As part of the growBots project, our project studio has been immersing themselves in the local farming community and its practices. To date, this has included visiting Decimal Place goat farm (at 7am on a Saturday morning no less) to milk goats and learn about those farming practices; hosting a video evening at which we curated an hours worth of videos clips on the future of farming; and attending the annual Georgia Organics conference.

Each of these was a significant undertaking and experience, and in the near future, I’ll post about each of them individually.

What stands out about each of these, is how they figure into the practice of public design and public design research. These are not research endeavors in the common sense – at least not in the common sense to design research. Rather, these activities all fall into methods and modes of research more akin “deep hanging-out” or “studying-up” to learn about the culture and practices of a given field.

If public design is about serious engagements with and commitments to issues and publics, then this is precisely the kind of research we need to be engaging in. Not only does it inform us about the cultures and practices of publics, it also serves to build trust and respect. At this early stage, its not entirely clear what precisely we are learning from these activities. But it is clear that these experiments into the modes and methods of public design research are a necessary first step in establishing engagements and commitments.