Example Experiment

An experiment in action!

This experiment sheet is an example of one which may be written for a research activity - in this case a workshop which focused on building people's capacity in 'backcasting' - a process to go from big picture 'outcomes' back to every day activities.

The left side of the sheet (yellow) is the part of the experiment which is written before the activity, and the right side (blue) is the summary of what happened.

We will go through this process more, later in the field guide.

Key in this experimentation culture, is the idea of documenting the research before and after, in order to retain the granular detail of the research for future reference.

Traditionally, design research outcomes might get documented in the form of a stakeholder write up, a published article, or maybe some form of graphic summary, but the raw insights may have their edges sanded down a bit (or a lot).

When it comes to referring back to research activities, we often have to lean back into our memories or presentations, which rarely have the full, rich data and insights of an experiment sheet.