectives on embodied creation of knowledge in collaborative design

In collaborative design, students engage in focused knowledge work. On the other hand, collaborative designing can be understood as drafting series of essential features (of the problems and the solutions) in different formats, which build on linguistic and embodied resources.

Sketching has an acknowledged role in facilitating idea generation and communication. In these studies, collaborative sketching was utilized when memorising was required, especially to depict spatial configurations, whereas gestures provided a channel to ideate fine details clearly and with precision by employing both visuospatial and kinaesthetic feedback. Moreover, gestures revealed a conceptualisation that was different from words. A strength of gestures as a resource for creative collaboration is that gestures invite designers to share and communicate rather than withdraw.

Material knowledge was a resource to address the challenges of making, not an end itself. In general, materials were considered to be practical solutions rather than sources of inspiration and new ideas.

In general, the practice of sharing ideas as and when they emerge might benefit novices as much as any single design tool. At best, active and rich use of embodied resources alongside the linguistic ones can turn interaction into inspiraction, that is, interaction that inspires—elicits new ideas and (even) more productive interaction. Further, the epistemic role of the studied embodied resources is not necessarily limited to enriching communication and thinking but could entail the ability to elicit more ideas by enhancing the intensity and richness of collaborative designing.

Read more on Line by line, part by part: Collaborative sketching for designing, Material knowledge in collaborative designing and making – A case of wearable sea creatures and Hands on design: comparing the use of sketching and gesturing in collaborative designing

Maarit Mäkelä

The creative process could be described as altering positions of serendipity and intentionality. Intuitive leaps are taken when circumstances are fortunate or feed the process with opportunities for progress. These paths may be followed or re-wined through an internal, and sometimes shared, learning process that takes time and that benefits from breaks and time for reflection. Materials act as agentic forces and may be attributed partial ownership of the process as they enable or disable certain possibilities through their affordances. Read more on Personal exploration: Serendipity and intentionality as altering positions in a creative process.

Maarit Mäkelä & Teija Löytönen

The physical environment and materials – active agents in the learning process – create a performative learning space. In such a space, learning becomes a more unpredictable and experimental process, opening up new, emergent possibilities. Pedagogical relationships go beyond the teacher and the curriculum, and the agency of materiality has a pedagogical effect. We propose that materiality teaches in its own way, and the design of the learning setting has an important role. Matter can have an unanticipated or unexpected contribution to the learning processes – and to the final artefacts. In addition to the pedagogical agency of matter, physical environment as part of the material world also has agency, thus creating a performative learning space. Instead of contributing solely to transmitting knowledge and skills, the teacher’s role then is to create conditions for the emergent and evolving learning – and to be prepared to learn herself, alongside the students. Read more on Rethinking materialities in higher education.

To sum up four years of intensive work in a blog post is hard

However, we are happy that the goals of the project were achieved very well and we did not drastically change the implementation of the research plan. The project provided a new understanding of the meaning of embodied knowing in relation to material culture. It also revealed new ways to focus future research efforts toward multidisciplinary research. The challenge of the project was to conduct interdisciplinary research creating a mutual language between different discourses (design research and neuroscience). In order to get good quality data in neuroscientific standards we were forced to make compromises in some of the research settings. The strict experimental setting that we had to implement to get our data did not easily capture the essence of the creative design process. Anyhow the discourse was fruitful and we were able to receive meaningful results.

Research setting utilising movement sensors on the wrists and a heartbeat monitor.
Photo by Camilla Groth.

 

Research setting utilising EEG as well as movement sensors on the wrists and a heartbeat monitor.
Photo by Camilla Groth.

 

Each of the 30 participants produced 92 pieces of formed clay and 92 drawings, resulting in a room full of ceramic artefacts and drawn designs. Photo by Camilla Groth.

The most challenging task in the project was to design a research setting that would capture the practical information that is relevant to the field of design research, but at the same time acknowledge the limitations of the data that can be acquired via methods used in the field of brain research. The main work related to designing of these methods (Track C) were already done when writing the application, and during the project we were able to implement these study settings to the practice. Thus, in the study we were able to gather the planned data, though in small scale. This means that even though we have results, they are mainly tentative due to the limitations of the gathered data. Regardless, our main contribution to the field is that we opened a neuroscientific track in the field of design research that may be built on by future research teams.

Read more on our neuroscientific studies on

Huotilainen, M., Rankanen, M., Groth, C., Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, P. & Mäkelä, M. (2018) Why our brains love arts and crafts: Implications of creative practices on psychophysical well-being. FORMakademisk Journal, 11 (2).

Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, P., Huotilainen, M., Mäkelä, M., Groth, C. & Hakkarainen, K. (2016) How can neuroscience help to understand design and craft activity? The promise of cognitive neuroscience in design studies. FORMakademisk, 9 (1) Article 3, 1-16.

Leinikka, M., Huotilainen, M., Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, P., Groth, C., Rankanen, M., Mäkelä, M. (2016) Physiological measurements of drawing and forming activities. In: P. Lloyd & E. Bohemia, eds., Proceedings of Design Research Society Conference 2016, Brighton, Vol. 7, pp. 2941-2957, DOI 10.21606/drs.2016.335

Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, P., Huotilainen, M., Mäkelä, M. Groth, C. & Hakkarainen, K. (2014) The promise of cognitive neuroscience in design studies. In Lim, Y.-K., Niedderer, K., Redström, J., Stolterman, E., & Valtonen, A. (Eds.). Proceedings of the Design Research Societys’ Conference, Umeå, Sweden: Umeå Institute of Design, Umeå University. pp. 834-846.

Handling Mind final seminar at Nuuksio national reserve 28-29/11

kuva4(original text by Camilla Groth)

The handling mind project group assembled to gather the most significant results of the project as a whole during November 28th and 29th. The results will be presented at the final seminar of the Human Mind research program on the 1st and 2nd of December hosted by the Academy of Finland. A note on these gathered results will be posted here after the seminar. Here are some images from the Nuuksio seminar place.

kuva1

kuva3kuva5kuva6 k2muokPhotos by Camilla Groth and Kaisa Ala-Outinen, from Hawkhill Nature cottage rental

 

Handling Mind joined forces with EMAL at the Design Research Society (DRS) 2016 Conference in Brighton June 28-30

Brighton Pier in June 2016. Photo by Camilla Groth

Brighton Pier in June 2016. Photo by Camilla Groth

(Original text by Camilla Groth)

The Handling mind consortium created a joint event together with the Norwegian research group Embodied Making and Learning (EMAL) from The University College of Southeast Norway, during the Design Research Society (DRS) 2016 Conference in Brighton June 28-30.

We arranged a joint additional theme session called EMBODIED MAKING AND LEARNING and invited papers, from which six papers made it through the review process and were presented in the session on Wednesday 29th of June. Marte Sørebø Gulliksen from the The University College of Southeast Norway acted as the sub chair and co-conveners were: Pirita Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, Helsinki University, Finland together with Maarit Mäkelä and Camilla Groth, Aalto University, Finland.

The context of this thematic session is the collective endeavors formally established at the LearnXDesign 2015-conference in Chicago, June 2015 by researchers from three research groups in Norway, Finland and Canada. At that conference, the consortium held a full-day open symposium. Papers from that symposium were published during the DRS-conference as a special issue of FORMakademisk. Here you may find five publications that are contributions of the Handling Mind researchers.

The thematic sessions during this years DRS conference in Brighton provided both an incitement and a platform for presenting and discussing various aspects of embodied making and learning. The papers presented in this track discussed core issues of embodied making and learning through various theoretical and methodological means

The first presentation, The role of sensory experiences and emotion in craft practice by Camilla Groth, linked sensory experiences with emotion and sense making in craft practice. Drawing on new knowledge on embodied cognition and the importance of emotions in risk assessment and decision making process, she presented a practice-led study in clay throwing. Groth’s analysis of how emotions and experience guided her risk assessment, decision making and problem solving expand current knowledge of the role of emotions and sensory experiences in the embodied making processes in craft practice.

In our second presentation, Learning what it means to learn: first-hand experience in the process of material transformations, By Biljana Fredriksen we dive into the sense making process of children and learn how their embodied material exploration aids in new understandings. The paper presents specific examples of three-year old children’s first-hand experiences in material transformation, and discusses how these experiences relate to their learning. Fredriksen proposes that even adult learn through such experiences, and that it even could be an arena for learning how to learn.

After these two introductory presentations we heard about two research projects that combine design research with neuroscience. Traditionally the mind has been studied separately from the body, but as a new understanding about the embodied mind has emerged there is a need to research the embodied mind in action. The first of these two presentations, Why making matters—developing an interdisciplinary research project on how embodied making may contribute to learning by Marte S. Gulliksen, envisions a new project development that would be truly interdisciplinary. Knowledge from the rapidly developing neurosciences shows promise to generate insight that could be useful for confirming and expanding current knowledge on how embodied making contribute to learning. Gulliksen has taken on the challenge to write about relevant neurobiological knowledge from a woodcarver and craft teacher perspective through a series of articles. In her paper, she presents this strategy and the aims for such a project development, tentative ideas for future interdisciplinary studies that has been put forth in the series of articles and the methodological framework for the project: an integrative applied research approach.

The next paper presented a project combining the study of mind and body in design and craft practice, the Handling Mind project. The results of this four-year project was presented by Marianne Leinikka, (image 2 and 3) in the session on Physiological measurements of drawing and forming activities. In the Handling Mind project, psychophysiological experiments were designed and conducted to study the relationship between making and feeling, handling creative situations and the embodied mind. Through a careful design comprising visual and material design in three different tasks, the study’s findings expand current knowledge on embodied activities.

In the following three presentations the theme of embodied making were further expanding the topic from other perspectives. In her presentation Constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing knowledge through making Anna Louise Piper bridges the gap between implicit and explicit knowledge. The paper presents a practice-led study of the development of composite woven garments, and uses this study to demonstrate how process object analysis advance creative practice, in particular in regards to the transition from hand production to digital production.

The situatedness of a practice puts demands on the design process to be embedded in real world situations and to consider the lived experiences of the users. The following presentation; Experience Labs: co-creating health and care innovations using design tools and artefacts by Tara French, Gemma Teal, and Sneha Raman, presented the project “Experience Labs”. Experience labs are an approach developed to facilitate meetings between those receiving and delivering healthcare. The labs are means of co-creating new solutions by shared insights from participants from both ends of the health care, to engage in the design process and experience new concepts. This paper brings in a new perspective on embodied making through design for healthcare.

Marianne Leinikka giving the Handling Mind paper presentation. Photo by Camilla Groth

Marianne Leinikka giving the Handling Mind paper presentation. Photo by Camilla Groth

Marianne Leinikka giving the Handling Mind paper presentation. Photo by Camilla Groth

Marianne Leinikka giving the Handling Mind paper presentation. Photo by Camilla Groth

The above presentation of the papers delivered at the conference is based on the introductory notes of the session:

Gulliksen, M., Groth, C., Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, P., Mäkelä, M (2016) Introduction: Embodied making and learning. In: P. Lloyd & E. Bohemia, eds., Proceedings of DRS2016: Design + Research + Society – Future-Focused Thinking, Volume 7, pp. 2889-2893. DOI 10.21606/drs.2016.605

For the actual papers delivered by the Handling Mind consortium during the DRS conference see:

Leinikka, M., Huotilainen, M., Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, P., Groth, C., Rankanen, M., Mäkelä, M. (2016) Physiological measurements of drawing and forming activities. In: P. Lloyd & E. Bohemia, eds., Proceedings of DRS2016: Design + Research + Society – Future-Focused Thinking, Volume 7, pp 2941-2957, DOI 10.21606/drs.2016.335

Groth, C. (2016) The role of sensory experiences and emotions in craft practice. In: P. Lloyd & E. Bohemia, eds., Proceedings of DRS2016: Design + Research + Society – Future-Focused Thinking, Volume 7, pp 2895-2910, DOI 10.21606/drs.2016.337

 

FORMakademisk special issue from our symposium Embodied making and design learning, LearnXDesign, Chicago

The latest FORMakademisk issue, Vol. 9 No 1 (2016) presents five articles based on presentations in symposium Embodied making and design learning:

  • Embodied Making, Creative Cognition and Memory by Marte Sørebø Gulliksen
  • Personal Exploration: Serendipity and intentionality as altering positions in a creative process by Maarit Mäkelä
  • How can neuroscience help understand design and craft activity? The promise of cognitive neuroscience in design studies by Pirita Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, Minna Huotilainen, Maarit Mäkelä, Camilla Groth and Kai Hakkarainen
  • Design and Craft thinking analysed as Embodied Cognition by Camilla Groth
  • Material knowledge in collaborative designing and making – A case of wearable sea creatures by Tellervo Härkki, Pirita Seitamaa-Hakkarainen and Kai Hakkarainen

The symposium was part of Learn X Design conference, held in sunny (mostly) sunny Chicago, IL USA, June 28-30, 2015.

While the days were sunny, the morning fog made the city to disappear

While the days were sunny, the morning fog made the city to disappear. Photo by Camilla Groth

In addition to the authors listed above, also two other presenters were heard: Catharine DISHKE-HONDZEL, PhD, Western University, Canada, and Joel LOPATA, PhD, Western University, Canada. After the public part of the symposium, all the facilitators from the three research groups that organised the symposium took some time to plan for the future.

The faciliatators, from the left: Brynjar Olavsson (HiT, Norway), Joel Lopata (Western, Canada), Pirita Seitamaa-Hakkarainen (Helsinki University, Finland), Marte S. Gulliksen (HiT, Norway), Maarit Mäkelä (Aalto University, Finland), Catharine Dihske-Hondzel (Huron College, Canada), Tellervo Härkki (Helsinki University, Finland), Camilla Groth (Aalto University, Finland)

The faciliatators, from the left:
Brynjar Olavsson (HiT, Norway), Joel Lopata (Western, Canada), Pirita Seitamaa-Hakkarainen (Helsinki University, Finland), Marte S. Gulliksen (HiT, Norway), Maarit Mäkelä (Aalto University, Finland), Catharine Dihske-Hondzel (Huron College, Canada), Tellervo Härkki (Helsinki University, Finland), Camilla Groth (Aalto University, Finland)

IMG_28561

Learn x Desing

In an upcoming conference

LearnxDesing, Chicago, IL USA, June 28-30, 2015

we’ll participate as presenters in a symposium:

Embodied making and design learning

Presenters:

Marte S. GULLIKSEN, Professor, Telemark University College, Norway

Pirita SEITAMAA-HAKKARAINEN, Professor, Helsinki University, Finland

Maarit MÄKELÄ, Associate Professor, Aalto University, Finland

Catharine DISHKE-HONDZEL, PhD, Western University, Canada

Joel LOPATA, PhD, Western University, Canada

Camilla GROTH, Doctoral Student, Aalto University, Finland

Tellervo HÄRKKI, Doctoral Student, Helsinki University, Finland

 

New design challenge – more research data

It is autumn and time to collect some more research data for track B! First year students of Textile Teacher Education visited SEA LIFE Helsinki to get acquainted with and inspired by sea creatures.

One possessive sea creature in SEA LIFE Helsinki. Photo by Tellervo Härkki

One possessive sea creature in SEA LIFE Helsinki. Photo by Tellervo Härkki

Guest Experience Supervisor Paulina Ranta welcomed us and introduced this autumn’s design challenge.

Paulina Ranta presenting SEA LIFE. Photo by Tellervo Härkki.

Paulina Ranta presenting SEA LIFE. Photo by Tellervo Härkki.

This year the students will design accessories for children visiting SEA LIFE Helsinki.

Design challenge autumn 2014 - word cloud by Wordle.

Design challenge autumn 2014 – word cloud by Wordle.

A new round of data collection started for Skill learning

Tatting materials and tools: yarns, shuttles and crochet hook. Photo by Tellervo Härkki

Tatting materials and tools: yarns, shuttles and crochet hook. Photo by Tellervo Härkki

Second round of data collection for Skill learning has started. All 11 new participants visited  Finnish Institute of Occupational Health for EEG-measurements, and after that they spent an hour and a half at the University premises, Siltavuorenpenger 10 to learn tatting (in Finnish: käpyily or sukkulapitsi) and filet lace (in Finnish: verkkopitsi).

Learning materials for tatting. Photo by Tellervo Härkki

Learning materials for tatting. Photo by Tellervo Härkki

 

DRS 2014 – our upcoming presentations

DRS 2014 – Design’s Big Debates. The Design Research Society, Umeå, Sweden, June 16-19, 2014

The following presentations have been approved:

Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, P., Huotilainen, M., Mäkelä M., Croth, C., & Hakkarainen, K. (in press). The promise of cognitive neuroscience in design studies. Proceedings of Design Research Society 2014 Conference, June 16-19, 2014 Umeå, Sweden.

Groth, C., Mäkelä, M., Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, P. & Kosonen, K. (in press). Tactile augmentation: reaching for tacit knowledge. Proceedings of Design Research Society 2014 Conference, June 16-19, 2014 Umeå, Sweden.

Wordle word cloud created from draft article The promise of cognitive neuroscience

Wordle word cloud created from draft article The promise of cognitive neuroscience