PRA

Participatory rural appraisal (PRA) is an approach used by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other agencies involved in international development. The approach aims to incorporate the knowledge and opinions of rural people in the planning and management of development projects and programmes.

I met Srini today and spoke to him about the project, and asked him to shed some light about PRA, even though PRA is used in a rural context, there could be some merit in borrowing certain methods – modify and redesign them to use them to in this context.we spoke about certain activities that are done and he’s also given me a paper to go through.

– Daily Routine, what is know as day in life in design research.
to know more about your interviewee’s/user’s habits – and to understand what all his life entails.

– Seasonal Calendar ( used in context of crop etc )- but helps give you an overview of major milestones in a year. Probably could be seen in light of exams in the VTC scenario.

– Expenditure Chart ( example give 25 stones/sharpeners etc to the interviewee, and ask them to distribute the stones into various different things they would do with their money)
this could help give me understand their motivation or values better

its important to remember context, make sure you give them things from their context

– Mobility Map : shows you where all they go, again understand more about their life habits mo

– Space : make a map of the places you go to in a week , and write all the different activities you do in that space. eg. classroom- thinking/reading? home- work/sleep/eat

-Time trends : (said could be useful to alumni) see in the last x amount of years how every 3 years certain things have changed/ stayed.

– Flow chart – going through all the answers/charts to these activities( anonymously putting up) and then analyzing them with the group, so you can see patterns that the community has that can be addressed.

He spoke about how its important to know your objective behind each activity you do.

Some thoughts –

I started thinking about things like -an emotion chart to see how and where are they happy/motivated/bored etc and see how the space could change that.

a question occurred from this thought- is there value in knowing what emotion you are experiencing in context to self understanding?