Bringing users together to gain deeper insight into their experiences

Beta is a co-creation workshop Alexia organized as part of her master’s thesis research to gain in-depth understanding of how spending times outdoors influenced women’s lives.

Participatory Research / Visual Design

Framing: identifying the questions

Alexia wanted to find out what makes outdoorsy women resilient and strong. What is it about their experiences out-of-doors that empowers them? And how does this translate into their everyday lives?

Each participant was given a set of cards to inspire them to think more broadly about their experiences outdoors. The cards featured a set of body silhouettes which alluded to each of the areas I was interested in having them explore: the mind, body, heart, and gut.

Creating: building a totem together

Totems are inspired by natural objects or animals that are believed by a particular society to have spiritual significance. By borrowing this form factor and providing the participants with a blank piece of the totem, I gave them the opportunity to build their own emblem. Each blank piece featured 3 sides which were to be collaged, decorated, and written on in response to the following prompts:

To end the workshop we had a small ceremony for each participant to present their piece and add it to the central totem. The goal of this shared emblem was to capture the core of what these experiences had brought to their lives and for me to carry these learnings into the rest of my thesis.

Capturing what was learned

Beta reinforced a lot of Alexia’s initial findings: experiences outdoors have an incredible influence on women’s self-confidence; having women role models is incredibly important; and assessing situations outdoors while taking risks translates into benefits that permeate everyday life.