Conference article

Multi-disciplinarity requires team members to justify and competitively defend their disciplinary perspective; which creates a risk of them becoming ego-centric (Fisher & Smith; 2011). Whiteley (1993; 2010) examined the problem of multiple intentions affecting social development projects and recognised that to design responsibly; the designer must facilitate a co-creative process. Service Designers have been seen to accommodate co-creative design activities in recent projects. In the UK; different studies to develop collaborative practices utilise diet; exercise; meditation and different group working strategies and are objective and empirical; conducted in clinical settings. However; design-based social innovation projects occur in real life (live) community contexts and mostly produce case-studies as outcomes; which are subjective and biographical. Therefore; this research looks to create a mixed-method. The research process is also multidisciplinary; whilst based in design it has a complexity science; holistic perspective; incorporating physiological and psychological methods. The derived methodology described in this paper utilises social interactions; physiological information and psychological data to build a holistic set of methods to triangulate the effects that meditative practice can have on co-creating individuals and teams. The corresponding analysis requires a three step process; firstly; generating themes or hypothesis(es); secondly; coding data based on the hypothesis and thirdly; categorizing the themes based on their relevance and importance within a multidisciplinary social innovation context by reducing the instance of ego-centricity in its team members. The contribution of the paper is that it demonstrates that a hybrid methodology can be derived to create evidence-based research to support the development of more open; collaborative and human centred approaches to innovation.

Co-creation; research method; awareness based practices