Doing generative research: a process ethnography of an interdisciplinary co-design project

Through a joint auto-ethnographic review of methodological practice in an interdisciplinary project, we reflect on the structures, strategies and tactics to develop and maintain an authentically generative research design involving ethnographic fieldwork and a novel co-design framework with the adult social care workforce in Scotland, UK.

Seven projects were funded by the UKRI Healthy Ageing Challenge as part of the Social, Behavioural & Design Research Programme between 2021 and 2024. As one of these, Healthier Working Lives (HWL) focused on an older workforce who are underpaid, overstretched, and largely ignored, seeking to better understand the issues they face, and to bring them into contact with design businesses trying to work in the care sector, with the aim of enabling real world change. The academic team included social anthropologists and co-design researchers committed to generative and empowering processes rather than the extractive interpretation of captured data. Generative research commonly encounters barriers including expectations of other team members, funders, and sometimes of the communities involved.
We are now conducting a joint auto-ethnographic reflection through an audit of the shared Miro boards that chart discussions amongst the wider HWL team over the past two years. We report on: the structures we put in place to scaffold the project methodology and connect the imaginaries of ethnography and co-design amongst the research team (including the novel ‘Ripple Framework’); changes in strategies and tactics for supporting the care workforce to contribute meaningfully over an extended period of time, while not taking power from them; the methodological tensions that remain in the outcome narratives of the project; and how we understand success for the four ‘innovation teams’ that were created to develop change projects in response to self-identified priorities. Key activities and moments in the team process are described.